Research Center of New Media Technology

Climate Change Collaboratory (Triple-C)

News

  • 20 Sep 2012 - Public Symposium on "Networking Knowledge, Networking People: New Media for Climate Change Action"
  • 18 Apr 2012 - Launch of Climate Quiz, a Facebook game to investigate environmental attitudes and perceptions among social media users
  • 01 Dec 2011 - Social Media as a Barometer of Environmental Policy (Content Analysis of COP 17 Online Coverage)
  • 22 Sep 2011 - Presentation of the Triple-C Initiative at the 12th Austrian Climate Day (University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences)
  • 02 June 2011 - Sustainovation 2011 Conference
  • 19 Nov 2010 - Improving Climate Change Communication: A Call to Action by Thomas E. Bowman et al. published in 'Science'
  • 16 Jun 2010 - Expert Workshop and Public Symposium
  • 12 Mar 2010 - Presentation at the 11th Austrian Climate Day
  • 01 Mar 2010 - Start of the Project

Project Summary

The Climate Change Collaboratory (Triple-C) aims to strengthen the relations between environmental stakeholders who recognize the need for climate change adaptation and mitigation, but differ in their specific worldviews, goals and agendas.

For this purpose, the collaboratory provides tools to manage expert knowledge as well as a context-sensitive environment for creating and editing documents in a collaborative manner. Building upon the award-winning technology behind the Media Watch on Climate Change, the user's semantic context is provided by a real-time synchronization framework for rendering advanced visualizations including information landscapes, geographic projections, and ontology graphs. Innovative survey instruments in the tradition of “games with a purpose” create shared meaning through collaborative ontology building, and leverage the extensive user base of social networking platforms to capture indicators of environmental attitudes, lifestyles and behaviors.

Two project workshops help align Triple-C with the research activities of its associate partners, increase the project’s visibility, and foster the collaboration with leading international organizations.

Project Consortium

The Triple-C project is funded by the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund within the program line ACRP (Austrian Climate Research Program). The project partners include MODUL University Vienna (Department of New Media Technology and Department of Public Governance and Management), the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Research Institute for Computational Methods), University of Graz (Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change), and the European Support Center of the Club of Rome.

Project Summary

The Climate Change Collaboratory (Triple-C) aims to strengthen the relations between environmental stakeholders who recognize the need for climate change adaptation and mitigation, but differ in their specific worldviews, goals and agendas.

For this purpose, the collaboratory provides tools to manage expert knowledge as well as a context-sensitive environment for creating and editing documents in a collaborative manner. Building upon the award-winning technology behind the Media Watch on Climate Change, the user's semantic context is provided by a real-time synchronization framework for rendering advanced visualizations including information landscapes, geographic projections, and ontology graphs. Innovative survey instruments in the tradition of “games with a purpose” create shared meaning through collaborative ontology building, and leverage the extensive user base of social networking platforms to capture indicators of environmental attitudes, lifestyles and behaviors.

Two project workshops help align Triple-C with the research activities of its associate partners, increase the project’s visibility, and foster the collaboration with leading international organizations.

Core Partners

  • MODUL University Vienna, Department of New Media Technology and Department of Public Governance
  • Vienna University of Economics & Business Administration,
  • Research Institute for Computational Methods
  • University of Graz, Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change
  • The Club of Rome, European Support Centre

Austrian Associate Partners

  • University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences,Department of Water, Atmosphere and Environment
  • World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Austria
  • Science Center Network
  • International Society for Environmental Protection, Central European Environmental Data Request Facility (CEDAR)

International Associate Partners

  • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),Climate Program Office
  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),Ames Research Center
  • Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC)
  • London School of Economics, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment

2013

  • Scharl, A., Hubmann-Haidvogel, A., Weichselbraun, A., Lang, H.-P. and Sabou, M. (2013). Media Watch on Climate Change – Visual Analytics for Aggregating and Managing Environmental Knowledge from Online Sources. 46th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS-46). Maui, USA: Forthcoming (accepted 05 Sep 2012).

2012

  • Scharl, A., Sabou, M. and Föls, M. (2012). Climate Quiz – A Web Application for Eliciting and Validating Knowledge from Social Networks. 18th Brazilian Symposium on Multimedia and the Web (WebMedia-2012). G. Bressan and R.M. Silveira. São Paulo, Brazil: Brazilian Computer Society: Forthcoming.
  • Wohlgenannt, G., Weichselbraun, A., Scharl, A. and Sabou, M. (2012). Dynamic Integration of Multiple Evidence Sources for Ontology Learning, Journal of Information and Data Management. Forthcoming (Accepted 14 Aug 2012).
  • Scharl, A., Sabou, M., Gindl, S., Rafelsberger, W. and Weichselbraun, A. (2012). Leveraging the Wisdom of the Crowds for the Acquisition of Multilingual Language Resources. 8th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-2012). N. Calzolari et al. Instanbul, Turkey: European Language Resources Association: 379-383.
  • Piccolo, L.S.G., Scharl, A. and Baranauskas, C. (2012). Design of Eco-Feedback Technology to Motivate Sustainable Behavior: Cultural Aspects in a Brazilian Context. International Conference on Information Resources Management (IRM-2012). Vienna, Austria.
  • Hubmann-Haidvogel, A., Brasoveanu, A., Scharl, A., Sabou, M. and Gindl, S. (2012). Visualizing Contextual and Dynamic Features of Micropost Streams. 2nd Workshop on Making Sense of Microposts (MSM-2012), 21st International World Wide Web Conference. M. Rowe et al. Lyon, France: CEUR Proceedings: 34-40.

2011

  • S. Seebauer, A. Kufleitner: Validation of a Facebook “Game with a purpose” as an Indicator of Climate Change Knowledge. Accepted for presentation at the 12th European Congress of Psychology, 04-08 July 2011, Istanbul.
  • S. Seebauer, A. Kufleitner: Leverage of a Facebook “Game with a Purpose” as a Survey Tool for Climate Change Knowledge. Accepted for presentation at the 9th Biennial Conference on Environmental Psychology, 26-28 September 2011, Eindhoven.
  • Scharl, A., Hubmann-Haidvogel, A., Wohlgenannt, G., Weichselbraun, A., Dickinger, A. (2011): “Scalable Annotation Mechanisms for Digital Content Aggregation and Context-Aware Authoring”, 10th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computer Systems & 5th Latin American Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (IHC-CLIHC-2011). Porto de Galinhas, Brazil: Brazilian Computing Society: 376-380.

2010

  • Scharl, A. and Weichselbraun, A. (2010). "Building a Web-Based Knowledge Repository on Climate Change to Support Environmental Communities", Organizational, Business, and Technological Aspects of the Knowledge Society: 3rd World Summit on the Knowledge Society (WSKS-2010), Proceedings Part II (= CCIS Vol. 112). Eds. M.D. Lytras et al. Heidelberg: Springer. 79-84.
  • Aversano-Dearborn, M. and Schauer, T., Eds. (2010). Proceedings of the Climate Change Expert Workshop & Symposium (16 June 2010). Vienna, Austria: Triple-C Consortium. www.modul.ac.at/nmt/triple-c/
  • Scharl, A. (2010). “Climate Change Communication and Collaboration – Translating Awareness into Collective Action”, Proceedings of the Climate Change Expert Workshop & Symposium (16 June 2010). M. Aversano-Dearborn and T. Schauer. Vienna, Austria: Triple-C Consortium: 7-9.
  • Scharl, A. (2010): "New Media for Climate Change Communication and Collaboration", 11th Austrian Climate Day, University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, 11-12 March 2010, Vienna, Austria. V28.

The Climate Change Collaboratory (Triple-C) is a two-year research project funded within the Austrian Climate Research Program (ACRP). The introductory expert workshop and public symposium entitled “Climate Change Communication and Collaboration: Translating Awareness into Collective Action” took place on June 16th, 2010 at MODUL University Vienna. Photos of the event as well as the slides of the keynote speakers (see short biographies below) are now available for download: David D. Herring, Communications Program Director, U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA Climate Program Office Download Slides | Photo* Prof. Dr. Helga Kromp-Kolb, Head of the Institute of Meteorology, University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences Download Slides | Photo* Prof. DDr. Arno Scharl, Vice President and Head of Department, MODUL University Vienna, Department of New Media Technology Download Slides | Photo*Dr. David Stainforth, Senior Research Fellow, London School of Economics, Grantham Research Institute Download Slides | Photo*Moderator: Thomas E. Bowman, MA, President of the Bowman Design Group and Founder of the Climate Solutions ProjectDownload Slides | Photo* Short Biographies David Herring serves as Director of the Communications & Education Program within NOAA's Climate Program Office, in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he works to promote public climate science literacy. Central to this endeavor is the new NOAA Climate Services Web Portal (www.climate.gov), published in December 2009, for which he serves as Program Manager. David also conceived a new series of public dialogs called “Community Conversations on Climate”, which brings together climate scientists, policy experts and citizens into facilitated dialogs about causes and impacts of climate change. Before joining NOAA in 2008, David spent 16 years working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, as an Education and Outreach Project Manager in the Earth Sciences Division, where he also served as the Terra Mission Outreach coordinator. David led the effort to build NASA’s award-winning Earth Observatory, Visible Earth, and NEO websites. He received his Masters Degree in 1992 from East Carolina University, where he trained in science and technical writing, journalism, and science education. Helga Kromp-Kolb is a climate researcher and heads the Institute of Meteorology and is chair of the University Senate at the University of Applied Life Sciences and Natural Resources in Vienna. Her scientific expertise is in the area of climatology and meteorology in particular environmental meteorology and environmental research. After a leading position at the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik/ Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics and after being an Associate Professor at San José State University in Californa / USA she has been teaching and researching at the University of Applied Life Sciences and Natural Resources in Vienna, a position she has held since 1995. She is a member of the Austrian, German and American Associations for Meteorology. Her scientific expertise is in high demand in numerous advisory bodies and councils. Ms Helga Kromp-Kolb was awarded with the “Konrad Lorenz Award” in 1991 and “Austrian Scientist of the Year Award” in 2005. Arno Scharl is the Vice President of MODUL University Vienna and Head of the Department of New Media Technology. Prior to his current appointment, he held professorships at the University of Western Australia and Graz University of Technology, was a Key Researcher at the Austrian Competence Center for Knowledge Management, and a Visiting Fellow at Curtin University of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley. Arno Scharl completed his doctoral research and habilitation at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. He has edited books on Environmental Online Communication and The Geospatial Web (www.ecoresearch.net/springer; www.geospatialweb.com), founded the ECOresearch Network (www.ecoresearch.net) and served as co-chair of the 20th International Conference on Informatics for Environmental Protection. His current research interests focus on the integration of semantic and geospatial Web technology, Web mining and media monitoring, virtual communities and environmental online communication. David Stainforth is a Senior Research Fellow in the Grantham Research Institute. He is a physicist by training and has many years experience of climate modelling. While a researcher at Oxford University he co-founded and was chief scientist of the climateprediction.net project, the world's largest climate modelling experiment. He has been both a NERC Research Fellow and a Tyndall Research Fellow at Ox-ford University. His current research interests focus on how we can extract robust and useful information about future climate, and climate related phenomena, from modelling experiments. This includes issues of how to design climate modelling experiments and how to link climate science to real-world decision making in such a way as to be of value to industry, policy makers and wider society. Thomas E. Bowman is one of the premier interpreters of global change, climate and energy science, and green business strategies. He is a social entrepreneur, advisor, communication strategist, and science interpreter. As President of Bowman Design Group, he led award-winning climate exhibition designs for the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences and Birch Aquarium at Scripps, and the Ocean on the Edge exhibition at the Aquarium of the Pacific. As a consultant with Bowman Global Change, he contributed to the federal Climate Literacy education guide, organized a groundbreaking meeting for assessing public attitudes to global warming, and authored its influential summary report. Bowman founded the Climate Solutions Project to develop public intervention strategies with a blue-ribbon team of experts in climate science, social science, economics, ethics and social marketing. He writes a monthly column on green business strategies and received an inaugural Small Business of the Year award from the California Air Resources Board in 2009 for generating annual cost savings while slashing his firm's greenhouse gas emission by 65% in just two years. * Photo Credits: MODUL University Vienna/APA-OTS/Schedl (More Photos)