Immersive Visualisation Systems as Alignment Strategies for Extreme Event Scenarios

Immersive systems are increasingly used to train first responders and prepare communities for extreme climate events. This chapter considers alignment issues that arise in their development and discusses how they might be resolved—taking as case study the iFire system currently being designed at the iCinema Research Centre. We particularly focus on ways to maximise the two non-moral values that define the success of any such system as well as of associated climate science: accuracy and verisimilitude. Drawing on the work of Shepherd et al. (2018) and Sharples et al. (2016), we theorise the epistemic and situational challenges to arrive at these values. Exploring solutions already proposed through the related concepts of ‘storylines’ (Shepherd, 2019), ‘scenarios’ (Lempert, 2013) and ‘tales’ (Hazeleger et al., 2015), we show how iFire’s values may be maximised through composition strategies derived from these concepts. Using this approach, we explain how iFire may ‘simulate’ links between uncertainty and affect to enhance decision making in uncertain circumstances. Our key findings are that alignment strategies for iFire are best described as ‘interpretable’ (rather than ‘explainable’) and can be achieved through qualitative methods. These describe compositional strategies deployed by the user that support reflective management of uncertainty.