EnviPeace – A MR-based Learning System for Environmental Peacebuilding

Abstract

Climate change, pollution, and environmental degradation have significant effects on human well-being and ecosystems, resulting in extreme weather events and loss of biodiversity and livelihoods. Climate change poses a threat to peace and stability in states and societies. The majority of the countries most affected by climate change also experience armed conflicts, which increase vulnerabilities that can be further exacerbated by resource scarcity and environmental degradation. “Environmental peacebuilding” (EP), is an approach that aims at creating sustainable peace by integrating climate and environmental considerations into conflict prevention, management and resolution. This requires cooperation among various actors, such as governments, NGOs, international organizations, and local communities. Civilian and military experts working in crisis areas must acquire necessary knowledge and skills to incorporate these factors into their work. However, it is difficult to create realistic training situations since environmental and climate factors and their effects on crisis areas cannot be visualized in real-life simulation exercises. The integration of mixed reality (MR) technologies into the training process enables more realistic and immersive simulations of the effects of climate change, scarcity of resources, and environmental degradation. This helps the trainees to better understand the perspectives of the communities affected as well as the operational tasks and challenges faced by peacebuilding personnel deployed in contexts affected by climate change and conflict. EnviPeace provides an MR-based learning environment that enables teaching advanced peacebuilding and conflict transformation skills. It is designed for large outdoor areas, where virtual elements such as floods, droughts, local inhabitants, or refugee camps are overlaid onto the real world through MR glasses. Combining live actors with virtual characters creates rich, adaptive simulations. This paper describes the current state of the EnviPeace system, the results of the requirements analysis and the first results of the scenario tests.

Keywords: Mixed Reality, Virtual Reality, Training, Environmental Peacebuilding, Situational Awareness, Outdoor Localization, Skill Training

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1008100