Visualisation of the effects of climate change in the Baltic Sea Region (BaltVision) 

Baltic Vision aims to bridge the communication gap between scientific disciplines, decision-makers and practitioners, in other words to be a common platform for dialogues on impacts of and ways toward adaptation to climate change in the Baltic regions with an emphasis on the sea and the coastal zone. The aim to build this bridge will be fulfilled by projecting scientifically produced knowledge and information in a visual form accessible to a wide public audience. The project will generate climate change information and scientific results into an existing digitalised visualisation platform so that the global context of climate change and regional effects on the Baltic Sea Region can be communicated to a wide variety of target groups. This includes effects of climate change for various areas around the BSR, plankton levels in different regions of the Baltic, and the spread and movement of algal blooms.
 

In this first phase, Baltic Vision focused on visualisation directed towards the findings from the BONUS project ECOSUPPORT, which detailed advanced modelling tools for scenarios of the Baltic Sea ecosystem to support decision-making. The cooperation within ECOSUPPORT, as well as within the frameworks of BALTEX and BALTADAPT, will ensure that the visualisation applications are truly transnational: they consider similarities and differences when it comes to impacts, vulnerability and possibilities to implement various adaptation strategies.
 

The specific goal is to provide a platform for collaboration between environmental scientists, decision-makers, and local, regional and transnational stakeholders representing different sectors. The interactive visualisation presentations aim to increase the knowledge among a wide group of stakeholders and interest groups on the effects of climate change, and to facilitate discussions on vulnerability and adaptation between different actors. This can be achieved by ensuring those involved interactively access visualisation of the effects of climate change projections on relevant problems, as well as in visualisations of how factors that determine vulnerability vary in the region and what the impact would be of suggested measures. The interactive visualisation aims to promote discussions on these issues, because not only are visualisations useful, but the discussions can also feed ideas of relevant developments of the visualisation material for coming projects.