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New game to help kids learn about climate change

Missions With Monty is a quest game developed at North Carolina State University that uses Monty the Monitor Lizard to guide students through complex climate problems. The game will be adapted to Australian conditions thanks to a University Global Partnerships Network (UGPN) grant that allows a partnership with institutions around the world to develop solutions to a universal issue.

The project leader, Associate Professor Sarah Howard, said the game was aimed at primary school students in Years 5 and 6. Students may be given a challenge such as why a population of frogs has migrated away from a pond, she said.

They may have to learn about the frog, its environment, what’s happened to the pond’s catchment and what’s happened to the weather. With the help of Monty, they encounter scientists, points of data and other animals to investigate the issue.

The funding would adapt the game to Australian conditions, such as drought and fire, and with Australian animals. With the help of researchers from the SMART Infrastructure Facility, new ways of capturing data from the game would be developed, giving teachers valuable insights into the ways that their students learned.

Finally, new ways would be developed to allow international collaboration among students, building on the existing framework for collaboration within the classroom. The interdisciplinary nature of the project – educational psychology, educational technology, computer science, science education, and design – provides the potential for increased faculty collaboration across institutions.

This process has the potential to provide a model for data collection and international teacher and student multi-national collaboration that could then be extended to any educational context. The UGPN aims to develop sustainable world-class research, education and knowledge transfer through an active international network of selected Universities collaborating in research, learning and teaching to benefit global society.

The program will develop a range of jointly enabled innovative solutions to world problems based on shared research expertise and a mobility strategy for increasing the number of faculty, staff and students with international experience. The UGPN annual conference will be held in Wollongong next year.

The need for education around climate change in Australia is pertinent. The global economic and environmental impact of wildfires is likely to worsen as a result of human-induced climate change and land-use patterns, according to a team of international fire researchers.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Reviews: Earth & Environment, researchers describe global and regional trends in fire activity and project what is expected to come down the pipeline in the future. The interaction between climate, vegetation and fire occurrence has led to distinct fire regimes, which are characterised by their frequency, seasonality, geographic scale and pattern, and environmental effects.

Past climate change is known to have influenced the extent, frequency and intensity of landscape fires by affecting vegetation patterns, fuel abundance and drought. Currently, human-induced climate change is altering rainfall patterns and increasing temperatures, resulting in more frequent extreme fire events.

Extremely intense fires can trigger the development of pyrocumulonimbus storms, which are powerful convective thunderstorms that can reach the stratosphere and create localised weather, including rain, hail, lightning and pyro-tornadoes.

In Australia, the difficulties in separating the influences of climate change from the effects of stopping traditional Aboriginal fire management practices following European colonisation in the early 19th century.

However, the effects of climate change are evident in the increasing number of extreme fire events – including the Black Summer fires of 2019-20 during which 35 pyrocumulonimbus storms were recorded, doubling the known records of these extreme events. This spike in fire intensity and severity has also been recorded at various other locations around the world, including Chile, Canada, Portugal and California.

Development of these fire management interventions requires transdisciplinary research that combines insights from natural and social sciences, engineering and technology, and humanities. Such research is also prerequisite for improving global and regional fire models of future fire activity.

PARTNER

Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.

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CTC Global Singapore, a premier end-to-end IT solutions provider, is a fully owned subsidiary of ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) and ITOCHU Corporation.

Since 1972, CTC has established itself as one of the country’s top IT solutions providers. With 50 years of experience, headed by an experienced management team and staffed by over 200 qualified IT professionals, we support organizations with integrated IT solutions expertise in Autonomous IT, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.

Well-known for our strengths in system integration and consultation, CTC Global proves to be the preferred IT outsourcing destination for organizations all over Singapore today.

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Planview has one mission: to build the future of connected work. Our solutions enable organizations to connect the business from ideas to impact, empowering companies to accelerate the achievement of what matters most. Planview’s full spectrum of Portfolio Management and Work Management solutions creates an organizational focus on the strategic outcomes that matter and empowers teams to deliver their best work, no matter how they work. The comprehensive Planview platform and enterprise success model enables customers to deliver innovative, competitive products, services, and customer experiences. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with locations around the world, Planview has more than 1,300 employees supporting 4,500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide. For more information, visit www.planview.com.

SUPPORTING ORGANISATION

SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister​ of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.

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HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices. 

PARTNER

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

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