Carlos Galan-Diaz

Digital innovation through partnership between nature conservation organisations and academia: A qualitative impact assessment

Nature conservation organisations increasingly turn to new digital technologies to help deliver conservation objectives. This has led to collaborative forms of working with academia to spearhead digital innovation. Through in-depth interviews with three UK research-council-funded case studies, we show that by working with academics conservation organisations can receive positive and negative impacts, some of which cut across their operations. Positive impacts include new ways of engaging with audiences, improved data workflows, financial benefits, capacity building and the necessary digital infrastructure to help them influence policy. Negative impacts include the time and resources required to learn new skills and sustain new technologies, managing different organisational objectives and shifts in working practices as a result of the new technologies. Most importantly, collaboration with academics was shown to bring the opportunity of a profound change in perspectives on technologies with benefits to the partner organisations and individuals therein.

Walking participants through a virtual model: how we got there and its implications

Keywords Cognition x Perception x Desktop virtual environments x Active navigation vs. passive observation Background to project In the context of urban redesign and public participation, this research aims to establish what differences are afforded between active navigation of a desktop computer model of the built environment, compared to passive observation of a walkthrough of that same model. The motivation for the research is to establish an improved method for architects and urban designers seeking to convey design ideas to their audience. Findings from the research literature on whether active navigation of desktop virtual environments offers advantages over passive observation are equivocal in many areas. For example, there are contradictory findings in relation to wayfinding, spatial orientation and scene recognition (e.g. Wilson 1999; Christou and Bulthoff 1999; Gaunet et al. 2001). However, there is greater agreement on the issue of memory for spatial layout, with researchers confirming that this is enhanced with active navigation compared to passive observation (e.g. Brooks et al. 1999; Foreman et al. 2005). Within architecture, there is evidence to suggest that the presentation of moving images (in, for example, a walkthrough) does lead to better understanding of design proposals, but at present the viewer is precisely that, a viewer of a predetermined display. In the research described here we have incorporated 3D CAD (Computer Aided Design) models into a computer game engine in order to give people the ability to actively navigate themselves through an architectural model that would previously only have been accessible to them in the form of a predetermined walkthrough. We designed a between subjects experiment to

Discourses of on-farm wind energy generation in the UK farming press

ABSTRACT As the owners of the majority of land in the U.K., farmers are well placed to contribute to renewable energy targets. Media coverage can both drive and reflect farmers’ views about renewable energy but has been largely unexplored to date. This article uses discourse analysis to examine the evolution of coverage of one form of renewable energy – on-farm wind – in the U.K. farming press from 1980 to 2013. We identified a diverse debate with five major discourses. On-farm wind turbines are alternatively represented as: profitable farm diversification opportunities; producers of clean energy; important for rural development and sources of conflict. Although press coverage predominantly encourages wind energy production, a further discourse advises farmers to ‘Proceed with Caution’. While emphasising images and values which have widespread affinity among U.K. farmers, the press have increasingly employed an economic frame, constructing wind energy generation as a farm diversification strategy. The most recent farming press coverage predominantly encourages an instrumental approach to wind energy, crowding out other (non-economic) rationales and marginalising local community concerns. This appears to reflect the financial orientation of recent policy support (particularly Feed-in Tariffs), and may have long-term costs in enabling sustainable energy production systems.

The Influences of Actual and Perceived Familiarity on Environmental Preferences for the Design of a Proposed Urban Square

People gain actual familiarity through direct experience of environments, but environments we have never visited can still seem familiar. To date, few academic studies have investigated this phenomenon of perceived familiarity. This paper discusses the concept of perceived familiarity and environmental preference from the perspective of people who may be asked to make judgements of future urban designs as part of the planning process. A sample of local and nonlocal people were asked to rate images of two versions (existing environment and proposed redesign) of an urban square on scales of preference and perceived familiarity. Results showed that the mean ratings for the proposed design were similar for both local and non-local samples. However, we found a clearly discernible difference in the way psychological antecedents are associated with environmental preference. For nonlocals, preference for the existing design is significantly associated with preference for the proposed design, but for local people this is not the case. In addition, for non-locals perceived familiarity of the proposed design is associated with perceived familiarity of the existing environment, but for the local sample this is not the case. Implications for public participation processes in urban design, as well as limitations and future lines of research, are discussed.