VRSvalbard – a Photosphere-Based Atlas of a High Arctic Geo-Landscape

Recent technological advances provide opportunities to enhance students' learning. Field-based geoscience education is no exception. Traditional pedagogy of field teaching, although invaluable, sometimes struggles to provide students with the depth and breadth of real-world examples to foster a deep understanding of geoscientific landforms and processes. These methods rely on complex landscape features examined in a field activity to exemplify the learning content, while teaching staff typically ground students' understanding with supplementary printouts of figures, diagrams, and sketches. In this paper we present VRSvalbard, an interactive web-GIS platform currently populated with 129 virtual field tours of the High Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard. The virtual field tours are built around 1481 aerial photospheres, systematically acquired largely during drone-based data acquisition campaigns as part of the overarching Svalbox project including a database of digital outcrop models. The virtual field tours offer interactive digital field experiences in desktop and virtual reality mode. Selected tours also integrate 3D datasets, digital outcrop models, digital elevation models, interactive map layers, satellite imagery, published figures, photos, audios, videos, and text resources. These elements are presented within a detailed and realistic 3D digital globe that allows students to virtually explore field sites before and after field excursions. In addition, we provide an overview of the motivation behind VRSvalbard, the technical framework of the platform and a summary of using the VRSvalbard platform during education, research and field excursions for the petroleum industry.