ASH MEMORIES: A Virtual Reality Journey Through International Collaboration and Climate Change Resilience

Summer 2022: as a consequence of a long and unusual drought, a series of fires devastate some wooded areas of the Karst, a cross-border area between Italy and Slovenia. According to researchers from the Environment and Territory group of the Department of Agri-food, Environmental and Animal Sciences of the University of Udine, the first estimate of the damage caused by fires (both on the Italian and Slovenian sides) is over 3700 hectares of burnt woodland. Almost 194,000 cubic meters of lost biomass. The fire has destroyed 32% of the forest stock in the areas affected by the fires. The recovery of the burned territories could take between 10 and 20 years. ASH MEMORIES is a virtual reality experience (VR) built with 3D scans of fragments of Karst areas, collected during the days following the fires. This VR tells the story of a successful international collaboration, where people from two EU countries are working together in facing the consequences of climate change. The VR experience engages using a multimedia approach: users are invited to take a physical walk into a 3D world (almost 25 square meters) surrounded by sounds and voices of people living inside the affected areas. Fruition of this VR is therefore an active process where people can decide where to look and what to listen. This kind of environment invites people to take their time to experience the VR, letting emotions to rise. We believe that memories of this kind, those rising as consequences of a natural disaster, find a common ground in human experiences: our minds are connected in a common sense of sorrow, because, after all, we feel as we are loosing our unique and only Home. Increasing awareness on the consequences of climate change by envisioning such bad scenarios is a powerful tool we can use to move people to act towards a more eco-friendly behavior. ASH MEMORIES represents a case-study in communication of climate change risks awareness and the problems related to the loss of biodiversity. It is an example of how science can rely on art, creativity and new technologies to communicate and reach different publics. Moreover it tells a story of a disaster which was successfully mitigated by a virtuous cooperation between different countries, highlighting the importance of developing international climate change risk-prevention policies.