2026-08-31 –, 608
An interactive workshop delivering 3D, place-based stories on biodiversity loss, climate pressures, finite resources, and urban growth. Participants build reusable maps and narratives with open-source tools, emphasizing transparent workflows, open data, and energy–urban–ecological interdependencies across depth, height, and time.
This workshop provides a hands-on, end-to-end workflow for telling place-based stories at the Anthropocene scale, linking biodiversity loss, climate pressures, finite resources, and rapid urban growth through three-dimensional storytelling. Participants will move data from open-source GIS into immersive environments, then render, animate, and publish compelling narratives that reveal how energy demand interacts with planetary boundaries.
Session flow
Foundation: Begin in QGIS to curate multi-layer datasets (biodiversity indicators, land use, population density, energy demand proxies, climate hazards) and build a scalable 3D base using open data. Layers are aligned to ensure consistency across platforms.
Visualization (CesiumJS): Export geospatial assets as 3D tiles and globe-ready datasets. Demonstrate interactive, web-native visualization that preserves depth, height, and temporal change for audiences beyond GIS specialists.
Real-time rendering (Blender): Import GIS assets to craft photorealistic landscapes, animated sequences, and cinematic micro-narratives. Leverage Blender’s animation toolset to illustrate thresholds, tipping points, and resource flux with material, lighting, and atmosphere that convey urgency.
Interactive worlds (Unreal Engine): Assemble a responsive, VR-ready or desktop experience that lets users explore urban cores, coastal interfaces, and subsurface contexts. Implement guiding narratives, data-driven gauges, and decision points that make planetary limits tangible in a dense urban setting.
Scripting and automation: The last three tools enable Python scripting to streamline pipelines—data ingest and conversion in Python, asset manipulation in Blender, and workflow orchestration in Unreal Engine. Explore lightweight APIs to push data from QGIS to Blender and Unreal, then to CesiumJS for web deployment.
There will be a learning pathway available for beginners to work independently and build stories by engaging with Cesium Ion.
Although there aren’t pre-requirements, depending on session goals, gaining familiarity with tools of your choice such as Cesium, Blender or Unreal Engine will optimize session time.
Download vector data for region of interest or use provided datasets is also an option.
What skills do participants require to have?:A working knowledge of QGIS will be helpful. Downloading tools beforehand is optional but suggested. Participants are able to observe a workflow to replicate or to generate their own.
Bonny is a dynamic quantitative storyteller facilitating narratives at intersection of geospatial data science, climate and sustainability. Defying conventional paths to tech bringing a refreshing perspective to the field blending art and science to convey complex ideas through the power of numbers we are reminded that our first data visualizations are often maps.
Highlighting place and location as memory, audiences explore our interactions with ecosystems revealing that what appears completely factual is often, not factually complete. Bonny is globally recognized as a leading voice in thinking beyond words to illuminate climate science and the human impact on our planetary boundaries..