The EARTHscope is a web based "geo-story-telling" tool that incorporates important Design Science problem solving principles and methods. Developed by the Buckminster Fuller Institute, a 501c3 non-profit, EARTHscope combines GIS mapping, time series data layers, animation, and scenarios into a single publishing framework and multimedia enhanced interface. These powerful communication and visual display techniques provide students with a unique structure to create visually rich stories based on their research findings that can be shared via the web with other schools and students. EARTHscope is designed to foster a whole-systems perspective that supports the discovery of the often invisible linkages between human and planetary life support systems at the global and local level.
EARTHscope is a project of the Buckminster Fuller Institute
CONTENTS
The EARTHscope is a web based "geo-story-telling" tool that incorporates important Design Science problem solving principles and methods. Developed by the Buckminster Fuller Institute, a 501c3 non-profit, EARTHscope combines GIS mapping, time series data layers, animation, and scenarios into a single publishing framework and multimedia enhanced interface. These powerful communication and visual display techniques provide students with a unique structure to create visually rich stories based on their research findings that can be shared via the web with other schools and students. EARTHscope is designed to foster a whole-systems perspective that supports the discovery of the often invisible linkages between human and planetary life support systems at the global and local level.
The EARTHscope integrates three basic principles:
Click here to view and interact with the EARTHscope prototype.
The various functions and content windows of the EARTHscope offer a basic framework for geo story telling.
The current feature set allows users to:
Historical Roots of the Project
The inspiration for the EARTHscope has its roots in the World Design Science Decade (1965-1975) -- a program originally proposed by R. Buckminster Fuller in 1961 to the International Union of Architects. For the first phase, Fuller planned the development of "dramatic educational tools" to promote "World Literacy re: World Problems," including "dramatic indication of potential solutions, by Design Science [to improve] the overall performance of world resource units to serve 100% instead of the present [circa 1967] 44% of humanity." Dynamic presentations of "Human Trends and Needs" in relation to an "Inventory of World Resources" available on a global scale were envisioned to be central elements of the program.
A Challenge to Education as Usual
The full deployment of such vitally needed educational tools and programs as Fuller envisioned requires an equally dramatic re-think of the business as usual approach to education. To the extent reform is on the agenda, it appears to be limited to training our students to compete more favorably and achieve financial success in a globalized economy. But as David Orr, chair of the environmental studies program at Oberlin, continually points out, there are "better reasons to rethink education that have to do with the issues of human survival that will dominate the world of the 21st century."
Professor Orr summarizes (Earth In Mind - 1994) the priorities our schools and universities must pursue if we are to adequately prepare students to design solutions to the enormous problems they are inheriting from previous generations:
"Those now being educated will have to do what we, the present generation, have been unable or unwilling to do: stabilize world population; stabilize and then reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, which threaten to change the climate, perhaps disastrously; protect biological diversity; reverse the destruction of forests everywhere; and conserve soils. They must learn how to use energy and materials with great efficiency. They must learn how to utilize solar energy in all of its forms. They must rebuild the economy in order to eliminate waste and pollution. They must learn how to manage renewable resources for the long run. They must begin the great work of repairing, as much as possible, the damage done to the earth in the past 200 years of industrialization. And they must do all of this while they reduce worsening social and racial inequities. No generation has ever faced a more daunting agenda.
For the most part, however, we are still educating the young as if there were no planetary emergency. Remove computers and a scattering of courses and programs throughout the catalog, and the curriculum of the 1990s looks a lot like that of the 1950s. The crisis we face is first and foremost one of mind, perception, and values; hence, it is a challenge to those institutions presuming to shape minds, perceptions, and values. It is an educational challenge. More of the same kind of education can only make things worse This is not an argument against education but rather an argument for the kind of education that prepares people for lives and livelihoods suited to a planet with a biosphere that operates by the laws of ecology and thermodynamics.
The skills, aptitudes, and attitudes necessary to industrialize the earth, however, are not necessarily the same as those that will be needed to heal the earth or to build durable economies and good communities."
By design, the EARTHscope offers a challenge to educational as usual. It incorporates a learning framework aimed at catalyzing educators and students to think broadly, to think about whole systems and patterns, to think about the future consequences of the choices we make today. But perhaps most important it can serve as a tool that can help launch students into a real world engagement with designing whole-system solutions.
Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science
In the early 1950’s, Buckminster Fuller, (who preferred to be called Bucky), pioneered an approach to developing solutions called Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science–referred to more simply as Design Science. This disciplined approach embodies several critical perspectives and skills needed to allow individuals to participate more consciously in helping humanity exercise its rapidly expiring option to achieve 100% success.
A working definition:
Generally, being comprehensive means thinking in terms of whole systems and anticipatory means preparing in advance for both present and future needs. Design Science, as Bucky defined it, is the "effective application of the principles of science to the conscious design of our total environment in order to help make the Earth’s finite resources meet the needs of all humanity without disrupting the ecological processes of the planet".
During a life time of applied Design Science, he discovered that the most important question the design scientist must always ask is, "What can I do for other human beings that will not trespass on any humans nor frustrate any of the regenerative integrity of the environment?" Fuller further defined the responsibility of the design scientist as one that requires commitment to "increasing the options of humanity, not decreasing them…. to develop artifacts [solutions] that make it possible for you to do what you want to do, while trying to continually increase the magnitude of your effectiveness, reducing the restraints, and saving you time".
EARTHscope and a Design Science Methodology
The EARTHscope was conceived to facilitate engagement with the process of comprehensive anticipatory design science–a design strategy well suited to empowering individuals and small groups to design local systemic solutions that are compatible with the needs and restraints of larger systems — i.e., regional and global. One possible way of describing key aspects of a Design Science methodology appears in the diagram below. The EARTHscope applies most directly to steps 1 -4 and 7 & 8 in yellow (see diagram below)
Based on the work of Buckminster Fuller and adapted from Environmental Design Science Primer (Brown, Cook & Gabel 1978)
The EARTHscope, as an authoring framework organizes all the basic analytical tools used to help describe the present state (Step 2 above) as well as possible future states (Steps 3, 3a, 4, & 4a above). These might include:
One of the most unique aspects of working with the EARTHscope authoring framework is the opportunity it provides students to think about the future by using scenarios, a powerful tool used originally by the military, corporations and now finding its way increasingly into civil society organizations. Imparting the skills of scenario planning would be of unique educational benefit to students.
Below you will find brief excerpts from the work of several leading thinkers and practitioners of scenario planning that describe its role and methods:
Allen Hammond, the senior scientist and director of strategic analysis for the World Resources Institute succinctly describes the utility and power of scenarios:
"Scenarios are not predictions or forecasts. They are carefully posed stories that describe plausible alternative futures often supported by reams of data and the intuitions and experience of experts and scholars. But the point of the story is not to develop a more accurate view of the future; it is to enable the reader to look at the present in a new light–to see it more clearly, to see new possibilities and implications–and hence to make better decisions. Scenarios are powerful because they help those who read them to visualize in more concrete and human terms–to emotionally connect with–what might otherwise be only an abstract trend, a line on a graph. They make far more vivid the potential consequences of current trends or proposed actions."
(excerpt from: Which World? Scenarios for the 21st Century, by Allen Hammond)
Hardin Tibbs, a leading specialist in corporate strategy and scenario planning and advisor to the Buckminster Fuller Institute (working on the conceptual development of the EARTHscope and related scenario content) offers perspective on useful ways to think about our collective global future:
"Thinking about the future we would hope to see gives increased strategic leverage, since it is a proactive rather than a reactive strategic stance (Ackoff, 1981). The future is intrinsically uncertain, and we can fill it either with what we think might happen, or what we would like to see happen (a product of our understanding of the strategic environment and our self-knowledge). If we do the latter, we can create a framework in which all our actions--both tactical and strategic--can contribute to creating the optimistic outcome. The optimistic outcome is not seen as inevitable, nor as a tightly defined outcome state. It is based on a broadly desirable set of outcomes given the developments observed on the world [or local] stage today: it is related uniquely to this context and time."
(excerpt from an article by H.Tibbs entitled: Towards an Optimistic Future: Using Normative Scenarios to Shape Global Strategy)
Basic Scenario Process Steps
(source: H. Tibbs)
Pierre Wack's approach to scenario development. Pierre Wack was a scenario pioneer in the Business Environment
Division of Royal Dutch/Shell. Source: Hardin Tibbs, from a personal conversation with Kees van der Heijden.
Incorporating the principles of whole-systems thinking, scenarios, and Design Science methodologies can be one of the most valuable and exciting developments in educational curricula in the years ahead. With its graphically rich content and intuitive user interface, the EARTHscope can be an important aid in teaching students about these principles while engaging them in real-world learning and problem solving. The students of today will be the decision-makers of tomorrow.
Towards this end, the Buckminster Fuller Institute is in the early conceptual development phase of a program for high school, and college students we are calling the EARTHscope Design Science Challenge. This program will enable students to :
If you have an interest in the development of the EARTHscope tool and EARTHscope presentations, GIS integration, use of the EARTHscope in curricula, and/or the EARTHscope Design Science Challenge, please contact the authors of this paper.
PRESENT STATUS OF EARTHscope-GIS INTEGRATION
The EARTHscope has been developed to date using Macromedia Flash software. The reasons for choosing this platform are two-fold:
First, Flash offers an easy authoring environment for the integration of graphics, text, animation, and interactivity. This allows for rapid prototyping and editing of the user interface design, features, and functionality. Secondly, Flash has a large installation base on the Internet, therefore providing a readily established publishing platform that can reach millions of people without the need to install new software or plug-ins onto their computer.
Since Flash uses vector graphics as its most efficient graphic display format it makes for a natural evolution to integrate GIS formatted data and standard tool-sets into the Flash environment. The EARTHscope is, to our knowledge, the first tool developed in Flash to undertake building this bridge, and as of the writing of this paper the Buckminster Fuller Institute has established a translation technology to accomplish this goal.
VISION OF A FULLY GIS-ENABLED EARTHscope
EARTHscope uses a modular approach for importing all data created for a presentation, including GIS layers, animation frames for animated time-based data on maps and graphs, text, and images. As such, any and all data within the EARTHscope can be swapped with new data at the user’s request from a remote server.
Our vision is that the next phase of EARTHscope development will enable full GIS integration that will allow for seamless importation of shape files from any data server in the world, such as through the Geography Network. This will allow students and teachers to easily import GIS data as they prepare maps, graphs, text, and images for a complete presentation.
We also envision a comprehensive online library of EARTHscope presentations and individual content modules accessible from directly within the EARTHscope. Through a dynamically updated index, teachers can incorporate EARTHscope presentations into their curricula using the best presentations available on a given topic created by leading organizations, researchers, and even other teachers and students. By also being able to access individual content modules for each of EARTHscope’s content areas, teachers and students can easily build their own presentations from the EARTHscope library. Being linked to the library, presentations can also be dynamically updated with current data as appropriate each time an EARTHscope presentation is launched with the update feature enabled.
As the EARTHscope develops we envision many new features such as:
We also envision a scenario modeling /gaming component (driven by frequently updated data sets) that would enable users to:
In Conclusion
Given the state of our global environment and the challenges of our social and technological evolution in the decades ahead it is essential that students are introduced to and engaged in developing a comprehensive understanding of the trends and scenarios that will impact their lives and those of many generations to come. EARTHscope used in conjunction with ESRI’s GIS software will provide one of the most important teaching tools for educators seeking to empower their students with the information they will need to make the most informed decisions in their communities and around the world towards the fulfillment of a safe and sustainable future.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge Joe Skopek and the Chromatrope team for conceptual and technical design of the EARTHscope and the EARTHscope-GIS integration process.