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This article describes the design and evaluation of a virtual field trip on the topic of radioactive waste management research for university education. We created an interactive virtual tour through the Mont Terri underground research laboratory by enhancing the virtual experiment information system, designed for domain experts, with background information, illustrations, tasks, tests, and an improved user interface. To put the tour's content into context, a conventional introductory presentation on the final disposal of radioactive waste was added. A user study with 22 participants proved a good perceived usability of the virtual tour and the virtual field trip's ability to transfer knowledge. These results suggest a benefit of employing virtual field trips in geoscientific university courses. In addition, it is conceivable to use the virtual field trip as a tool for science communication in the context of participatory processes during nuclear waste disposal site selection processes.

Due to the present climate crisis, the increasing frequency of the water extreme events around urban regions in river basins may result in drastic losses. One of the most effective preventive measures is a prior analysis of the eventual effects to comprehend the future risks of such water extremes. As well as analysis of historical impacts, the model-based management of water extremes have also a crucial role. Therefore, we present a 3-dimensional visual-scenario-based environmental analysis framework by utilising a Virtual Geographic Environment for the visualisation and the exploration of model-based management of hydrological events in urban regions. Within the study, we focused on the City of Dresden in eastern Germany located in the basin of the Elbe River. We integrated a large set of historical observation data and the results of numerical simulations to explore the consequences of modelled heavy precipitation events within different scenarios. Utilising a framework developed in Unity, the resulting visualisation of different scenarios dealing with water extremes simulated with coupled numerical models constitute the overall focus of this particular study. The resulting application is intended as a collaboration platform in terms of the knowledge transfer among domain scientists, stakeholders and the interested public.

Climate change and the high proportion of private motorised transport leads to a high exposure of the urban population to environmental stressors such as particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, noise, and heat. The few fixed measuring stations for these stressors do not provide information on how they are distributed throughout the urban area and what influence the local urban structure has on hot and cold spots of pollution. In the measurement campaign “UmweltTracker” with 95 participants (cyclists, pedestrians), data on the stressors were collected via mobile sensors. The aim was to design and implement an application to analyse the heterogeneous data sets. In this paper we present a prototype of a visualisation and analysis application based on the Unity Game Engine, which allowed us to explore and analyse the collected data sets and to present them on a PC as well as in a VR environment. With the application we were able to show the influence of local urban structures as well as the impact of the time of day on the measured values. With the help of the application, outliers could be identified and the underlying causes could be investigated. The application was used in analysis sessions as well as a workshop with stakeholders.

We propose a framework for the 3D exploration of heterogeneous environmental data within a geographical region of interest. Based on Unity, the system can be built for a variety of platforms and works both on regular machines as well as in virtual reality environments, where it can be considered a basis for a virtual geographic environment. Focussing on the catchment of the Müglitz River in south-eastern Germany, a large collection of observation data acquired via a wide range of measurement devices has been integrated in a geographical reference frame for the region. Results of area-wide numerical simulations for both groundwater and soil moisture have been added to the scene and allow for the exploration of the delayed consequences of transient phenomena such as heavy rainfall events and their impact on the catchment scale. This study focusses on the concurrent visualisation and synchronised animation of multiple area wide datasets from different environmental compartments. The resulting application allows to explore the region of interest during specific hydrological events for an assessment of the interrelation of processes. As such, it offers the opportunity for knowledge transfer between researchers of different domains as well as for outreach to an interested public.

Blockchain technology supports highly sensitive data sharing with the improvement of security and privacy using cryptography. It is highly preferred in scenarios where the difficulty of tampering the data is critical. To manage supply chain in industrial distribution effectively, privacy, transparency, security, provenance and correctness of sensitive data need to be controlled between different participants. In particular, it has crucial importance in pharmacology that affects finance, investment and health of society. Thus in this study, we propose a blockchain track and trace system (BTTS) for improving management of pharmaceutical supply chain. We have offered state-of-the-art Hyperledger Fabric BTTS that distributed participants can control correctness of the medicine and protect highly sensitive data provenance for pharmaceutical supply chain. Proposed Hyperledger Fabric permissioned blockchain-based BTTS presents smart contract structure and protection for highly sensitive manufacturer’s ownership data with less energy consuming than proof-of-work-based approaches.

We propose a Virtual Geographic Environment for the exploration of hydro-meteorological events. Focussing on the catchment of the Müglitz River in south-eastern Germany, a large collection of observation data acquired via a wide range of measurement devices has been integrated in a geographical reference frame for the region. Results of area-wide numerical simulations for both groundwater and soil moisture have been added to the scene and allow for the exploration of the delayed consequences of transient phenomena such as heavy rainfall events and their impact on the catchment scale. Implemented in a framework based on Unity, this study focusses on the concurrent visualisation and synchronised animation of multiple area wide datasets from different environmental compartments. The resulting application allows to explore the region of interest during specific hydrological events for an assessment of the interrelation of processes. As such, it offers the opportunity for knowledge transfer between researchers of different domains as well as for outreach to an interested public.