Exploring Energy Trade-Offs: Interactive Decision-Making with ASU’s Decision Theater
How do policymakers, scientists, and communities make informed decisions about complex climate and energy challenges? Arizona State University’s Decision Theater offers a powerful approach by combining data, modeling, and immersive visualization to help stakeholders explore the consequences of different choices before decisions are made.
Decision Theater’s mission is to transform decision-making for local and global challenges through the co-creation of data-based tools, methods, and experiences that explore possible futures and empower societies to address complex issues.
Participants will experience how Decision Theater’s tools support collaborative decision-making in real-world sustainability challenges. Using interactive models, data visualization, and role-based simulation, attendees will explore how complex energy decisions involve trade-offs across environmental, economic, and community considerations.
The session will include a hands-on simulation focused on the siting of a solar power plant. Participants will learn how integrated models and data visualization can help evaluate potential locations while considering competing priorities and constraints.
Interactive Simulation Experience:
Participants will be divided into stakeholder roles such as policymakers, energy developers, community representatives, and environmental advocates, and will work together to decide where a new theoretical solar power facility should be located based on a variety of environmental, social, and economic factors.
As different options are evaluated, participants will see how each decision changes the outcomes across the system, illustrating the real-world complexity of climate and energy planning.
Through this interactive exercise, attendees will gain firsthand experience with how Decision Theater integrates data analytics, predictive modeling, and visualization to help diverse stakeholders collaboratively explore solutions to complex societal challenges.
DC Climate Week is not responsible for this event. It is organized by the organizing group, and being listed on the DCCW calendar is not an endorsement of content or partners.