Rainproof ARTIS: Visualising Urban Flood Risk in Amsterdam's Plantage Neighbourhood
Developed in collaboration with ARTIS, this capstone responds to increasing urban flood risk in Amsterdam's Plantage neighbourhood and a broader communication challenge: how do you make abstract climate risks feel real and urgent enough to motivate collective action? Combining qualitative user testing with quantitative newspaper topic modelling, the team examined how residents and institutions currently understand and engage with flood risk, and where existing communication falls short. Their analysis revealed that the gap between technical climate data and public understanding is not just a matter of information access, but of framing, visualisation, and relevance to everyday life.
In response, the team designed RainProof ARTIS, a digital intervention consisting of an information website and an interactive 3D flood simulation tool that visualises local flood scenarios and the potential impact of different adaptation measures. The project deliberately explored two communication registers, a simplified interface for general residents and a more detailed, data-heavy version for institutions, testing how different levels of complexity affect engagement and motivation to act. By grounding the tool in real neighbourhood data and iterating through user testing, the team worked to ensure that the science behind flood risk translation was not just accurate but genuinely usable. The result is a science communication tool that treats visualisation not as a finishing touch but as the core of the intervention.