Immersive Sea Level Projections 🌊🌍

An immersive VR application that visualizes future sea-level rise in coastal cities using 3D geospatial data and climate projections. Built with Unity, Cesium, and XR, the project allows users to walk or fly through flooded cities to better understand the spatial and human impact of climate change.

🎯 Project Goal

Traditional 2D maps and charts often fail to convey the real-world impact of sea-level rise. This project leverages 3D visualization and Virtual Reality to:

• Improve awareness of future coastal flooding
• Enable embodied exploration of affected cities
• Support education and decision-making in climate resilience planning

📈 Dataset

• IPCC AR6 WGI Sea Level Projections (GitHub, Paper)

• Projections use only processes with assessed medium confidence SSP5-8.5 (see here for details about ssp scenarios)

• Data preprocessing can be found here

✨ Features

• Cesium-powered global 3D terrain and buildings for 100 selected cities
• Sea level projection in VR
• Interactive city and year selection
• Flying and walking navigation modes
• Charts for getting insights from the data

🛠️ Tech Stack & Requirements

Hardware

• Meta Quest 3

Software

• Unity 6000.3.0f1
• Cesium for Unity
• XCharts
• GeoidHeightsDotNet

Cesium Account (Important)

⚠️ This project will not work without a Cesium account and a valid Cesium ion connection.

To render 3D terrain and buildings, Cesium for Unity requires access to Cesium ion.

🚀 How to Run the Project

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/695roshan/Sea-Level-Projections.git

2. Open the project in Unity

   • Use Unity Hub
   • Open with Unity 6000.3.0f1

3. Connect Meta Quest 3 to Your Computer

4. Connect Cesium ion

   • Create a Cesium account (see section above)
   • Add your Cesium ion access token inside Unity

5. Open the main scene

   • In the Unity Editor, navigate to:

     Assets → Scenes → Base Scene
     

   • Double-click Base Scene to load it

6. ⚠️Ensure the XR Interaction Simulator game object under the Base Scene is turend off, otherwise it won't work on the HMD

7. Press Play (▶) in Unity

   Ensure XR settings are enabled

🎮 Controls

Left hand:

• Joystick : Move
• Primary Button : Reset menu
• Secondary Button : Summon menu

Right hand:

• Joystick(y axis) : Change elevation
• Joystick(x axis) : Rotate view
• Primary Button : Jump
• Secondary Button : Toggle fly/walk
• Back Trigger : Select
• Side Trigger : Grab