Visualising, Illustrating and Communicating Future Water Visions to Support Learning and Sustainability Transitions

Abstract

A global existential and interlocking environmental, climate and cooperation/equity polycrisis is being faced, which increasingly impacts and is impacted by water and land systems. As a result, transformations in response are gaining increasing traction. Advances in approaches to visualising and communicating how innovations and changes in landscape features enable shifts, transformations and transitions are more crucial than ever before. Visions help focus the actions, collaboration and alignment of multiple actors in working towards a common purpose, whilst also entering people’s consciousness at the deep level of values, transforming beliefs and consequently, thinking and action. They give direction to effort and pull on transformational innovation. The evidence-based ‘Water Visions Visualisation Platform’ presents an innovative and accessible way to illustrate, communicate and support future water visioning and strategising at the landscape scale based on composite paradigms, scenarios, horizons and concepts. Plausible visions of the future are envisioned, illustrated, narratively described and qualitatively assessed, as well as connected with real-world examples and resources through the interactive platform. This paper outlines the co-creation methodology, the architecture and the initial co-development of the platform, as well as a preliminary evaluation of its efficacy through literature-based criteria and the sharing of the platform with stakeholders.

1. Introduction

The scientific consensus suggests that the scale of global challenges faced in the current interlocking systemic polycrisis will require transformative change over a long time scale to deliver sustainable outcomes, with different actions needed over different time horizons [1,2,3]. Global pressures have also resulted in the cross-disciplinary consensus that in the water management context it is time to both critically review the effectiveness of existing policies, approaches, processes, technologies and mechanisms and take a fresh and more systematic exploration of how water management might look, cope and adapt from the present into the future [4,5,6,7,8]. This is of course not limited to water management, but in-depth coverage of other areas is beyond the remit of this paper, though we touch on different domains and sectors where they directly interconnect with water. Paradigm shifts and sustainability transitions for water management are key, and a large volume of work exists highlighting the transformational changes required in long-term horizons, principles, approaches and strategies, as well as action, including towards more regenerative systems [9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17].

Consequently, to visualise and communicate these shifts, transitions and changes, it becomes necessary to collectively identify positive visions of the future. Such visioning and resultant visions provide hope and direction, gain commitment for a common cause and can lead to the co-design of effective responses and programs of action for a better future, pulling on transformational innovation, rather than dwelling on doom, gloom and catastrophe and plummeting people into eco-anxiety, despair and reactive responses. Visions can also act at the deeper level of peoples’ values and mental models, move effort away from ‘futures modelling’ based on past trends and current system limitations, and cut through the often contradictory individual and collective short-term opinions and actions. Visions provide a pathway towards long-term desired goals and a way of envisioning alternative futures [18,19,20,21,22].

However, understanding, translating, visualising and communicating the concepts, principles, innovations, layers of disciplines, scales, dimensions and actions that may constitute paradigm shifts, sustainability transitions and transformational change are major challenges. These challenges require responses that act systemically, through circularity and across the nexus, thus requiring reframing and viewing our world as an overlapping, interconnected and interacting complex system rather than a complicated system. Sustainable and resilient adaptive water futures/catchment landscapes must therefore be viewed and visualised as complex socio-ecological-technical systems (SETS). Socio-ecological-technical systems (SETS) are defined where interactions occur across social and economic systems (socio); ecosystems, habitats and other natural systems (ecological); and infrastructure, built, engineered and technological systems (technical). This requires sectors to view these interacting systems as one integrated system rather than as separate systems, which is currently not the case. Several authors consider a false separation of these components (in conceptualisation, policy and management) to be a major reason for environmental and social decline that has reinforced a paradigm of failing attempts at protecting the ‘natural world’ from the ‘other separate’ degenerative, unsustainable, ‘human world’. This separation establishes conflicting and adversarial agendas in which nature generally loses out. Only once SETS are acknowledged and reframed across multiple domains can further effective, equitable, resilient and sustainable transformational change occur [20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28].

In addition, approaches to visioning and envisioning aim to enable people to suspend reality, visit a positive version of the future, bring back what they saw and shape and realise it into something in the present that can lead a pathway back to the future. Such ‘backcasting’ methods produce visionary images of long-term futures that can motivate accelerated movement towards achieving sustainability goals. Backcasting often requires the ‘generation of images of the future’, ‘construction of future visions’ or similar [29]. However, whilst visioning and backcasting is the act or process of making such mental ‘images’, what remains after this to represent that process and the futures discussed is often not explicitly considered; artefacts remaining are often not coherent images, pictures or illustrations. Very few studies go beyond textual or diagrammatic future representations and [30] refer to these ‘images’ as being “…mental images of attainable futures…shaped by a collection of actors.” (p. 1035). This is not to say that all backcasting projects do not produce artistic depictions beyond these mental ones. Whilst artistic depictions of snapshots of the future abound for various topics and themes on the internet, they are often not tied to real-world collaborative visioning, backcasting or futures activities or workshops, and are thus more akin to science fiction [30,31]. However, if future ‘images’ are to be powerful enough to capture people’s minds and imaginations and inspire the exploration of challenges and opportunities, then their co-design through backcasting and future visioning activities is essential to illustrate, through a range of media, what is imagined to be possible [28,31].

This brings us into the world of visualisation and communication (and to some extent, e-learning), where storytelling and realistic illustrative depictions enable objects, people, nature, technology, infrastructures, systems and society to be situated in and connected across these futures, alongside the textual descriptions of the plans, goals, objectives, outcomes, feasibility, potential and consequences [23,26,29,32]. The end result needs to be a way to communicate these whole-system illustrations of the future to audiences who were not party to the workshops and activities through which they were derived and whom did not formulate the textual or mental visions or images [32,33,34,35,36]. In addition, in an extended participatory way, illustrated artefacts can be used to include people from all walks of life in their re-interpretation and re-configuration ex-post. Focusing on the resulting non-technical aspects of the illustrations can help non-scientists feel they are not excluded as opposed to always included; they can engage if and when they want [37]. As [23] also notes, envisioning the future with communities enables individuals and groups to bring aspects of their cultural and sub-cultural attributes into an otherwise potentially dominantly technocratic process.

From a science communication point of view, whether that be environmental science, climate change science or futures communication, the selection and use of messaging, narratives, storytelling and visual imagery has been subject to substantial research and practical guides issued from various organisations [31,33,38,39,40,41]; ISO 14063:2020. Futures communication is in its early days and as [36] asserts, whilst communication is noted as a crucial part of futures work, there are areas with limited or no published work and a definition of futures communication is needed. In a UK context, ref. [35] produced a list of ‘top tips’ for futures communication, synthesised from a network of over 300 futures practitioners.

With this context and background in mind, the Environment Agency England, the Westcountry Rivers Trust and Plan Vision aimed to co-create a proof-of-concept, interactive platform through which to explore illustrations and narrative visions of the future. Platform content would be underpinned with an extensive evidence synthesis [20], which was undertaken in response to questions from decision makers during discussions such as “those are just academic ideas aren’t they?”; “but what does that look like?”; “how does x intervention relate to y intervention?”; “that is just a concept what does it look like in practice?”—as well as real-world examples of the ‘art of possible’ and ‘pockets of the future in the present’, some of which are detailed in

Table 1. Commencing transformations—mapping out characteristics (areas, principles, ways of working and actions for potential influence) to reframe and facilitate transformational change, along with some ‘real-world’ examples that are visualised in the Water Visions Visualisation Platform. H = horizon; L = landscape. For further detail on concepts and their relative sustainability merits, refer to [20].

Framing for Compliance-Orientated Regime (Unsustainable; L1)	Framing for Regenerative Sustainability (Futures); L2 and L3	Actions/Potential for Influence (for Existing Decision Makers); L2 and L3	Real-World Example/s and Representation in Visualisation Platform (e.g., L2 Zones/Features; L3, e.g., in ‘Interconnected System’)
Focus on problems, symptoms and some consequences	Focus on problems, systemic interactions and causes	Collaborative ‘upstream’ (at-source) regenerative and sustainable multi-objective systems-focused interventions	Natural systems/capitals, infrastructure systems/capitals (natural and built), social systems/capitals (social and cultural) as various landscape features (see ‘features list’ in the platform)
Focus on mitigation, degenerative and non-resilient approaches siloed working with disjointed governance,	Focus on circular, resilient, regenerative approaches across nexus sub-systems (water, food energy, waste, transport, etc.) with polycentric governance	Systems thinking Adoption of multiple sub-systems/capitals into analysis, business practice, reporting and regenerative planning Revise and enhance existing polycentric structures, interactions and enforcement incorporating new alliances across public, private and non-profits avoiding contradictory policy and incentives Environmental equity and fair/just transitions Establish standards for better co-design of infrastructures and governance	Integrated catchment management (all sub-systems/capitals)—source control/nature-based solutions/blue–green infrastructure; regenerative farming; bioresource centres, regenerative manufacturing and building Inter-institutional partnerships, communities of practice, knowledge networks, learning alliances, citizen assemblies
Neo-liberal (private good, profit driven), technocratic, unjust and unhealthy with limited understanding of negative unintended consequences	Socially just (public good, shared value driven), democratic, healthy and transparent with understanding of risks and trade-offs management	Co-produce new policy approaches and tools for assessment of multiple sub-systems/capitals/services/goods (instead of cost-benefit analysis or GBP-based metrics only) Promote corporate responsibility and participatory approaches for adoption of corporate shared value	Individuals and communities visible in assessments and co-production of indicators with appropriate multi-sector professionals (‘wheels’) Water bodies as legal entities—Environmental Personhood; Earth Law New business models and reconfigured supply chains e.g., green finance and Future Farming, as well as social practice change, citizen science and environmental education (homes/communities zones) Rejection of GDP, replacement with sustainability-focused country success measures
Non-evaluative and unadaptive, lags behind current thinking and science	Evaluative and adaptive, keeps up with and drives current thinking and science (innovation)	Co-develop structures for enhanced evaluation and policy updating and implementation cycles Co-produce updated frameworks/strategies for working with science/research/communications organisations for timely sharing of state-of-the-art knowledge	Multiple UK-based examples such as Water Industry National Environment Programme (WINEP) and Environment Agency 25 Year Environment Plan, as well as community/place-based approaches such as River Dart Charter and Connecting the Culm Blueprint (L3—Built System–Community Hub)

(full exploration of the concepts, paradigms, scenarios and horizons is beyond the scope of this paper but is contained within [20]). The Water Visions Visualisation platform was co-created to achieve this aim and to act as a platform for further information collation, organisation, communication and deliberation. Whilst set in the context of the preceding literature, the contribution of this paper is predominantly methodological and focuses on the co-creation methodology, the co-development of a proof-of-concept demonstration platform and the preliminary evaluation of its efficacy. Resituating the work in the literature is undertaken where relevant, though primarily focused on the practical scope of the platform.

The rest of this paper proceeds as follows: The next section outlines the Water Visions Visualisation Platform co-creation methodology. This is followed by a section outlining a brief ‘user journey’ through the platform to demonstrate the illustrations and interactive elements (to undertake a full interactive journey, please visit: https://wrt.org.uk/project/water-visions/, accessed on 6 December 2022). The penultimate section provides a preliminary evaluation of the platform based on the initial monitoring and evaluation activities and contextualises them in the literature. A final section brings all previous sections together in concluding remarks and recommendations.

2. Co-Creation Methodology

The Water Visions Visualisation Platform (‘platform’) project set out to co-develop illustrations (visualisations) of future regenerative, sustainable, resilient, shared and socially just landscapes to showcase and communicate evidence-based material and the ‘art of the possible’ in relation to sustainability transitions with a focus on water [20]. The aim was to provide accessible, inclusive visualisations and other supporting content to enable stakeholders with highly diverse levels of prior knowledge and technical skills to engage with and co-develop a shared vision for future SETS landscapes.

The illustrations and wider platform help to illustrate landscape-wide interventions (urban and rural), as well as coherent systemic programs of interventions; illustrate and promote the consideration of different routes to resilient, sustainable, regenerative and socially just landscapes to benefit all; depict a shift to more coherent management and governance of artificial (grey) and natural (blue–green) infrastructure, technology and processes to deliver resilient and sustainable water and environmental systems; highlight possible futures for farming/food production, land management, water service provision and waste processing, blue–green urban landscapes and the increased (but appropriate) use of nature-based solutions to support thriving communities and businesses; be flexible in terms of self-guided or pre-designed tours of the material and for updating, wider input and further co-design [20].

Consequently, the stages of the work included:

• a rapid scoping review [20] and co-development workshops with participants (the project team, comprising the seven authors—representing stakeholders with diverse levels of prior knowledge and technical skills) on key concepts, principles and approaches identified in the science discourse, such as systems thinking and analysis; management change; circular economy principles; regenerative methods; water–energy–food nexus; polycentric governance; co-creation; shared values; the Three Horizons Framework; scenario planning and policy mapping; Systems Innovation Approach; future visioning, future-scaping, envisioning, transition pathways, adaptive pathways and the ‘what if’ approach; forecasting and backcasting; bioregional planning; landscape frameworks and optioneering; and communication and pedagogy [17,20,23,29,31,32,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61];
• synthesis of this material into provisional scenarios based on axes of econo-centric to eco-centric and technology for private good to technology for public good;
• co-development by project team participants of a visualisation ‘architecture’ framework to accommodate visual and narrative description of elaborative content and synthesis;
• co-development by project team participants of conceptual and technical designs for the illustrations and supporting information;
• co-development by project team participants plus two additional collaborators of interactive content with links to supporting resources;
• co-delivery by project team participants of initial ‘pilot testing’ to high-level audiences and a formal launch to wider audiences (people across a wider range of specialisations, sectors and positions) through which to refine the demonstration platform.

Unfortunately, user co-creation beyond the project team was not possible during this phase of the project due to budget and time constraints.

The visualisations represent the physical landscape with horizons, paradigms, scenarios, visions and futures playing out across them through depictions of a range of features (such as technologies, processes, activities, interactions and such). The three detailed visualisations and one ‘wireframe’ (an outline of an unspecified future representing further transformation to a socio-eco-centric scenario, which is difficult to illustrate and poorly supported by easily accessible literature, and/or to enable stakeholder and community workshopping) are consequently referred to as:

• Landscape 1 (L1)—‘unsustainable’;
• Landscape 2 (L2)—‘in transition’;
• Landscape 3 (L3)—‘regenerative sustainability’;
• Landscape 4 (L4)—’regenerative utopia/transformed’ (wireframe).

In a very general sense, L1 operates within an ‘econo-technical’ paradigm (economics and technology are the dominant drivers), L2 and L3 in an ‘eco-technical’ paradigm (ecology and technology are increasingly the dominant drivers) and L3 and L4 operate within a socio-ecological-(technological) paradigm (where social and ecological aspects are the dominant drivers, with technology focused to support the optimisation of these). These paradigms are described further as vignettes in [20].

To fully commence the co-creation process, a reframing of the ‘desirable’ characteristics of the ‘art of the possible’ for such future water visions of the complex catchment landscape systems and sub-systems was required, which is summarised in Table 1. This was used as a starting and return point to ensure the visualisations were progressing as needed (defined by the project team as representing as many of the outlined concepts as possible within the initial project duration). The co-creation methodology subsequently took the following steps:

• Co-defining the system and timescales: sub-systems, capitals (natural, built, socio-economic), features and actions;
• Assessing and visualising system services (services provided by capitals) and nexus outcomes (‘benefits’);
• Co-production of illustrations, messages and narrative content.

The methodology to co-create the visualisation platform developed and evolved organically as the project participants developed an understanding of each other’s perspectives, knowledges, ideas, preferences, ways of working and requirements through meetings, workshops and other communications (e.g., emails, documents). The Theory of Change (ToC) approach [62,63] was used to track the work for monitoring and evaluation. The ToC end point identified for the Water Visions project is social and political understanding, action and change relating to climate and environmental change and regenerative sustainability through the co-design and co-creation of visualisations and communications that connect people with envisaged future landscapes. Consequently, the aim of the demonstration platform aspect of the project was to illustrate and communicate evidence and insights for water system management in a current and future context of an interlocking systemic polycrisis. This paper focuses on the activities, outputs and initial outcomes relating to this aspect of the ToC, but the consideration of the impacts and ToC as a whole is a work in progress.

2.1. Co-Defining the System and Timescales: Sub-Systems, Capitals, Features and Actions

A number of online tools, such as MURAL, were used to facilitate meetings and workshops and digital workspaces, such as MS Teams, were used to share materials, resources, working documents and other files amongst the project team participants. MURAL boards covered (example in Figure 1) the following project team workshops:

• A workshop to brainstorm the visualisation of sustainable landscapes—to collate knowledge, references, examples, images, diagrams, ideas and suggestions on perspectives, approaches, frameworks, tools, innovations, features, etc. to include in the visualisation platform;
• A workshop to undertake scenario and policy mapping—to map out existing policy and suggest potential future policy requirements for three integrated scenarios/horizons/visions [20] along a timeline up to 2050-80 (or ‘open’), covering policy, governance and society and identifying barriers to change at the micro and macro scale;
• A workshop to determine landscapes 1 and 2 feature label allocation, messaging and narrative development tasks—agreeing on label length, content and convention was crucial to ensure consistency in the visualisation platform textual content to enable ease of recognition, association and navigation during the user experience;
• A workshop to explore landscape 3 features and undertake sharing, monitoring and evaluation planning—to brainstorm ideas for a landscape representing transformation/transition (i.e., including full implementation across the SETS of regenerative, circular, nexus approaches, etc.).

These MURAL boards were active documents that received contributions from all project team participants throughout the project duration. Boards were synthesised into Excel (Version 2311) spreadsheets using a bespoke structure based on the content and architecture needed to begin to develop and populate the elements of the visualisations, whilst maintaining the integrity of the systemic relationships through the use of interconnecting macros. A deliberative process was undertaken [64,65] using the initial MURALs and spreadsheets to determine the elements that would form the main foci for the illustrations. The spreadsheets were also used to track all of the components required in their co-creation (images, links and resources).

The elements represented sub-systems—water, energy, waste, transport and food; capitals—natural, built/infrastructure and socio-cultural; assets/features—individual technologies, processes, policies and transactions; actions/pathways—shifts in function and feature representing steps of change; and timescales—the present and a range of futures. Repositories, inventories and finally an online content organiser (Figure 2) were iteratively developed to dynamically collate all elements underpinning the visualisation platform architecture into one place. The creation of the repositories and inventories enabled the illustration elements to be finalised and communicated to the project partner illustrator (Plan Vision; participant and co-author) to enable the illustration work to commence. The evolution of the repositories and inventories into the content organiser then enabled the mapping of the elements and illustrations to a ThingLink architecture in order to begin construction of the interactive visualisation platform. However, before this step was undertaken, ‘benefit wheels’ were developed in order to enable users to qualitatively visually compare the ‘three capitals’ performance of the outlined elements to examine potential trade-offs amongst features, sub-systems and landscapes.

2.2. Assessing and Visualising System Services and Nexus Outcomes (‘Benefits’)

The Local Action Project’s Opportunities Assessment Method [66,67], which is used to visualise various metrics in the form of ‘wheels’, was built on and adapted for application to the visualisation platform to produce wheels to embed in the platform. The adaptations required co-defining and adding additional metrics to represent benefits provided by the landscapes, zones and features with a focus on their performance and contributions to sustainability. Additional metrics focused on resilience, sustainability and the nexus components and led to the development of two separate wheels focused on system services and nexus outcomes, which are summarised in

Table 2. System service and nexus outcome benefit ‘wheels’ categories and segments.

System Services (Wheel)

Nexus Outcomes (Wheel)

○ Natural assets (category): ▪ Supports biodiversity (segment) ▪ Water cycle regulation ▪ Greenhouse gas (carbon) regulation ▪ Connection to nature ○ Infrastructure: ▪ Water resources ▪ Waste management ▪ Food and drink production ▪ Energy generation ▪ Housing provision ▪ Industry and transport ▪ Flood risk management ▪ Recreation and amenity ○ Social and cultural assets: ▪ Work and productivity ▪ Community cohesion ▪ Social justice and equality ▪ Behaviour and attitude

○ Water (category): ▪ Sustainable water management (segment) ▪ Low flood and drought risk ▪ Sustainable access to water ○ Land: ▪ Healthy ecology and biodiversity ▪ Sustainable industry and transport ▪ Liveable towns and cities ▪ Sustainable access to land ○ Food: ▪ Sustainable food and drink ○ Energy: ▪ Sustainable energy supply and demand ○ Climate: ▪ Low hydrometeorological hazard ▪ Good air quality ○ Society: ▪ Sustainable society

and an example wheel illustration in Figure 3. The content organiser was used to collate expert opinion scores (provided by project participants based on their knowledge, qualifications and consideration of [20] plus other academic and grey literature reviewed) for each of the system service and nexus outcome metrics. This was undertaken at the whole landscape level, for each landscape zone and system and for all the features within each landscape zone and system. The wheels enable the performance and contribution of the different features, zones and systems to be compared across the landscapes, as well as being able to undertake a comparison at the overarching landscape level. The wheels were based on deliberation by project participants in the first instance but allow for wider participatory deliberative discussion and revision or modification through future co-development phases (with participants of all knowledge system types, e.g., expert and non-expert). Whilst the wheels enable comparison of elements across landscapes and highlight trade-offs, they do not necessarily further represent the systemic relationships amongst the categories and segments, which requires additional research and the co-development of their suitable depiction. At present, the visualisation of these systemic, interconnected relationships is limited to one animation representing the circularity of the bioresource centres due to project timescales. The co-development of more of these in future project phases is required to make these relationships explicit, which are essential to facilitate more extensive learning through the platform.

2.3. Co-Production of Illustrations, Messages and Narrative Content

The completion of the content organiser and the initiation of the construction of the wheels, enabled the project to shift into the illustration, messaging and narrative co-production phase. During the workshops, it emerged that more than illustrations would be needed to convey the concepts, principles and messages that the project aimed to communicate; therefore, the approach was modified so that accompanying each landscape, zone, system and feature was a detailed textual narrative to provide context and depth to the illustrations. Illustrations and narratives were drawn and written iteratively in parallel to enable them to eventually be connected together within the ThingLink platform, which is a commercial educational technology (https://www.thinglink.com/ accessed on 6 December 2022). The platform allows for further narrative and other information and media to be attached through embedding additional links to further better describe and illustrate concepts, principles and messages and to provide case studies of the concepts ‘in action’, facilitating deliberative scrutiny (when used within the context of a guided workshop/focus group).

Illustrations of the landscapes were sketched on layers of A0 tracing paper in ink as wireframes during the first iteration (Figure 4), allowing time for feedback and style and content shifts as needed. Vignettes or ‘zoomed-in’ areas, which became the ‘zones’, were also produced at this time. This style of illustration and process was consciously chosen, as it brings humanity, comfort and connection into the illustrations, which can be missing from illustrations and graphics produced through more graphic design and computer-aided design (CAD) methods and processes. Following this first stage, an initial colour version of each whole landscape and zone containing detailed features was produced, shared and reflected upon for landscapes 1, 2 and 3. Minor changes, edits and updates were then made before the final illustrations were produced.

The whole landscape colour illustrations bring the platform user/viewer into the world of water and land management, situating them as the explorer of this world—in either a self-guided or guided way depending on the journey type, which is discussed in the following section. The zones and systems enable users to zoom in to a more manageable and visually more ‘friendly’ vignette scale, which draws them into the detail of what is featured and what is happening in the zone or system they have chosen to explore. As the user becomes more comfortable with what they are viewing, they may choose to explore the detail of the features and interact with the clickable elements of the landscapes.

Each layer of the illustrations—landscape, zone/system, feature—has clickable elements. These clickable elements contain the narrative for the element, as well as multi-media links to images, further information and resources (Figure 5). The narratives are written in an accessible, engaging language and in styles representative of what needs to be communicated through each, depending on the landscape within which the user finds I: landscape 1—providing reflection on what is not working well; landscape 2—providing an indication of a shift or change to what is better for the environment, society and the economy; landscape 3—providing insight into how the new innovations or approaches have positively influenced the landscape; landscape 4—wireframe only (for use in co-visioning and co-creation workshops).

Some of the narratives were co-produced with collaborators external to the project team who are experts in their field, such as coastal and marine environments. This does tend toward more expert-level language and stories; however, collaborators were asked to define any new words in more social language to enable their accessibility for platform users through the glossary. Very few full-scale rejections of current practices were depicted in the visualisations as incremental transformation or transition was seen to be more realistic than radical shifts in the context of [20]. However, the use of L4 in future projects could explore radical full-scale rejections and hypothesise how they may alter landscapes, systems and features. The narratives were also required to more explicitly depict messages around the socio-cultural institutions and infrastructures that play-out across the landscapes. During the co-creation process, it became apparent that depicting such features in the illustrations would require a different approach than for natural or built environment infrastructure—social and cultural capitals, ‘assets’ and services are more difficult to visualise in detail through imagery. Additionally, considering which institutions, decision-making structures and skills will be needed in a future where citizens are more educated, knowledgeable, skilled, engaged and empowered required extra attention in the workshops. To accommodate these perspectives, additional categories were added to the wheels previously described.

Future phases of the project will aim to more fully consider additional accessibility requirements, requiring consideration of appropriate multi-media or other devices that could be used to better depict and explore these dimensions of the landscapes, which highlight the complex interactions amongst changing knowledges, changing institutions and broadening imaginations (both public and institutional) that require representation. This is particularly the case for the regenerative utopia landscape (4), which is potentially highly populated with more abstract socio-cultural, eco-technical, eco-economic and socio-eco-political concepts. In the demonstration version, the platform tries not to directly use these complex academic terminologies. Instead, the landscape, zone, system and feature descriptions use social language to describe what is being depicted. For example, rather than using ‘eco-technical’ or ‘soc-eco-political’, tangible descriptions of suggested features that demonstrate these concepts are provided—“Carbon- and water-intensive products have been almost entirely priced out of the market. Investment has made resource use more efficient with minimal environmental impact (eco-economic). Older technology is often retrofitted or maintained if more economical and/or sustainable than replacing it. This is complemented by product legislation banning substances responsible for environmental impacts and health hazards (socio-eco-political).” (landscape 3: regenerative sustainability description item).

The previous section describes the steps in the co-creation methodology. The following section describes an example user journey to demonstrate the steps that might be taken in exploring the illustrations, narratives and multi-media resources that have been populated into the proof-of-concept platform.

3. User Journey

Undertaking the co-creation methodology described in the previous section and bringing together all of the elements and components resulted in a platform with the architecture outlined in Figure 6. To navigate this complex architecture, a user guide is included in the landing page. In this section an example user journey is provided to indicate how a platform user might move in and around the architecture. The user journey illustrated is similar to one undertaken in the real world during platform pilot webinars, which are described in the following section.

The platform can be used as a resource in a number of ways:

• As a resource to support fully guided webinar presentations with pre-set narratives or ‘user journeys’ through the use of slide decks.
• As a resource to support a hybrid—part-guided, part self-exploratory—live online session.
• As a resource to support an entirely self-guided session through a user-led journey.

Within this paper, only the first resource example is possible to demonstrate. To undertake the third option—a live, entirely self-guided session through a user-led journey—please refer to the previously provided web URL address. Figure 7 illustrates a user journey with a pre-set narrative focused on agriculture. Currently, to benefit most from the journeys, the user needs to keep in mind some of the textual narratives that explain the systemic relationships amongst features, zones and systems. At the moment, there is only one animation explicitly visually demonstrating these systemic relationships, which is focused on bioresource centres. The aim of future project phases would be to co-develop more of these animations and other resources illustrating these systemic relationships. At present, audiences who might need support to hold these narratives or knowledge can be guided through these inter-relationships across the platform using the ‘fully supported’ or ‘hybrid’ options. The steps in the user journey are intended to guide the user around the platform to maximise convenience and focus and to avoid cognitive overload:

• Landing page—Welcome video, introduction, user guide and landscapes 1-4;
• Landscape 1—Landscape 1: visualisation of an unsustainable scenario landscape;
• Landscape 1—Overall scenario landscape description and scenario wheels;
• Landscape 1—Zone: agriculture; feature: livestock sheds;
• Landscape 2—Visualisation and description for landscape 2: in transition;
• Landscape 2—Landscape 2: in transition wheels;
• Landscape 2—Zone: agriculture; feature: livestock sheds;
• Landscape 2—Zone: agriculture description, list of features and wheels;
• Landscape 2—Zone: agriculture; feature: animal waste digestor descriptions;
• Landscape 2—Zone: agriculture; feature: animal waste digestor wheels;
• Landscape 3—Visualisation of regenerative sustainability;
• Landscape 3—Description and wheels.
• (optional step of considering landscape 4 wireframe)

Upon interacting with the clickable features, the user is drawn further into the layers of information and invited to explore more about each feature to the level at which they feel comfortable. Shown first in the pop-up factsheets are the narrative text and wheels. If the user clicks the arrows in the bottom right corner of the pop-up box, then they can navigate through a range of additional links to multi-media resources, such as reports, journal papers, magazine articles, videos and other external materials, which describe the feature in action. Once finished, clicking on the cross at the top right corner of the pop-up box closes the box and the user is back in the zone or landscape. From there they can consider their next element to explore or can return to the home page using the navigator in the top left corner of the screen.

The platform was demonstrated to high-level audiences during 2022 whilst in development and formally launched in April 2023. The following section summarises preliminary monitoring and evaluation undertaken after these activities.

The platform also features other functionality to encourage interest, exploration and use such as:

• a swipe animation from landscape 1 to landscape 3;
• a simple animation illustrating the reimagining of wastewater treatment plants as circular ‘bioresource centres’ operating across the nexus;
• downloadable illustrations, for instance, for developing bespoke user journeys.

4. Preliminary Evaluation

Once the proof-of-concept demonstration platform was completed, a preliminary evaluation was undertaken, which comprised two aspects: (i) evaluation by the project team against criteria from the reviewed literature; (ii) evaluation through pilot testing with high-level audiences and web-based platform-embedded feedback forms.

Criteria for the evaluation were synthesised from the relevant literature and focused on the implementation of a futures approach [40], effective communication of futures alternatives [68] and meaningful and effective adaptation communication [69] to enable comparison with other futures studies. The final 40 evaluation criteria are summarised in

Table 3. Water Visions Visualisation Platform evaluation criteria achievement summary.

#	Criteria	Achieved?	How?
1	Promotes understanding of futures thinking as being imperfect and exploratory	To an extent	Introductory, disclaimer and item description texts cover this in their narratives
2	Explores a particular question	Yes	The question/aim is provided in the introduction/welcome
3	Grounds thinking in data and trends whilst recognising creative thinking and distinguishing between objective facts and imaginative visions	Yes	Evidence-based [19], which underpins narratives with imaginative illustrations to support creative thinking
4	Uses ‘What? So what? Now what?’ questions to explore impacts and include next steps, time frames, impact severity and interconnections	To an extent	Benefit wheels provide the ‘so what’, potential impacts and interconnectivity, guiding next steps and time frames for consideration
5	Uses narratives and storytelling for visualisation	Yes—though needs more social narratives	Illustrated landscapes, zones, systems and features are accompanied by a textual narrative, which weaves a wider story
6	Asks the audience how they want to be communicated with. The language, content and format(s) should be audience specific and understood from the outset	To an extent	Methodology includes co-creation to embed these aspects—proof-of-concept platform language, content and format are for high-level stakeholder audiences. Would need adapting to other audiences in collaboration with them
7	Recognises uncertainty and tipping points	To an extent	Narratives are framed using uncertainty and multiple illustrations indicate there is no set future. Tipping points are shown in wheels and illustrations and communicated in narratives
8	Clearly defined purpose, aim and objectives	Yes	The question/aim is provided in the introduction/welcome
9	Strategic and evidence-based, with links to the evidence embedded to provide accuracy and legitimacy	Yes	Evidence-based [19], with links to the evidence embedded in the clickable pop-ups (journal papers, reports, websites, videos, animations, images, podcasts)
10	Current and future scenarios, as well as a variety of scenarios	To an extent	L1—current, L2 and L3—futures, L4—co-creatable wireframe
11	Accessibility/easily accessible, including software used	In parts	Heavily biased towards Microsoft Office 365, as this tends to be industry standard in the country of origin (UK), but could be substituted with other preferred software. Textual narratives need audio versions embedded and other adaptations accommodated
12	Includes a user guide	Yes	User guide provided on website and landing page of platform
13	Zoom-in ability (similar to ‘virtual globe’)	To an extent	Illustrations decrease in scale to facilitate zooming. Additional zoom-in capabilities would be useful for individual illustrations, which is not possible within ThingLink
14	Interactive view and explore function	Yes	Clickable pop-ups and navigation icons provide interaction and explore functions
15	Easily navigable	Mostly	Navigation is via click and go, which is familiar to most audiences
16	Easy to interpret/understand	To an extent	Format follows standard protocols, content is designed to avoid cognitive overload (short text boxes, etc.) but does require certain prior knowledge and skills to interact with the visuals, information and resources
17	Clear visuals (e.g., text/pixel size), assumptions, limitations and methods	Yes	Appropriate font sizes and image resolution. Disclaimers provided
18	Includes spatial and policy aspects	Yes	Spatial element provided through use of landscapes, zones and systems; policy elements contained within narratives
19	Media in a variety of formats to engage users	Yes	Links out to journal papers, reports, websites, videos, animations, images, podcasts and others. Suited to target audience but would need tailoring to other audiences
20	Cost/benefit/trade-off/performance information	Yes	Benefit wheels and narrative elements in pop-ups
21	Supports stakeholder engagement	To an extent	Co-created amongst a group of stakeholders and can be used as a stakeholder engagement tool via guided workshops
22	Facilitates reflection	To an extent	Supports ‘what if’ thinking, which is inherently reflexive, though could embed more queues and signposting for this
23	Enables co-development/co-creation	To an extent	Co-created amongst stakeholders, L4 specifically included for co-creation/workshopping and platform can be further co-developed as is fully reconfigurable though certain skill sets required
24	Supports learning (including social learning)	To an extent	Enables users to acquire and apply new knowledge; can bring together multiple users to share and learn together. Additional accessibility and audience versions required for learning with a wider range of users
25	Supports online/workshop collaboration	Yes	Parallel exploration possible and L4 specifically included for co-creation/workshopping
26	Empowers decision making at a range of levels	To an extent	Enables users to compare and consider a range of interventions and actions—but only if they are open to exploration
27	Opportunity for face-to-face support (e.g., through knowledge brokers)	Yes	Authors can provide support or train others to provide support
28	Is useful and satisfies users’ needs	To an extent	Indicated through co-creation process and user feedback
29	Climate change is framed as a phenomenon personally relevant to the target audience	To an extent	Yes, includes individual-scale interventions and actions, though more of these needed
30	Communication on risks and impacts resonates with local practices, values, concerns and previous experiences	To an extent	Narratives are grounded in the local (though currently context-specific to UK), though more of these needed
31	Communication provides opportunities to explore impacts by oneself	Yes	Self-guided user journey option
32	Information is transparent: uncertainties are made understandable and are visualised to appear credible	Yes	All narratives, wheels and pop-ups are framed in this way
33	Information is not over-simplified	Yes	Narratives and media are clear and use explicit rather than simple language, with social language rather than academic language (though a lot of technical language) with definitions provided where needed and in a glossary, and a list of features for support
34	Not only fearful messages are spread	Yes	Message framings and narratives are realistic but optimistic and hopeful
35	Information relates to established implementation barriers	Yes	Evidence-based barriers are framed appropriately
36	Communication presents clear options and lists of alternative adaptation measures to choose from	To an extent	Clickable item menus and list of features clearly convey options. There are more options illustrated than clickable features currently available due to project duration. Future phases aim to increase the number of clickable items
37	Communication on actions is tailored to the needs and objectives of the target audience and relates to everyday concerns	Yes	Everyday concerns are articulated through features that work less well (L1) and work better (L2, L3) at different scales for a range of audiences
38	Adaptation options are visualised	Yes	Illustrations, imagery and multi-media. There are more options illustrated than clickable features currently available due to project duration. Future phases aim to increase the number of clickable items
39	It is clear how individual adaptative responses can make a difference	To an extent	Through benefit wheels and narratives, there are more options illustrated than clickable features currently available due to project duration. Future phases aim to increase the number of clickable items
40	Communication enhances engagement and discussion among users	To an extent	User feedback indicates the platform is being used to communicate future water vision interventions and action within and amongst different groups

alongside the evaluation of whether or not the platform met the criteria and how. The preliminary criteria evaluation by the project team was based on consideration of all the gathered feedback and determined that the platform met all 40 literature-based criteria to some extent. However, the authors acknowledge that this use of the criteria is limited and potentially biased. Due to time and budgetary pressures, it was not possible to embed these criteria in the user feedback form. Future evaluations will address this by embedding suitably worded versions of the criteria within revised evaluation forms and processes. The preliminary criteria evaluation does, however, highlight the importance of the intensive and extensive co-design, co-development and co-creation methodology implemented. Ref. [68] also noted the importance of improving the quality of visualisation tools and involving stakeholders in co-development, as well as ensuring tools are accompanied by dedicated community engagement capability if aiming to make landscape science more accessible and applicable to current and future users. Unfortunately, user co-creation beyond the project team was not possible during this phase of the project due to budget and time constraints. Instead, pilot testing was undertaken.

Whilst the platform was co-created by participants from three different types of environmental organisations (charity, non-departmental public body, consultancy practice) with a diverse range of knowledge and expertise, pilot testing with other audiences was required to enable initial monitoring, evaluation, feedback and review activities.

Pilot testing took the form of webinar feedback, which was collected after providing two fully guided webinar presentations with pre-set user journeys through the use of slide decks to high-level stakeholder audiences on 14 July 2022 and 19 January 2023, totalling approximately 150 attendees (with a range of science, policy, technology, operational, planning and other backgrounds). Answers to direct questions asked in feedback were answered during the webinar. Feedback received at both webinars was accommodated to enable the platform to be revised and updated ahead of the launch of the demonstration platform. In addition, website feedback form responses were gathered after the demonstration platform was officially launched via the Water Visions website on 14th April 2023 alongside other feedback submitted during the launch via social media and other contacts. As the evaluation is still ongoing, statistical results are not detailed here. Instead, a summary of feedback questions and comments from the webinars and survey was collated by theme to indicate the overall impression of the platform at the time of writing. Feedback fell across 10 themes:

• General—thanks and praise.
• Navigation—comments of contrasting experiences (‘not clear’ versus ‘really strong’).
• Visuals/platform—positive comments on the illustrations. Questions about style and framings.
• Futures—comments on portrayals being realistic and positive. One comment suggesting L3 is too eco-technical, was reassured that socio-eco-tech framings would be more explored with users is L4.
• Video/animation/sound—suggestion for better use of sound.
• Wheels—generally positive comments though clarity needed on scale and method (qualitative).
• Technical information—questions about particular items.
• Audience/users—suggestions on tailoring for different users. Impact tracking.
• Learning—what users had taken away, from reflection to thinking about forward-looking approaches (systems; nexus) and transformation, as well as competencies and capabilities needed for sustainable futures.
• Glitching—pop-up box errors that required user refreshing.

Overall, the feedback was positive with some technical information queries, suggestions for future co-development and minor glitches experienced during use. The majority of feedback focused on visuals, futures and users, which was to be expected during pilot testing. By meeting these criteria to some extent, the platform goes some way to achieving the implementation of a futures approach, effective communication of futures alternatives to high-level stakeholders, meaningful and effective adaptation communication and improvement in the quality of visualisation tools and co-creation with stakeholders. However, the work presented does not extend to a participatory or co-designed platform beyond the proof-of-concept demonstration stage or co-developed evaluation criteria with a range of audiences, which is an aim for future work. Thus, evaluation-focused critical reflection will be more extensively covered in future work, once further co-development and critique is undertaken with a wider range of audiences. The project team could also not ensure tools were accompanied by dedicated community engagement capability as this was subject to a range of factors outside their control.

Consequently, through the consideration of the evaluation criteria and collated feedback, it was determined that the platform achieved the aim and objectives of the project, which were to:

• co-create, among a small project team, an interactive demonstration platform through which to explore illustrations and narrative visions of the future underpinned by an extensive evidence synthesis, as well as real-world examples of the ‘art of possible’ and ‘pockets of the future in the present’ (through zones and features);
• co-develop, among a small project team, illustrations of future regenerative, sustainable, resilient, shared and socially just landscapes to showcase and communicate evidence-based material in relation to sustainability transitions with a focus on water;
• provide a robust platform for further information collation, organisation, communication and deliberation.

In relation to:

• providing accessible, inclusive visualisations and other supporting content to enable stakeholders with highly diverse levels of prior knowledge and technical skills to engage with and co-develop a shared vision for future SETS landscapes.

The project team acknowledges that further work is required to co-develop, evaluate and achieve this objective.

In summary, the preliminary evaluation highlights that a magnitude and diversity of co-benefits were realised during the proof-of-concept demonstration co-production process phase of the project. Ongoing co-development and further monitoring and evaluation activities will assess the platform in relation to the Theory of Change set for the project (beyond the scope of this paper). Further critical reflection will be covered in future work, once further co-development and critique has been undertaken with a wider range of audiences.

5. Conclusions

The Water Visions Visualisation Platform project set out to illustrate, narrate and communicate evidence and insights for water system management in a current and future context of an interlocking systemic polycrisis. In particular, concepts, principles and interventions for water (and nexus) system transformation partly in response to comments and questions from decision-makers during the course of the scoping literature synthesis. Further, the aim was to illustrate these in the context of a transition from unsustainable to sustainable, indeed more regenerative, landscape-level scenarios. The evidence and literature describe many of the concepts, principles and interventions separately, so it was important to try to bring them together to demonstrate their interactions and how they work together as a coherent ‘set’ of changes.

The platform in its current proof-of-concept demonstration version goes some way to supporting not only communication and learning about potential futures and their visualisation, but also provides a basis for stimulating further collation, deliberation and ‘co-creation’ in both generic and place-based contexts. The co-creation of a proof-of-concept interactive platform comprising coherent illustrations, narrative, examples and resources of visions of the future as landscape visualisations enables such futures to be explored and interrogated through zones, features and ‘wheels’. The platform content was underpinned with an extensive evidence synthesis [20], as well as real-world examples of the ‘art of possible’ and ‘pockets of the future in the present’ (example features and circularity animation focused on bioresource centres) to demonstrate that many of the identified changes are already happening somewhere and in some form. This is crucial for decision or policy makers or strategy managers to increase their awareness of options beyond their operational space (area of influence, expertise or focus). Through the presented comprehensive discussion on approaches to visualisation and alternative futures, a description of the co-creation methodology and a preliminary evaluation of the Water Visions Visualisation Platform, it is possible to make the following conclusions and recommendations.

5.1. Conclusions

• The co-creation process outlined provides a useful starting framework for further visualisation, illustration and communication projects;
• Scenarios were an effective way to organise and synthesise scoping review findings into coherent landscape, ‘zone’ and ‘system’ visuals and narratives;
• Scenarios were an effective but static way to demonstrate transition from unsustainable practices to more sustainable practices;
• Visualisation of evidence was an effective engagement, communication and learning tool for these coherent scenarios for the targeted audiences;
• An interactive platform supports the linking of real-world examples to the illustrated contents. This is essential to communicate to more operationally-focused decision makers who need to see examples;
• Not all concepts and principles are easy to visualise or illustrate in the landscapes (e.g., systems, regenerative, circularity and nexus approaches). Therefore, other means are needed such as narrative, animation and links to other resources. Further co-development with a wider range of audiences is required to understand additional suitable approaches/formats/media for such abstract concepts;
• Additionally, further co-development of the platform would also benefit from a more complete evaluation of its features and performance, in the spirit of co-learning and co-development that is central to this endeavour.

5.2. Recommendations

• When working collaboratively on co-design and co-creation, ensure significant time is allocated to workshopping and conceptual elucidation;
• Ensure that interfaces such as the platform are built using standard software to enable onward collaboration and updating where possible;
• The platform should be further tested and co-created with a wider set of audiences;
• The platform landscapes L1–L3 should be further populated with new findings and examples that are in the content organiser but could not be included during the project duration;
• Explanation of concepts and principles could be co-developed further through narrative, animation, audio and other examples;
• The L4 wireframe should be used for (i) co-developing short-term acceptable/fundable generic or place-based scenario programmes of work using L3 as a ‘pull’; (ii) co-developing a place-based, long-term ambition scenario; (iii) co-developing a more transformational scenario than L3.

Whilst the proof-of-concept demonstration platform contributes a ‘live’ practical tool for audiences to play with and take forward, the process of its co-creation has also provided a contribution to the body of work on visualising, illustrating and communicating future water visions. In the context of the literature and debate presented at the beginning of the paper, this work highlights that accessibly illustrating, translating and communicating the concepts, principles, innovations, layers of disciplines, scales, dimensions and actions that may constitute shifts, transitions and transformational change remain significant challenges. They require considerable time, energy and resources to elucidate and illuminate through visual and other media, which requires substantial commitment across funders and creative teams. Whole-system illustrations of the future can be co-designed, as highlighted through the methodology presented. However, particularly challenging is the portrayal of the systemic links and interrelationships amongst illustrative elements, which require ‘active’ media such as animation. To fully understand and co-develop media that better facilitates audience learning at this level requires further collaborative and creative research and development.

The co-creation methodology and proof-of-concept platform is structured to evolve to continue contributing to this field. Both are available to co-develop with various audience requirements, with the benefit of a reference to the principles upon which the current version is based. Please contact the authors.