The Design-A-Thon brings together UC San Diego students from all disciplines and experience levels in a pitch-style competition to apply the Design Thinking process to proactive solutions to end destructive wildfires.
The Wildfire Crisis
During fire season, it has become the norm to see front-page images of apocalyptic wildfires. A century of suppressing wildfires has created a dangerous accumulation of flammable vegetation on landscapes, contributing to megafires that risk human life and property and destroy ecosystems.
The Design Challenge
Your design challenge is to create a concept design for a physical or virtual installation that will increase public understanding and acceptance of prescribed burns as an important tool for ending devastating megafires.
THE UC SAN DIEGO DESIGN LAB
The UC San Diego Design Lab works on major societal issues, such as education, automation, healthcare, social interactions, citizen science, and the ethical issues that are of ever-increasing importance. For the Design Lab, design is a way of thinking, addressing the core issues, always taking a systems point of view, emphasizing the role of people in the complex systems of the modern world.
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER AND WIFIRE LAB
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) was established as one of the nation’s first supercomputer centers in 1985. Since that time, it has garnered a national reputation as a leader in high-performance and data-intensive computing and cyberinfrastructure. The WIFIRE Lab at SDSC works with researchers and emergency management professionals to meet the growing needs in hazards monitoring and response, from data collection to modeling efforts to interfaces for operational use.