Visualizing Climate Equity in NYC

About Ocellus

Ocellus is a mixed reality platform that leverages the Urban Systems Lab's Data Visualization Platform to present users with unique interactive geospatial maps of heat, flood risk, and other climate indicators in New York City. The project aims to improve understanding of urban systems and enhance decision-making for more equitable and resilient cities.

OneNYC 2050

The project is grounded in New York City's long-term strategic plan, OneNYC 2050; a framework that addresses the city's most pressing infrastructure, environmental, and socioeconomic challenges through an equity lens. Ocellus brings that data to life in a spatial, immersive format that allows communities, planners, and policymakers to engage with it directly.

My Role

Ocellus was a research-led XR platform being developed in collaboration with the Urban Systems Lab. I led the equity research across all three thematic narratives, working through large datasets to identify patterns, anomalies, and the stories the data was telling about climate risk and investment distribution across NYC neighborhoods. From there I collaborated with the broader team across the full design process, from storyboarding and wireframing through to prototyping the final application across mobile, tablet, and desktop. That included both the spatial exploration experience and the XR layer: first-person 3D visualizations and mapping geospatial data onto physical surfaces in mixed reality.

Research and Narrative Design

I conducted research to identify infrastructure, environmental, and socioeconomic equity issues tied to the OneNYC 2050 framework, then co-authored three thematic narratives that form the storytelling backbone of the platform.

Exposure: Heat and Flood Risk

Mapping where climate hazards are most acute across NYC neighborhoods, drawing on the Urban Heat Island index, FEMA flood maps, and historical storm surge records to show which areas face the greatest physical risk.

Vulnerability: Social and Demographic

Identifying which communities are least equipped to absorb climate impacts. Income levels, housing quality, health outcomes, and access to green space were the key factors used to understand where social vulnerability compounds physical exposure.

Investment and Equity: Green Infrastructure

Examining where climate investments and green infrastructure resources are being directed across the five boroughs, and whether that distribution aligns with where vulnerability and need are highest. This was where the most significant data anomalies surfaced.

UX Design & Prototyping

With the research narratives defined, the team moved into design. My contribution spanned the full process from early storyboarding through to high-fidelity prototypes across mobile, tablet, and desktop.

Sequencing a Non-Linear Story

I worked with the team to translate the three research narratives into spatial storytelling flows, mapping how a user would move through the mixed reality experience from the opening context through to the layered data views for each thematic area. The core challenge was sequencing: the data told an interconnected story across exposure, vulnerability, and investment, and the flow needed to reflect that without overwhelming users moving through a physical space.

Designing Across Realities

The design system had to stretch beyond responsive screen sizes. Designing for mobile, tablet, and desktop was one layer of the challenge, but the greater complexity was adapting the same interface logic for mixed reality, where users interact with data projected onto physical surfaces rather than contained within a screen. Layout, typography, information density, and interaction patterns all had to be reconsidered for a context where the environment itself is part of the interface.

Making Complex Data Accessible

The XR layer brought a different challenge: the data was scientifically dense, and the users encountering it ranged from climate researchers to community members with no data background. Every definition needed to be surfaced in context, every visualization needed to be legible without prior knowledge, and the transitions between screen-based exploration and immersive mixed reality needed to feel intuitive rather than jarring. The goal was an experience that was rigorous enough for experts and accessible enough for first-time users, without compromising either.

The Ocellus Platform

Ocellus launched as a fully interactive mixed reality platform, bringing together geospatial maps, data-driven narratives, and infographics into a single immersive environment. Communities, planners, and policymakers can now explore climate equity across NYC at the neighborhood level, moving fluidly between screen-based data exploration and mixed reality, and engaging directly with the intersecting layers of exposure, vulnerability, and investment that shape climate outcomes across the five boroughs.

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