The research project Visual Analytics for Sustainability and Climate Change: assessing online open content and supporting community engagement. The case of Wikipedia (2025–2029) contributes to the goal of climate change information integrity by developing a visualization and analysis tool for the world’s most consulted free encyclopedia, Wikipedia, available in more than 300 languages. The tool allows monitoring and assessing entries related to sustainability and climate change, identifying gaps, and supporting volunteer communities and institutions engaged in improving content quality.
During the 2025–2029 phase, research and prototyping activities will focus particularly on Wikipedia articles about climate change, involving international partners, researchers, and volunteers to analyze available documentation and support actions for revising and enriching content.
The project is developed by the Institute of Design of the Department of Environment Constructions and Design SUPSI, in collaboration with Wiki Education, Wikimedistas de Uruguay, Wiki in Africa, and the Open Climate Campaign, under the patronage of Wikimedia Italia and with financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (10.003.183).
The research team includes Iolanda Pensa (concept and principal investigator), Giovanni Profeta (coordinator and design), Chiara Somajni and Nicole Schwitter from the Institute of Design SUPSI, Florence Devouard (co-director of Wiki in Africa and Wikimedian in residence at the WIPO-World Intellectual Property Organization), Sage Ross (CTO at Wiki Education), Cristian Scapozza (professor of Applied Geomorphology and head of the Competence center Climate Change and Territory – Institute of Earth Sciences SUPSI), and Florian Maximilian Meier (associate professor, Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University in Copenhagen).
COP30
The 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) brings together the 198 countries that are signatories to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and is the most important global conference on climate. The 2025 edition took place in Belém, Brazil, and for the first time identified information integrity as a key factor in climate action, launching a global initiative coordinated by UNESCO to promote accurate, science-based communication.