The High North Tour 2021: The Pandemic has Forced New Knowledge
Alta: In Alta, the university, local businesses and the municipality have joined forces in what they refer to as a visualization center for building and construction. In this way, students and the construction business meet in the same facilities at Campus Alta.
“The idea behind the Visualization Center in the Arctic (ViA) is to create a visual interaction space for students, Alta municipality and local businesses in relation to all the digital challenges we are facing”, explains Assistant Professor Peter Danielsen at UiT Alta.
Just like Alta business school, ViA is also based on digital teaching.
“It was thus not so hard for us to transition into fully digital web-based teaching. Perhaps the pandemic has been a wake-up call for people to get interested in this and realize that there are opportunities to which they have perhaps not been forced to relate until now”, Peter Danielsen says to High North News.
“To local businesses, this means that they get to test equipment and software they would not normally have in an office. Some things will be too expensive for one company, but we have it here.”
Involving citizens
“This applies to all parts of building and construction. The visual element is very effective for realizing what is going on. People understand an image or film much better and faster than a text explaining the same phenomenon. That is the whole clue here”, Danielsen says.
“It is also a way through which one can involve inhabitants in a construction area. Here, they can see what the development will actually be like. It is not just some lines drawn on a piece of paper”, Assistant Professor Peter Danielsen says.
Watch the whole interview with Peter Danielsen on top of this page. (Subittles available in English.)
Follow the High North Tour 2021
This article was originally published in Norwegian and has been translated by HNN's Elisabeth Bergquist.