The paper ‘Co-designing virtual reality-based solutions to promote the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals’, authored by Kalliopi-Evangelia Stavroulia, Marina Emmanouil, and Andreas Lanitis, has been awarded the Best Practical Paper Award at the 21st European Mediterranean & Middle Eastern Conference on Information Systems “Connecting Minds and Technology to Shape our Digital Future”. The paper was presented by Dr Stavroulia during the conference that was held on 2-3 September 2024 in Athens.
The paper addresses the lack of knowledge on sustainability and the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs) through emerging technologies. As part of this effort, the design journey for designing virtual environment prototypes focusing on promoting SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 5 (Gender Equality), and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) are presented. Preliminary results highlight the urgent need for immersive educational resources on sustainability and the SDGs, with virtual reality-based training showing promising potential.
Dr Stavroulia and Prof Lanitis are with the Visual Media Technologies Co-Lab (VMC2) that operates both at the CYENS Centre of Excellence, and the Cyprus University of Technology.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 739578
This project has received funding from the Government of the Republic of Cyprus through the Directorate General for European Programmes, Coordination and Development