Abstract:

The lack of usable land in Hong Kong is always a society issue such that people need to live in very congested areas with high level of pollution. The district in the Kowloon side of the Hong Kong tunnel area is especially a highly condensed area where the citizens have been suffering from this for over forty years. Hong Kong Polytechnic University(HKPU) neighboring there has proposed to the government and the community the possibility to construct a multi-layer deck which can mitigate this problem and improve for people’s living around. While promotion of this idea needs community consensus and support, the University has developed some virtual reality models based on simulation technology to popularize the core value of the Green Deck concept. In order to market the idea of this Green Deck project (https://www.polyu.edu.hk/cpa/greendeck/) and educate the students aware of this opportunity, a competition eligible for the full-time students of HKPU is organized as part of overall campus-wide sustainability education program. Students are encouraged to use cutting-edge tools (e.g.SketchUp & FlexSim) to design their Green Deck which can be more inventive, innovative and intelligent with environmental-friendly elements. FlexSim is originally an industrial level discrete event simulator and the latest version has included virtual reality (VR) option. These features are well recognized and accepted by the competition to call for students from different levels and disciplines to submit their designs, which are created by the use of this FlexSim and VR option, plus the general drawing tool such as SketchUp. Three introduction lectures and tutorials were conducted to get the students fully understand the functions of SketUp and FlexSim as well as the Green Deck concept at the beginning of the event. The students have exploited multiple computer-assisted resources to fulfill the conceptual models into three-dimensional (3D) “real world” scenario with self-motivation and confidence but within restrained expense and period, changing the traditional passive learning phenomenon into the proactive self-immersed study mode. Also the students among different teams posed their own questions to discuss with each other and solved technically during the whole preparation for the competition.
The initial phase of the output is positive that students have demonstrated some possible usage of the Green Deck for health care, festival events, environmental functions, and combinations of all these.The next step will be to refine the simulation models, and to promote them to public for exhibition. This can be a vital step to bring up awareness of sustainability education further to the general community instead of just within a university. A plan is made also trying to extend this competition to a summer camp for secondary school students, so that the same idea can be widely promoted and more green innovative contribution can be generated.
The methodology for this proposed topics is mainly focus on the utilization of the new technology with low overhead to nourish students to be creatively and actively thinking and modernizing the environment in sustainable development trace. It will give a highlight on the educational means link with technology to tackle the real problem in a scientific manner.

Keywords:

Simulations, Sustainability Education, Virtual Reality, Green Deck.