Visual Analytics for Sustainability and Climate Change/Credits

Visual Analytics for Sustainability and Climate Change: Assessing online open content and supporting community engagement. The case of Wikipedia.

Team

Research team

Iolanda Pensa (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5122-7385), principal investigator and concept, head of Culture and Territory Research Unit, Institute of Design, SUPSI.

Giovanni Profeta, project coordinator, researcher and designer.
Chiara Somajni, researcher.
Florence Devouard, researcher and community manager.
Sage Ross, senior developer in collaboration with Visualizing impact https://impact.wikiedu.org/ and Wiki Education Foundation.
Ahmed Amine Hassou, developer in collaboration with Visualizing impact https://impact.wikiedu.org/ and Wiki Education Foundation.
Nicole Schwitter, researcher.
Cristian Scapozza, researcher.
Florian Maximilian Meier, researcher - consultant in the project.
Evelin Heidel, executive director at Wikimedistas de Uruguay.
Isla Haddow-Flood, co-executive director at Wiki in Africa.
Monica Granados, Open Science leader at Creative Commons.
Lucas Piantá, community manager Latin America.
Greta Lapesa, intern February-April 2026.
Federico Benvenuti, community manager of the Italian-speaking communities.
Alessia Minnella, PhD candidate with a thesis on cultural heritage and climate change.
Virginia Moretti, researcher, focus on green architecture.
Rebecca Bertero, assistant.

Thanks for the contribution to the initial project design to Luca Morici and Marta Pucciarelli.

Partners

Wiki Education Foundation
Wikimedistas de Uruguay https://wikimedistas.uy/
Wiki in Africa https://www.wikiinafrica.org/
Open Climate Campaign https://openclimatecampaign.org/

With the patronage of Wikimedia Italia.

Project supported by the SNSF. Project number 10.003.183

History of the project

In 2020 visualisations conceived and implemented for the project Wikipedia and the Italian school/Wikipedia e la scuola italiana, 2020 with updates in 2021, 2022, 2023.
In 2023 the project Wikipedia and the Italian school is replicated in Uruguay.
August 2022 First draft of the proposal Visualizing sustainability and climate change.
December 2022 Submission to the Wikimedia Foundation research funds, not approved (SUPSI research outline WPviz).
April 2023 submission to the SNSF, not approved (SUPSI research outline - VIZCC).
April 2024 resubmission to the SNSF with revisions.
September 2024 project approved by the SNSF with requested revisions (SUPSI research outline - VIZWP - SNSF project number 10.003.183).
The starting date of the project is postponed from January 1st, 2025 to April 1st, 2025.

Documentation

For full list of the documentation, please refer to the DMP Data Management Plan.

OSF Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/6wv9t/
Wikidata: d:Q130394984
SNFS project number 10.003.183

Short description of the project on the working website of Wikimedia Italia https://wiki.wikimedia.it/wiki/Visualizing_sustainability_and_climate_change_on_Wikipedia - request of endorsement. Project endorsed by Wikimedia Italia.

Credits of the tool

Please note that the credits are still under construction :)

Wikipedia Panorama is a visualization tool designed and developed under the framework of the research project “Visual Analytics for Sustainability and Climate Change”, led by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI), in collaboration with Wiki Education Foundation, Wikimedistas de Uruguay, Wiki in Africa and Open Climate Campaign, with the endorsement of Wikimedia Italia, the support of the SNSF (10.003.183) and the engagement of many Wikipedia and Wikidata volunteers. The project is developed during the period 2025-2029.

Link to the visualization tool

Research team

The research team that developed the Wikipedia Panorama visualization tool includes:

Iolanda Pensa (principal investigator), Giovanni Profeta (coordination and design), Chiara Somajni, Sage Ross, Ahmed Amine Hassou, Nicole Schwitter, Cristian Scapozza, Greta Lapesa, Florian Maximilian Meier, Rebecca Bertero, Virginia Moretti.

Community involvement: Florence Devouard, Lucas Piantá, Federico Benvenuti.

Recorded qualitative interviews with Florian Maximilian Meier, Gitanjali Yadav, Dariusz Jemielniak, Lane Rasberry, Andrea Bandelli, Matthew Vetter, Sage Ross, Isla Haddow-Flood, Monica Granados, Evelin Heidel, Cristian Scapozza, Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, Alex Stinson, Mengyuan Fu and Kunhao Yang..

Code: https://github.com/WikiEducationFoundation/impact-visualizer.

Sources and history of the visualization tool

Visualizing Impact (2021-)

Visualizing Impact is a tool provided by Wiki Education (WikiEdu) designed to track and display the contributions made by editors (including students) to specific sets of Wikipedia articles or topics over time. In 2025, Iolanda Pensa and Sage Ross agreed to integrate the interactive visualizations from Wikipedia and the Italian School with Visualizing Impact.

Wikipedia and the Italian School (2020)

The visualization tool was originally conceived for the aims of the project Wikipedia and the Italian school. The project was funded by Wikimedia Italia in collaboration with a pool of teachers coming from Italian schools. It focused on describing and monitoring the status of Wikipedia content related to Italian schools during the coronavirus emergency, in 2020. However, it is still updated yearly.

The Wikipedia and the Italian school visualization tool is released under the MIT license. All data collected from Wikipedia and Wikidata are released under the license CC0 1.0.

Link to the Wikipedia and the Italian school visualization tool

Research team

Iolanda Pensa (responsible), Federico Benvenuti, Valerio Iannucci, Luca Martinelli, Paolo Fichera, Giovanni Profeta (design)

Reuse of the concept and code

The visualization tool was reused by similar initiatives in Uruguay and Ghana.

Wikipedia Primary School (2014 - 2017)

The very first work that lead to the development of the Wikipedia Panorama visualization tool was the project Wikipedia Primary School. It was a research project, developed by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) and the University of Cape Town, which aimed to develop and evaluate a system to assess Wikipedia articles for primary education and seeks to involve a wide network of scholars and contributors in their production. The project ran in the period 2014-2017.

A set of 176 articles was analyzed and improved during the course of the project.

The visualization tool Wikimole, collecting data from the Wikipedia API, is realized under license GNU General Public License v3.0. It consists of a set of data visualizations that allow the analysis of article page views, cleanup tags, and wikilinks. All data collected from Wikipedia are released under the license CC0 1.0.

Research team

Iolanda Pensa (principal investigator for SUPSI), Tobias Schönwetter (principal investigator for the University of Cape Town), Isla Haddow-Flood, Marta Pucciarelli, Luca Botturi, Kelsey Wiens, Erica Litrenta, Florence Devouard, Giovanni Profeta, Giancarlo Gianocca.