The City of Kelowna has recreated the city in the online video game Minecraft.
Minecraft is an open 3D-world game that can be used to create custom environments and landscapes, much like an online version of Lego.
“Cities collect geospatial data on lots of things — from public facilities to the terrain that makes our city unique,” said Jazz Pabla, City of Kelowna’s information services director.
“We are hoping our younger residents will enjoy discovering and creating a world of possibilities through the data in this new accessible format.”
The virtual Kelowna was created using a variety of data sets, which are available to the public for transparency, insight, and experimentation.
“We are constantly looking to use data to tell a story about our city and we saw this as an opportunity to introduce more people to our open data offerings,” Pabla said.
“Who knows? Maybe a young person who starts off with the Kelowna Minecraft world gets more interested in geographic information and goes on to a profession in information technology or planning.”
How to download Minecraft City of Kelowna world:
- Click on the download link
- Unzip the compressed Kelowna World file
- On a PC with Minecraft installed, navigate to “$AppData$\Roaming\.minecraft\saves”
- Copy the uncompressed world folder to the “saves” folder. The KelownaBCCanada world will show as a new world in Minecraft.
The virtual Kelowna was created in celebration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) day.
The day was created with the goal of inviting and teaching people about geography and the use of GIS to understand the world we live in.