The Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) at UNC Asheville will host a drop-in open house from 3:30-5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 5, at the RENCI at UNC Asheville Community Engagement Site, located in the Grove Arcade in downtown Asheville. The event is free and open to the public.

Operating from its new location in the Grove Arcade since October 1, the RENCI at UNC Asheville Engagement Site continues to provide leading-edge technology for area decision makers and other collaborators in the areas of disaster research, mitigation, and preparedness, taking advantage of Western North Carolina’s expertise in weather and climate modeling, visualization, and public outreach.

Visitors will see a 16-foot visualization wall, an immersive GeoDome, and 3-D visualizations in action as they learn about projects such as mapAsheville’s Priority Places, the newly released Urban Growth Model for the Asheville region, a multi-hazard risk analysis tool, geographic information systems (GIS)-based analysis of threats to eastern forests, flooding impacts and mitigation, and geospatial climate information viewers.

RENCI at UNC Asheville staff are excited about welcoming the public to the new engagement site. “We have settled in nicely to our Grove Arcade location and look forward to showing our engagement site and technologies to the public,” Susan Weatherford, RENCI at UNC Asheville Project Manager said. “Our partnership with the City of Asheville moves the new Engagement Site closer to community leaders and the public, which allows them to more easily use our resources to understand complex data and be better equipped to make decisions.”

For more information, contact Nina Hall, Community Engagement Coordinator for the RENCI at UNC Asheville Engagement Site, at 828/225-6575 or nhall@unca.edu.

The UNC Asheville Community Engagement Site is located in Suite 116 of the Grove Arcade, on the O’Henry Avenue side of the building, at One Page Avenue, in downtown Asheville.