Arizona businessman and philanthropist Ira A. Fulton has made a $3 million gift to Arizona State University to develop an advanced visualization tool that will enable policy makers and others to see, in detailed three-dimensional representation, the environmental consequences of their actions.

The computer-driven tool will be central to the newly established Decision Center for a Desert City, which was created with a $6.9 million federal grant to ASU. Among its features, the center's Decision Theater for the New Arizona will feature an "immersive environment" where, using computer models and visualization techniques, researchers can test the outcomes of decisions made on such topics as urban growth and water usage, as well as the effects of policy decisions on public health and myriad environmental and social challenges.

Fulton, the largest single donor in the history of ASU, previously had given $50 million to the school of engineering and applied sciences, which now bears his name, and $5 million to the school of education to establish a chair in early reading development and reading remediation and in honor of his wife, Mary Lou.

"It is fitting that a visionary like Ira Fulton is funding the development of the Decision Theater for the New Arizona which, in itself, is going to play a key role in many of our research projects," said university president Michael M. Crow. "Ira Fulton has shown that in order to make progress you need to make bold decisions. Funding the Decision Theater for the New Arizona is one more example of Ira's anticipation of key future needs and his willingness to help ASU fulfill them."