Search

Computer-based evacuation simulations are important tools for emergency managers. These simulations vary in complexity and include 2D and 3D GIS-based network analyses, agent-based models, and sophisticated models built on documented human behaviour and particle dynamics. Despite the influential role of built environments in determining human movement, a disconnect often exists between the features of the real world and the way they are represented within these simulation environments. The proliferation of emergency management location-aware mobile devices, along with a recent infatuation for augmented reality (AR), has resulted in new wayfinding and hazard assessment tools that bridge this gap, allowing users to visualize geospatial information superimposed on the real world. In this paper, we report research and development that has produced AR geovisual analytical systems, enabling visual analysis of human dynamics in multi-level built environments with complex thoroughfare network infrastructure. We demonstrate prototypes that show how mixed reality visual analysis of intelligent human movement simulations built in virtual spaces can become part of real space. This research introduces a fundamentally new way to view and link simulations of people with the real-world context of the built environment: mixed reality crowd simulation in real space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual reality (VR) is a display and control technology. VR creates artificial worlds of sensory experience or immerses the user in representations of real spatial environments that might otherwise be inaccessible by virtue of distance, scale, time or physical incompatibilities of the user and the environment. The idea of VR is not new the first instances of VR were created in 1960s. But despite this, the issue of using VR technology in the aspect of existing topographic databases has not yet been researched by cartographers. The experiment was carried out on the Polish topographic database (BDOT 10k) in scale 1:10 000 to identify challenges in converting built-up areas into 3D VR geovisualization. In this paper, the author describes main features of VR, advantages and disadvantages of the analysed 2D topographic database in the context of 3D geovisualization, cartographic principles which may be applied into VR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to empirically demonstrate the necessity to consider both the spatiotemporal variability of air pollution and individual daily movement patterns in exposure and health risk assessment. It compares four different types of exposure estimates generated by using (1) individual movement data and hourly air pollution concentrations; (2) individual movement data and daily average air pollution data; (3) residential location and hourly pollution levels; and (4) residential location and daily average pollution data. These four estimates are significantly different, which supports the argument that ignoring the spatiotemporal variability of environmental risk factors and human mobility may lead to misleading results in exposure assessment. Additionally, three-dimensional (3D) geovisualization presented in the paper shows how person-specific space-time context is generated by the interactions between air pollution and an individual, and how the different individualized contexts place individuals at different levels of health risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern 3D geovisualization systems (3DGeoVSs) are complex and evolving systems that are required to be adaptable and leverage distributed resources, including massive geodata. This article focuses on 3DGeoVSs built based on the principles of service-oriented architectures, standards and image-based representations (SSI) to address practically relevant challenges and potentials. Such systems facilitate resource sharing and agile and efficient system construction and change in an interoperable manner, while exploiting images as efficient, decoupled and interoperable representations. The software architecture of a 3DGeoVS and its underlying visualization model have strong effects on the system's quality attributes and support various system life cycle activities. This article contributes a software reference architecture (SRA) for 3DGeoVSs based on SSI that can be used to design, describe and analyze concrete software architectures with the intended primary benefit of an increase in effectiveness and efficiency in such activities. The SRA integrates existing, proven technology and novel contributions in a unique manner. As the foundation for the SRA, we propose the generalized visualization pipeline model that generalizes and overcomes expressiveness limitations of the prevalent visualization pipeline model. To facilitate exploiting image-based representations (IReps), the SRA integrates approaches for the representation, provisioning and styling of and interaction with IReps. Five applications of the SRA provide proofs of concept for the general applicability and utility of the SRA. A qualitative evaluation indicates the overall suitability of the SRA, its applications and the general approach of building 3DGeoVSs based on SSI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]