Implementation of web-based virtual reality technology in public participation

Urban planning and design processes involve the participation of various stakeholders, who mostly are lay people in planning and design. Thus, a crucial way to get the support of those lay people is to provide a visual and comprehensible media to represent the planning and design outcomes, which enable them to understand the planning and design directly. Virtual reality (VR) technology is an advanced visualisation technology with the characteristics of dynamic and realistic 3D visualisation, interactively navigation and web-delivery. It has been used in many aspects of urban design and management to represent the objects and phenomenon of the urban environment. This paper presents a study of comprehensively implementing VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) and web-based databases to represent 3D urban models of the master planning of the west Cambridge University Campus. This aims to facilitate web-based participatory consultation to allow staff, students and local residents to learn about and debate the planning and building proposals. Interactive 3D virtual reality models were created of a number of proposed urban development projects in Cambridge and published on the University web site along with mechanisms for surveying users’ opinions of the proposals. These were linked to relational databases on the web server for recording survey responses. Care was taken to provide the participants with a friendly interface and interactive functions to easily navigate the model and accurately understand the issues involved. This paper starts with reviewing the theory and practice of implementing virtual reality visualisation for public participation in urban design. The technical details of creating the 3D virtual reality models, merging them into the web site and linking objects in the virtual reality model with databases, are described. Finally the advantages of, and the barriers to, this kind of virtual reality application are addressed

Sticks, balls or a ribbon? Results of a formative user study with bioinformaticians

User interfaces in modern bioinformatics tools are designed for experts. They are too complicated for\ud novice users such as bench biologists. This report presents the full results of a formative user study as part of a\ud domain and requirements analysis to enhance user interfaces and collaborative environments for\ud multidisciplinary teamwork. Contextual field observations, questionnaires and interviews with bioinformatics\ud researchers of different levels of expertise and various backgrounds were performed in order to gain insight into\ud their needs and working practices. The analysed results are presented as a user profile description and user\ud requirements for designing user interfaces that support the collaboration of multidisciplinary research teams in\ud scientific collaborative environments. Although the number of participants limits the generalisability of the\ud findings, the combination of recurrent observations with other user analysis techniques in real-life settings\ud makes the contribution of this user study novel

A review of data visualization: opportunities in manufacturing sequence management.

Data visualization now benefits from developments in technologies that offer innovative ways of presenting complex data. Potentially these have widespread application in communicating the complex information domains typical of manufacturing sequence management environments for global enterprises. In this paper the authors review the visualization functionalities, techniques and applications reported in literature, map these to manufacturing sequence information presentation requirements and identify the opportunities available and likely development paths. Current leading-edge practice in dynamic updating and communication with suppliers is not being exploited in manufacturing sequence management; it could provide significant benefits to manufacturing business. In the context of global manufacturing operations and broad-based user communities with differing needs served by common data sets, tool functionality is generally ahead of user application

Virtual reality urban modelling - an overview

This paper offers an overview of the increasing use of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies for the simulation of urban environments. It provides a summary of cities worldwide where three-dimensional computer modelling is being utilised to aid urban planning. The study considers the need for a digital representation of cities and raises issues pertaining to advantages, barriers and ownership. A case study of a pilot project on the visualisation of Newcastle upon Tyne is examined to show an approach adopted for the representation of this city in North East England. The process of this visualisation is summarised and future research is outlined in relation to this city model

Interactive real-time three-dimensional visualisation of virtual textiles

Virtual textile databases provide a cost-efficient alternative to the use of existing hardcover sample catalogues. By taking advantage of the high performance features offered by the latest generation of programmable graphics accelerator boards, it is possible to combine photometric stereo methods with 3D visualisation methods to implement a virtual textile database. In this thesis, we investigate and combine rotation invariant texture retrieval with interactive visualisation techniques. We use a 3D surface representation that is a generic data representation that allows us to combine real-time interactive 3D visualisation methods with present day texture retrieval methods. We begin by investigating the most suitable data format for the 3D surface representation and identify relief-mapping combined with Bézier surfaces as the most suitable 3D surface representations for our needs, and go on to describe how these representation can be combined for real-time rendering. We then investigate ten different methods of implementing rotation invariant texture retrieval using feature vectors. These results show that first order statistics in the form of histogram data are very effective for discriminating colour albedo information, while rotation invariant gradient maps are effective for distinguishing between different types of micro-geometry using either first or second order statistics.Engineering and physical Sciences Research (EPSRC

Requirements for Topology in 3D GIS

Topology and its various benefits are well understood within the context of 2D Geographical Information Systems. However, requirements in three-dimensional (3D) applications have yet to be defined, with factors such as lack of users' familiarity with the potential of such systems impeding this process. In this paper, we identify and review a number of requirements for topology in 3D applications. The review utilises existing topological frameworks and data models as a starting point. Three key areas were studied for the purposes of requirements identification, namely existing 2D topological systems, requirements for visualisation in 3D and requirements for 3D analysis supported by topology. This was followed by analysis of application areas such as earth sciences and urban modelling which are traditionally associated with GIS, as well as others including medical, biological and chemical science. Requirements for topological functionality in 3D were then grouped and categorised. The paper concludes by suggesting that these requirements can be used as a basis for the implementation of topology in 3D. It is the aim of this review to serve as a focus for further discussion and identification of additional applications that would benefit from 3D topology. © 2006 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Interactive visualisation and exploration of biological data

International audienceno abstrac

PropBase QueryLayer: a single portal to UK physical property databases

Until recently, the delivery of geological information for industry and public was achieved by geological mapping. Now pervasively available computers mean that 3D geological models can deliver realistic representations of the geometric location of geological units, represented as shells or volumes. The next phase of this process is to populate these with physical properties data that describe subsurface heterogeneity and its associated uncertainty. Achieving this requires capture and serving of physical, hydrological and other property information from diverse sources to populate these models. The British Geological Survey (BGS) holds large volumes of subsurface property data, derived both from their own research data collection and also other, often commercially derived data sources. This can be voxelated to incorporate this data into the models to demonstrate property variation within the subsurface geometry. All property data held by BGS has for many years been stored in relational databases to ensure their long-term continuity. However these have, by necessity, complex structures; each database contains positional reference data and model information, and also metadata such as sample identification information and attributes that define the source and processing. Whilst this is critical to assessing these analyses, it also hugely complicates the understanding of variability of the property under assessment and requires multiple queries to study related datasets making extracting physical properties from these databases difficult. Therefore the PropBase Query Layer has been created to allow simplified aggregation and extraction of all related data and its presentation of complex data in simple, mostly denormalized, tables which combine information from multiple databases into a single system. The structure from each relational database is denormalized in a generalised structure, so that each dataset can be viewed together in a common format using a simple interface. Data are re-engineered to facilitate easy loading. The query layer structure comprises tables, procedures, functions, triggers, views and materialised views. The structure contains a main table PRB_DATA which contains all of the data with the following attribution: • a unique identifier • the data source • the unique identifier from the parent database for traceability • the 3D location • the property type • the property value • the units • necessary qualifiers • precision information and an audit trail Data sources, property type and units are constrained by dictionaries, a key component of the structure which defines what properties and inheritance hierarchies are to be coded and also guides the process as to what and how these are extracted from the structure. Data types served by the Query Layer include site investigation derived geotechnical data, hydrogeology datasets, regional geochemistry, geophysical logs as well as lithological and borehole metadata. The size and complexity of the data sets with multiple parent structures requires a technically robust approach to keep the layer synchronised. This is achieved through Oracle procedures written in PL/SQL containing the logic required to carry out the data manipulation (inserts, updates, deletes) to keep the layer synchronised with the underlying databases either as regular scheduled jobs (weekly, monthly etc.) or invoked on demand. The PropBase Query Layer’s implementation has enabled rapid data discovery, visualisation and interpretation of geological data with greater ease, simplifying the parameterisation of 3D model volumes and facilitating the study of intra-unit heterogeneity