Seeing the invisible: from imagined to virtual urban landscapes

Urban ecosystems consist of infrastructure features working together to provide services for inhabitants. Infrastructure functions akin to an ecosystem, having dynamic relationships and interdependencies. However, with age, urban infrastructure can deteriorate and stop functioning. Additional pressures on infrastructure include urbanizing populations and a changing climate that exposes vulnerabilities. To manage the urban infrastructure ecosystem in a modernizing world, urban planners need to integrate a coordinated management plan for these co-located and dependent infrastructure features. To implement such a management practice, an improved method for communicating how these infrastructure features interact is needed. This study aims to define urban infrastructure as a system, identify the systematic barriers preventing implementation of a more coordinated management model, and develop a virtual reality tool to provide visualization of the spatial system dynamics of urban infrastructure. Data was collected from a stakeholder workshop that highlighted a lack of appreciation for the system dynamics of urban infrastructure. An urban ecology VR model was created to highlight the interconnectedness of infrastructure features. VR proved to be useful for communicating spatial information to urban stakeholders about the complexities of infrastructure ecology and the interactions between infrastructure features.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.102559Published versio

After the SKA - Radio Astronomy in 2049

The concept of a Square Kilometre Array was developed to ensure that progress in Radio Astronomy in the early 21st Century continued at the same impressive pace as was achieved during the first 50 years. The SKA telescope is designed to pave that road to greater and greater sensitivity. So what technical challenges does the project face and what key innovations will drive the success of the SKA? What will the next Radio Astronomy mega-science project look like? In this article the author discusses the likely avenues of progress in the coming decades and comments on the status of radio astronomy in 2049 - the author's 70th (and presumably her retirement) year.Comment: Conference Proceedings PoS(RTS2012), 8 pages, 1 figur

Expanded urban media: from discretized social collages to corrugated social brain

Big data, the mobile Internet, social media and the Internet of things (IOT) generate more information than ever but the aggregation of social intelligence remains far from realising it’s potential. Two exemplary works, mediated_moments and plasma_flow, exhibited at Beijing’s China Millennium Monument Museum of Digital Arts in 2012 model the scalable potential of urban media to weave itself into the city’s social fabric, mapping and visualizing individuals’ thinking/intelligence onto a mixed-reality urban canvas

Trendswatch 2013: Back to the Future

TrendsWatch 2013 highlights six trends that CFM's staff and advisors believe are highly significant to museums and their communities, based on our scanning and analysis over the past year. For each trend, we provide a brief summary, list examples of how the trend is playing out in the world, comment on the trend's significance to society and to museums specifically, and suggest ways that museums might respond. We also provide links to additional readings. TrendsWatch provides valuable background and context for your museum's planning and implementation

Information Systems in the Era of the Internet of Things: A Domain-Specific Modelling Language

Based on the technological developments of the last few years and the associated digitalisation, the Internet of Things is now an essential part of practically every aspect of life. Smart products with their sensors and actuators are not only boundary objects between the physical and digital world, but also tie both worlds more and more together. The capabilities of the products range from simple monitoring tasks by drones in agriculture to autonomous use in mining. However, in order to exploit the full potential of these capabilities, it is not enough to use individual smart products or sensors, it is necessary to develop holistic IoT-based information systems from the ground up. To take such a systemic perspective, it is essential to have a sound conceptual understanding of the domain and a common language. Against this background, the publication presents a domain-specific modelling language for IoT- based information systems

Interplayable surface: an exploration on augmented GUI that co-exists with physical environments

The main goal of this experiment-driven thesis is to envision and design an interactive GUI1(graphic user interface) that coexists with physical surfaces. Based on an understanding of user behavioral patterns for getting access to information in these types of situations, experimentations and prototypes are implemented and tested with participants. In particular, to observe the user behavioral pattern for augmented GUI within certain environments and circumstances, this thesis presents several types of participatory experimentations with physical GUIs. The experiment participants were encouraged to participate in re-creates and reorganizes physical GUI, relating to their own situational specificity or informational tendencies they have. Based on extracted insights from research and experiments, in the last phase, I propose two thesis models about how interactive GUI applies to a physical environment: simulation mock-ups for user scenarios of augmented GUI and interactive GUI surface combined with projection mapping. Related to people’s behavioral patterns on augmented GUI, the thesis models will show several types of information structures and interactions. Also, in framing the overall data structure and wireframe for the thesis product model, informative affordance corresponding with users’ situational specificity2 is considered as a crucial direction point, actualized on an artifact in a perceptible way. Through experimentally prototyping a thesis model, consequently, I would like to expand the speculative usability interactive GUI will feature in the near future

Environmental Information Systems on the Internet: A Need for Change

The cost effective delivery of scientific and policy requirements is a key driver for the realization of global sustainability research, integrated assessment and supporting innovative systems. The next generation of geospatial information infrastructures is proposed as a possible solution. Still, questions such as ‘what does all this mean to environmental information systems’ and ‘what is expected to change’, have only partially been answered. In this paper, we describe the recent challenges for eEnvironment services in Europe, specify desired capabilities and derive according requirements. We identify affected stakeholder communities and depict their involvement in the overall value chain of environmental knowledge generation. Specific examples illustrate individual needs, while a derived description of the value chain indicates more general outcomes. Developmental requirements of future information systems are discussed. The presented work answers the questions above by bridging the gab between stakeholder needs, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development and higher level concepts, such as Digital Earth and Future Internet.JRC.DDG.H.6-Spatial data infrastructure