Linking GIS with real-time visualisation for exploration of landscape changes in rural community workshops

Abstract

To allow rural communities to evaluate possible future landscape scenarios, we have created a portable environment for landscape simulation (envisioning system). The goal of this system is to give communities the opportunity to plan their desired futures. Our system is designed for workshop environments and allows workshop attendees to explore and to interact with representations of virtual landscapes. We are using virtual reality technology to visualise the landscape representations, a geographic information system to allow participants to change the current landscape configuration, and mobile computing devices to allow the attendees to navigate in the virtual landscape, and give feedback and opinions on the landscape changes. Here, we describe the technology that implements the interaction between geographical information systems and real-time rendering needed to achieve real-time visualisation of landscape changes. To achieve this functionality we have programmed two software clients (a renderer and an ESRI ArcMap extension) and a server that handles message flow. The landscape has been divided into management units that each supports one land use type. Using the GIS interface, users can change the land uses associated to the units and the renderer will update the landscape correspondingly in real time.