Landscape Visualization

Now, that took me by surprise: On April 26th, Google announced that it will sell Sketchup to Trimble. In a statement on the Google SketchUp blog, SketchUp Product Manager John Bacus promises that they will further provide a free version of Sketchup and that it will appeal to various target groups while focusing on architecture, engineering and construction industries. However, an immediate implication is the transfer of licenses and personal data to Trimble including non-geolocated (!) 3D models in the Google Warehouse (geo-located models submitted before the closing date belong with Google but Trimble gets a license to use them in the future). I am not a lawyer but it shows how quickly data could change owners these times… Today, the 3D warehouse models we constructed were owned by Google, tomorrow they will be owned by Trimble (who develops, unlike Google, military systems as well).

Other than that, I tend to be slightly optimistic that Sketchup will keep being one of my favorite tools as Trimble has a good reputation in GPS and surveying. I still remember my undergraduate studies where we already used Trimble equipment… Lately, Trimble seems to diversify and has shown an enormous appetite for buying various companies specialized in aerial data collection, CAD and GIS software, mobile systems, laser scanning, photogrammetry, and even UAV and RFID technology. Well, I hope that Trimble will further professionalize SketchUp without loosing its amazing intuition that revolutionized 3D modeling.

According to Josh Williams (formerly Gowalla, now Facebook), Facebook has 2 billion items per month tagged with a location. Add Microsoft's Photosynth and the possibilities for the automatic generation of 3D landscapes are endless.

The German architecture magazine Bauwelt presents LVIZ in its third column about architecture and planning related blogs: blogschau03.

We welcome all new readers, who were inspired by the blogschau article to visit our blog, and invite you to browse through the LVIZ posts about landscape visualization and related themes such as geovisualization, representation of vegetation, virtual globes and much more.

On February 17th 2012, the symposium "Beyond Climate Models: Rethinking How to Envision the Future with Climate Change" took place at the Vancouver Convention Centre as part of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Guest speakers Mike Hulme from the University of East Anglia, Richard Moss, IPCC author on the IPCC scenarios, Stephen Sheppard and facilitator John Robinson from the University of British Columbia discussed the role of landscape visualization tools and processes to support climate policy and action.

After the speakers' presentations, participants discussed specific aspects such as the role of visualization in scientific collaboration, in combination with the scenario method, and the use of virtual globes and decision theatres. The evolving research questions were collected and will inform future research in the area. 

May 14-16 2012, Multiversum Schwechat, Austria

17th international conference on Urban Planning, Regional Development and Information Society
“RE-MIXING THE CITY” – Towards Sustainability and Resilience?

An overview of Accepted Papers/Presentations is available at http://www.corp.at/Download/CORP2012/REALCORP2012_programmedraft.pdf

Until March 10 the detailed program will be available at www.corp.at, early bird registration is available until March 15.

A very informative new paper:

Social learning can benefit decision-making in landscape planning: Gartow case study on climate change adaptation, Elbe valley biosphere reserve  
Landscape and Urban Planning, Available online 8 February 2012
Christian Albert, Thomas Zimmermann, Jörg Knieling, Christina von Haaren

Highlights

► Participatory, scenario-based landscape planning may facilitate social learning. ► Social learning outcomes involve changes in participants’ understanding and skills. ► Learning outcomes can have benefits for subsequent decision processes. ► Challenges are issues of scale, personal involvement, and resource needs. ► Further research is needed in more case studies and on longer-term effects.

Please note that the URISA Journal is currently calling for contributions to special issues on
1) PPGIS
2) GIS in Spatial Planning.

For more information, please visit
http://www.urisa.org/urisajournal

Research In Action – Local Climate Change Visioning

Although the AAAS Annual Meeting 2012 is not specifically focused on landscape visualization or geodesign, it is so huge and has such a broad variety of themes that I would like to point it out here. The communication of climate change (Mike Hulme, University of East Anglia) through scenarios (Richard Moss, IPCC author), landscape visualization (Stephen Sheppard, UBC) and in virtual globes (Rebecca Moore, Google) will be discussed in the Beyond Climate Models: Rethinking How To Envision the Future with Climate Change session.

The full program can be browsed on the AAAS 2012 website. Online Registration is still open this week until January 26.

The following post is by Chris Pettit from the ISPRS WG II/6 blog and follows up with Philip Paar´s post about the Future Internet Special Issue "Landscape":

The sixth of a series of papers as part of a special issue of the Open AccessJournal Future Internet on the theme “Internet and Landscapes“, as edited by the ISPRS Working II/6 on Geographical Visualization and Virtual Reality (Chris Pettit and Arzu Coltekin) has now been published by  Subhash Sharma, Chris Pettit, Ian Bishop, Pang Chan and Falak Sheth. This paper examines how geo-visualisation tools can provide useful participatory planning support in addressing issues of land productivity and sustainability. The research team have developed an online landscape library, which has been integrated with a suite of geo-visualisation tools including a GIS based Landscape Constructor tool, a modified version of a 3D game engine SIEVE (Spatial Information Exploration and Visualisation Environment) and an interactive touch table display. The paper includes some preliminary evaluation of the tools and outlines some further research directions. The full manuscript can be accessed via the journal through the following link: http://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/3/4/319/