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Jianhua GONG and Hui LIN, 2006. A Collaborative VGE: Design and Development, A Chapter to a book entitled "Collaborative Geographic Information Systems"edited by Shivanand Balram and Suzana Dragicevic, Simon Fraser University, Canada,186-206. [Paper Download]
A Chapter to a book
entitled "Collaborative Geographic Information Systems"
edited by Shivanand Balram and Suzana Dragicevic, Simon Fraser University, Canada
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Jianhua GONG1, Hui LIN2
1State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science
Institute of Remote Sensing Applications
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Datun Road 3,Chaoyang District
Beijing 100101,P.R. China
Phone : +86-10-64849299 (O)
Email: jhgong@irsa.ac.cn
2Joint Laboratory for Geoinformation Science
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin, Hong Kong
Tel: (852)-2609-6528 Fax: (852)-2603-5006
Email: huilin @ cuhk.edu.hk
http://www.jlgis.edu.cuhk.hk
Abstract: A collaborative virtual geographic environment (CVGE) is a 3D, distributed, and graphical world representing and simulating geographic phenomena and processes to enable geographically distributed users to explore geo-problems and theories and generate hypotheses, and to support geo-model building and validation and collaborative ecological planning. This chapter reports an approach to establishing a CVGE across the Internet and its application to the collaborative planning of silt dam systems in watersheds through the integration of distributed virtual environments, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), planning models of dam systems and geo-collaboration. The chapter addresses the conceptual and system frameworks of the distributed CVGE, and the 3-D modeling of virtual geographic environments and virtual collaborative studios, in addition to the mediated tools for collaboration, such as streaming media based communication, shared whiteboards for text input and graphics drawing, and text-based dialogue. In a case study of the Qiu-Yuan-Gou watershed, Suide County, Shanxi Province, China, a prototype system is designed and developed with Java, Java3D, and VRML. The complete dam systems in the Qiu-Yuan-Gou watershed represent a typical example model of a massive silt dam construction project on the Loess Plateau. The study employs the example model of the watershed to explore the methodologies of collaborative spatial planning of silt dam systems. Using the prototype system, participants can implement communication with each other via media tools, mainly in the virtual collaborative studio, and 3-D editing of shared dams, calculation of topographic properties and ideal spatial distribution of dam systems in virtual geographic environment.
Keywords: Virtual Geographic Environments, Geo-Collaboration, Spatial Planning, the Qiu-Yuan-Gou Watershed, Soil-Water Conservation, Silt Dam Systems, the Loess Plateau
Geographic environments are open, huge complex systems in which most complicated geo-problems, such as ecologic planning, sustainable urban development, evaluation of large geographic projects, disaster forecasting and early warning, emergence response and process, and ecologic security need to be collaboratively explored and solved by a group of people. Meanwhile, the rapid development of information and communication technologies facilitates the potential to invent many tools to support collaboration, with computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) becoming an important research field (Mandviwalla and Khan,1999; MacEachren, 2001). In the GIScience community, the limitations of current geographic information systems only designed for individuals and the resultant increase in interest in geo-collaboration is evidenced by the growing body of work on group decision support systems, public participation GIS, collaborative GIS, and collaborative geo-visualization (Densham et al., 1995; Batty et al., 1998; Jankowski, and Nyerges, 2001; Craig et al., 2002; Cheng et al., 2003; Benko et al., 2003;MacEachren and Brewer, 2004). This chapter will focus on the design and implementation of technologies for geo-collaboration from the perspective of distributed virtual geographic environments.
The rest of the chapter is organized as follows. In section 2, work related to geo-collaboration, with a special emphasis on distributed virtual environments, is presented through a discussion of relationships with the online community, networked visualization and Internet/virtual GIS. Section 3 elaborates the design of the conceptual and system framework of collaborative virtual geographic environments (CVGE). Section 4 presents a prototype system of CVGE and a case study of the dam systems planning in the Jiu-Yuan-Gou watershed. The last two sections conclude with a discussion of future research trends.
Geo-collaboration can be defined as a group of people working together in both the same or differing geographical location and time, to accomplish geo-tasks or to solve complex geo-problems. The study of geo-collaboration involves diverse aspects ranging from participants and organization to mediated tools, geo-problem contexts and supportive environments. From the viewpoint of geo-collaboration supportive mediation technologies, this chapter highlights distributed virtual environments supporting different place/same time geo-collaboration. Distributed virtual environment technology works to establish distributed, 3-D environments allowing geographic distributed users to meet and interact virtually with objects and processes and collaborate with other users in 3-D worlds on the Web (Normand, 1999; Gong and Lin, 2000). In recent years, distributed virtual environments have drawn increasing interest in academic and industrial communities (Hibbard, 1998; Dykes et al., 1999; Singhal and Zyda, 1999; Oliveira et al., 2000; Blaxxun, 2005).
From the perspective of online communities, originating from the online text-based or voice-based chat rooms such as the famous Muds (Multi-User Dungeons) and Tencent OICQ in China, distributed virtual environments are now used to create online, 3D communities for conducting a variety of activities such as chatting, game playing, forming clubs, virtual house building, and shopping in the virtual mall (Cooper, 2000; OICQ, 2005). Fig. 1 illustrates a snapshot of Cybertown, a well-known 3-D Internet community (Cybertown, 2005). In Fig. 1, online users are represented as 3-D avatars who can navigate in 3D worlds and chat with other users. From the perspective of networked computer graphics integrated with CAD and visualization technology, distributed virtual environments are applied to the building and distribution of CAD or visualization environments for collaborative designing or visual data interpretation. Fig. 2 shows a distributed CAD design environment, called DMUConference (Tecoplan, 2001). In the DMUConference environment, geographically distributed designers can meet virtually and discuss the design of cars.