Thursday, January 5, 2006

An Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Presentation:

Virtual London: Online Public Participation, 3D-GIS, and Virtual Worlds

Dr. Michael Batty is Professor of Spatial Analysis and Planning at University College London where he directs the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). He holds a joint appointment in the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning and the Department of Geography.

Dr. Batty is a Fellow of the British Academy and was awarded the CBE (Order of the British Empire Commander) for “services to geography” in the 2004 Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

Abstract:

We are in the process of constructing a large spatial data base of 20 square kilometres of central London at the level of building parcels. We can view this data base in many ways but the most evocative is to view it in 3D, to fly through it and to bombard it with complex spatial queries. We call this project Virtual London and it is the result of a long period of working with VR, multimedia and GIS which has recently been jump started with monies from the Greater London Authority and British Telecom under e-democracy initiatives. We show how the model has been constructed in layers and we illustrate various products that spin off from the model. There are countless applications – we can flood the model to look at global warming and sea level rise, we can add pollution surfaces to it, and we can populate the model with detailed renderings of buildings. We can also embed various kinds of photorealistic media in the model and we show how all this can be accomplished using state of the art GIS, in particular the software called ArcGlobe. We argue that from this model we need to produce products such as movies and hard copy as well as using it in different kinds of digital environments such as virtual worlds., We conclude by showing how the model can be extended underground as well as overground and inside buildings as well as outside. Finally we show how the model needs to be distributed so that we can realise it in real time, using grid technologies, for example. Virtual London: Online Public Participation, 3D-GIS, and Virtual Worlds.

Dr. Michael Batty is Professor of Spatial Analysis and Planning at University College London where he directs the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). He holds a joint appointment in the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning and the Department of Geography. Dr. Batty is a Fellow of the British Academy and was awarded the CBE (Order of the British Empire Commander) for “services to geography” in the 2004 Queen’s Birthday Honours list. An Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Presentation: 7:00-8:30pm Tuesday April 12th W10 Pappajohn Business Building Co-sponsored by the Departments of Geography and Urban and Regional Planning.