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Spatial Information Appliances
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2. Spatial Information Appliances
We need new impulses from applications of innovative technologies, which enable new approaches to problem solving. The enabling technologies exist today— the world-wide web, the Global Positioning System (GPS), cellular phones, and virtual reality— but with a few exceptions they have not been tied into the concept of integrated information systems. Rather than having GIS boxes on our desk tops or laps, we envision future GISs to be nodes in global information networks. This next (or next-but-one) generation of GISs will appear to have little in common with today’s GISs. Particularly, the one-sizefits- all approach will be replaced by a family of spatial information appliances, each of which tailored to
particular tasks.
2.1 Geo Sketch Pads
People take notes in all kinds of situations. The Geo Sketch Pad allows a user to capture geographic field notes through the annotation of digital pictures and videos taken in the field. It is supported by a GPS receiver and a gyroscope to record the location and direction of the note taking and a digital camera or a video camera capture the visual channel. The Geo Sketch Pad offers a multi-modal user interface on which a user may sketch with a pen over an image taken to highlight the features of interest, or annotate through spoken language the image recorded. The Geo Sketch Pad builds a bridge between the content captured by a recording device and the sensations a person feels in the field, thereby providing a better accounting for the context in which often abstract measurements are made.
2.2 Smart Compasses
The Smart Compass gives directions and helps users with orienteering in an unfamiliar environment, much like the magnetic compass, its analog counterpart. While the magnetic compass gives one fixed direction to which a user must align his or her own reference system or the orientation of a map, the Smart Compass points the user into the direction of a particular geographic object. Equipped with a GPS receiver to determine the observer’s location, a gyroscope to measure the orientation of the display unit, the smart compass works with a simple gazetteer of geographic names and their locations. Given the location of the observer, it calculates the direction to the target and shows the user an arrow pointing in the direction of the target. As the user turns the display unit horizontally, the pointer’s direction stays on the target, of course.
2.3 Smart Horizons
Smart Horizons allow a user to actually look beyond his or her field of view. Often people’s decisions are hampered by a lack of knowledge of what is behind the horizon. Smart Horizons present the user with such information as topography, infrastructure, traffic, or weather conditions in a way that it generates an integrated world of the user’s visible and invisible world. Smart Horizons consist of a GPS receiver to determine the observer’s location, a gyroscope to determine the observer’s direction, a bi-directional wireless link to real-time information source that provides the thematic information beyond the visible horizon, and a hand-held computer that processes the incoming data and generates in real-time the appropriate views. A device may be a hand-held display on which, when pointed into a particular direction, presents an extended panorama. Users pan left and right by horizontally rotating the device, while they explore an area further remote by vertically tilting the device. An alternative would be electronic binoculars, which generate a 3-dimensional model for the area behind the horizon through which the observer may navigate. With Smart Horizons travelers will avoid to drive into the bad weather and sailors will find a landing with a road close by.
2.4 Geo-Wands
A Geo-Wand is an intelligent geographic pointer, which allows users to identify remote geographic objects by pointing to them. It replaces the use of the traditional compass in combination with a topographic map to identify objects in the field, and enhances the concept by providing information that may be generally accessible through an information network. A Geo-Wand is equipped with a GPS receiver to determine the location and a gyroscope to capture the direction in which the wand points. Position and direction are matched with a digital terrain model, which is part of the Wand’s knowledge base, to determine the object to which the user pointed. Using a Geo-Wand, a hiker in the field may point to a mountain top and get its name, altitude, and distance. With the availability of up-to-date and detailed DTMs derived from aerial photographs or 1-meter resolution remotely sensed imagery, details about individual buildings will be accessible. By connecting the Geo-Wand through a cellular phone with an information network such as the world-wide web, the user may browse through any additional information available about the identified object.
2.5 Smart Glasses
Smart Glasses allow a user to augment reality by superimposing into the visual field a digital image. This device resembles the eye goggles found with virtual reality, however, unlike VR, Smart Glasses display a virtual world in addition to what a user sees naturally. A geologist, for instance, may find new insights through the use of Smart Glasses in the field when a simulation model of the geological processes over the last 10 Million years is superimposed over today’s terrain. Likewise, a fluvial geomorphologist may gain new insights from an augmentation of the flow in a ravine by displaying the low vectors derived from a simulation model. Sometimes information from another domain may be the key for making the right inferences, as in the case of an archeologist who, while in the field, may observe from a historical flashback that a piece of pottery found at this particular location may have actually originated further upstream and was likely flushed through floods to the location where it was found.
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