UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
Date:______
I, ______, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in:
It is entitled:
This work and its defense approved by:
Chair: ______
Geographical Knowledge Management System
Application in Virtual Earth Environment
Developing a managed, comprehensive and rich geographical information model in 3D Virtual world
A thesis submitted to
University of Cincinnati
In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
In the Department of Geography, Mc-Micken Arts & Science College
2008
By
Manoj Dhanotiya
Committee: Dr. Lin Liu (Advisor) Dr. Robert Frohn Dr. Raj Bhatnagar
June 12 th 2008
Abstract
Geography as a discipline had been revolutionized with the advent of modern technologies and especially in the field of GIS. We aim to use high end modern technologies and programming language to create an interoperable Geographical
Information Management Model in a Virtual Earth Environment where we can record history in an innovative and exploratory way. The first year graduate students at the
Department of Geography at the University of Cincinnati have been taking a walking tour to Downtown Cincinnati from the campus since the 1980s. These tours have witnessed the continuing change of the city along the route, and these changes have only been documented in the essays written by students. This research aims to develop an online application in virtual environment that can show the current, historical, and future observations along the route. With the rapid development of online tools such as
Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth, it is now possible to create a geo-referenced archive of urban changes in a virtual geographic environment. In this study, Microsoft
Virtual Earth SDK (Software Development Kit) and KML (Key Hole Markup Language) are used to develop a GIS application which will facilitate the development of content overlays featuring a detailed virtual tour of Cincinnati Down-Town Area plus any other area in whole world subject to the availability of satellite imagery. Satellite Imagery from
Navteq is used to show the historical monuments and places of geographic importance.
Geo-tagged videos of professors and student discussions on the “place-marked” locations are added in the content overlay for real time experience. A virtual geographic environment like this has the potential of being an effective teaching tool and perhaps attracting more high school students to the discipline of geography.
i
ii Acknowledgements
I am grateful to my academic advisor, Dr. Lin Liu .His guidance, instruction, and encouragement during the course of my research was enormous and I am deeply thankful to him.
I would like to express my sincere thanks to Dr. Robert Frohn and Dr. Raj Bhatnagar for serving on my committee and reviewing this thesis.
Thanks to my fellow students in the Department of Geography and Department of
Computer Science for making this research such excellent experiences by contributing their thoughts for improving my research work.
iii
INDEX
1. Introduction ...... 1
2. Background & Literature Review - ...... 6
3. Motivation ...... 18
3.1 Innovations in Geographical History ...... 18
4. Research Goal ...... 20
5. Methodology ...... 21
5.1 System Components & Architecture ...... 21
5.1.1 GML - Geographical Markup Language ...... 21
5.1.2 KML – Key Hole Markup Language ...... 24
5.1.3 SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol ...... 24
5.2 AJAX Model for Real Time Virtual Earth Browsing ...... 27
5.3 Application Components ...... 31
5.3.1 Component 1 - Mapping ...... 33
5.3.2 Component 2 ...... 37
5.3.3 Ajax Implementation for Real Time User Experience ...... 40
5.3.4 Final Integrated Model Application ...... 42
6. Results - Small Demo Virtual Tour ...... 60
7. Conclusion and Future Research ...... 75
8. References ...... 78
iv List of Figures:
Figure 1: Blurred out image of the Royal Stables in The Hague, Netherlands ...... 4
Figure 2: Map making Process through GML ( Zhong-Ren Peng (2004) ) ...... 23
Figure 3: SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol (Source Wikipedia) ...... 25
Figure 4: ASP.Net 2.0 Client Server Architecture ...... 26
Figure 5: Ajax Model ...... 29
Figure 6: Component 1 ...... 33
Figure 7: Component 2 ...... 37
Figure 8: Data flow Diagram ...... 38
Figure 9: Final Integrated Model Application ...... 42
Figure 10: Web Flow - User Interface...... 44
Figure 11: Student Login ...... 45
Figure 12: Main Interface ...... 47
Figure 13: Time Line Recorder ...... 49
Figure 14: Virtual Classroom ...... 51
Figure 15: Tour Organizer ...... 53
Figure 16: Admin Section ...... 55
Figure 17: Admin Interface ...... 56
Figure 18: Tour Categories ...... 57
Figure 19: Adding Places ...... 58
Figure 20: Application Security Model ...... 59
Figure 21: UC- Aerial View ...... 60
Figure 22: Bird’s Eye View ...... 61
v Figure 23: Museum ...... 62
Figure 24: Newport Levee ...... 63
Figure 25: Carew Tower ...... 64
Figure 26: Carew Tower with Geo-referenced Picture ...... 65
Figure 27: Carew Tower ...... 65
Figure 28: Carew Tower ...... 66
Figure 29: Ohio River ...... 67
Figure 30: Zoomed In ...... 68
Figure 31: Cincinnati Zoo ...... 69
Figure 32: Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden ...... 70
Figure 33: Eden Park ...... 71
Figure 34: Downtown ...... 72
Figure 35: Big Mac ...... 73
Figure 36: Great American Ballpark ...... 74
List of Tables:
Table 1: Some Desktop VR Systems in Education ...... 8
vi
vii 1. Introduction
In the context of rapid evolution of advanced computing technologies and increasing geographical information availability that we see a substantial challenge for research in methods for geographical knowledge management and information distribution. The challenge is to extend the GIS, spatial analysis and visualization methods especially with the emergence of virtual earth environments (Virtual Globe) and to integrate these components of geographic information science to produce new comprehensive and more elegant geographic knowledge management application. Virtual Globe is a 3D evolution of earth also widely popular in public as Virtual Earth after the inception of
Google Earth in 2004. It extends beyond geographical surface to outer space showing imagery of planets, stars and astronomical images. Google Earth is already using
Hubble Telescope images showing constellations, stars, galaxies and animations of planetary phenomena. Virtual Earth due to advanced computing capabilities can be seen as next generation globe given users power to view earth surface from different angle and altitude in both 2D and 3D environment. It overlays the images obtained from satellite, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe on earth and the resolution varies now from 1m to 15m varying from place to place. It also uses Digital elevation model (DEM) data provided by NASA’s Shutter Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). The three dimensional data are managed by use of geospatial languages like Geographical
Markup Language (GML) and Keyhole Markup Language (KML). The capabilities of virtual globe are not limited to show the geographical surface in 3D view but it also shows the man-made structures like buildings, cars and almost every other thing which exists on earth. One can also use long-distance laser scanning technology and digital
1 photography combining with Virtual Reality Modeling Language to develop 3D models of whole city. More advanced Virtual Earth Environments can be developed using such technologies to monitor real time traffic in Virtual earth environments. Geospatial technologies and applications are already experiencing a boom due to this advanced earth visualization but it is still awaiting to explore many of its applications in different field not limited to just visualization of earth which itself is one of the thrust to GIS mapping and data viewing capabilities.
Innovation in Remote Sensing and GIS technologies had helped us in reaching to the far most places on the earth and exploring the sites which is possibly skipped in the past. Through the integration of the GIS and RS we aim to find a possible way to map back those findings to their respective geographic location and make it available to researchers/enthusiastic, geographers/travelers and students to let them know what they might have missed in the historical books and literature. This lag between the new geographical findings can be minimized fast and efficiently by depicting history through an online medium like one we propose. This also gives us a new application of remote sensing and GIS data exploration. Remotely sensed data, images, pictures, Aerial
Videometry are mapped back to its original location and can prove to be of great help while exploring a place online with a real time experience while browsing through virtual tours in virtual earth environment. Also it will help to record and build a temporal dataset and history which can talk itself.
The emerging geo-informatics services from Google (Google Earth) and Microsoft
(Microsoft Virtual Earth) have a potential utility in creating custom desktop and online
2 interactive Virtual Tours in both 3D and 2D mode. We will examine the role of advanced
Virtual Earth Environments and current Geospatial Data Management technologies to answer the question rose in the discussion above. Using the cross integration of
Geographic Data Languages like GML/KML and with Microsoft Virtual Earth we aim to create a model for Geographical Knowledge Management in Virtual Earth
Environments.
One of the most critical issues of virtual earth environment is related to security and privacy. Following is a glimpse of some of the concerns raised on the imagery available for public view in Virtual Earth Environments.
• Former president of India Kalam has already expressed concern over the availability
of high-resolution pictures of important locations in India (Deshpande, 2007).
• Government of South Korea had expressed concern that the software displays images
of the presidential palace and various military installations that could possibly be used
by their hostile neighbor North Korea (World Tribune, 2005).
• Morocco's main Internet provider Maroc Telecom has been blocking Google Earth
(Hearn, 2006) since August 2006 without giving any justification for it.
• Operators of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney, New South Wales asked
Google to censor high resolution pictures of the facility (Dimanche, 2007).
3
Figure 1: Blurred out image of the Royal Stables in The Hague, Netherlands (Google Earth for Windows 2007) The residence of the Vice President at Number One Observatory Circle is obscured through pixelization in Google Earth and Google Maps after being pressurized from US government(Wikipedia, 2008).
Most of the above mentioned concerns were related to National Security and Privacy.
Only a small documented literature is available in the research and academic community about issues related to the security of the research data, imagery and results which could be displayed in Virtual Earth Environment. One of the possible reason could be because nobody has yet used such environments for displaying there research data in the virtual earth, which is one of our aims for building such an comprehensive application and extending current virtual earth environments with GIS capabilities to use it for research and educational purpose. Many geographers either go to remote places for excavation, doing research studies of unknown ancient place and also some time use remote sensing for exploring and analyzing satellite imagery which may be sensitive and available only for research purpose. They record GPS coordinates, take pictures and note their research findings for further research. Now
4 when we talk about Virtual Earth Environments to be used as aid in teaching, this is quite possible that this findings could be placed in such environments for educational purpose and as soon as this is done the research site gets exposed to people who can get the coordinates easily from such environments for knowing where they physically exist and can steal ancient objects of great importance or even destroy it. This is one of the issues which none of the current virtual earth environment had yet addressed.
Considering all this concerns over security issues and mainly concerns related to security of sensitive research data. We are determined to give a simple solution through our integrated Virtual Earth Application which would be secured and can cater to special interest groups without security concerns. The solution which we have proposed not only does the user authorization but actually separates the data which is sensitive from other. All the public imagery is still available to all the users without creating any tours at all. But a researcher can create tours and place all the sensitive images and research findings in the application and it will not get exposed to the public or the user of this application till he do not make it available and he can select people to see it for educational environment like in a virtual class room environment. The data uploaded by the researcher is saved in a separate database other than V3D database and it gets integrated only once the tour is being displayed by him. This gives geographers a worry free virtual environment where his hard work remains safe from prying eyes of anti social elements and he can still use it for presenting his research work to educational community in a unique way through 3D visualization.
5 2. Background & Literature Review -
“Almost everything that happens, happens somewhere. Knowing where
something happens can be critically important” - Michael F. Godchild
Every event happens ‘‘somewhere’’— that event literally takes place in some
geographical location — enabled us to argue that all human history is regional history,
and it loses value and meaning when its geographical aspect is overlooked while
recording it. For Myres (1953, 64, 75, 82–84), geographical history is geographical in
part because of its adoption of the regional method pioneered by geographers. “ All
history ,” he asserted, “ is the history of some country and of the geographical distribution of people and events that have successively coexisted there ” Myres (1953, 64, 75, 82–
84).
In ancient times, years and years ago, documents were written and recorded on palm leaves. This document also known as pattra, in Sanskrit means leaf. Many leaves were bound together to form a book. As geographers we do involve in lot of excavation and explorations finding out many times written sculptor on the walls of caves and we know how important it is to us to study the old geographical history and literature. Today we are able to look back in them for further knowledge enhancement and learning from past events because someone in their times recorded events which were historically and geographically of importance in the best way they could do on the available resources of that period. Most of our colleague geographers are involved in excavation of remote sites are involved in excavation on remote sites exploring the remnant of the
6 past culture and do find drawn pictures on cave walls depicting some story of that civilization which also tells us the geographical history of that place. As a geographer one lesson we could learn from these explorations and findings is that we have a crucial part to play in finding ways to conserve and record our geographical history using the available advanced and secured technologies of modern period. In the context of rapid evolution of advanced computing technologies and increasing geographical information availability that we see a substantial challenge for research in methods for geographical knowledge and information distribution. The challenge is to extend the GIS, spatial analysis and visualization methods (especially with the emergence of virtual earth environments) and to integrate these components of geographic information science to produce new comprehensive and more elegant geographic knowledge management application.
Virtual Reality could be traced back to 1950s and 1960s (Kalawsky, 1993) more advanced research started only in the 1980s with advancement of computer processor power which fuelled and powered the creation of realistic virtual worlds (Earnshaw,
Gigante, Jones 1993). The first experiments with the use of Virtual Reality to create geographic representations began in the early 1990s (Raper, McCarthy 1994) with work to develop data structure translators from GIS to VR formats. VR systems developed previously ranges from enormous setup with large audio visual equipments and other which could be run on desktop after installation on local machine. Most of them had tried to use the best of the technology of that time to give users a feel of real world while navigating in such environments.
7 Following table gives us a glimpse of some previously developed Virtual Reality systems (Chen, Yang, Shen, Jeng, 2007).
Table 1: Some Desktop VR Systems in Education
8 The creation of virtual “geographic” worlds made up of terrains draped with map data or remotely sensed imagery requires a particularly large number of shaded triangular facets to represent the land surface shape, often more than 5,000. Level-of-detail quad tree algorithms have been developed to help solve this basic problem so that only those objects near to the user's current viewing position are displayed using enough triangular facets to give high resolution (Muchaxo, 1998).
VFC-VRGIS is one of the prominent projects in VR systems and GIS. The Virtual Field
Course (VFC) Project was established in September 1996 as a joint development project between Birkbeck College, Leicester, and Oxford Brookes Universities and funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee of the U.K. (Raper J, 1998). The
VFC aimed to deliver advanced visualizations and mapping tools using geo-referenced
VR and multimedia in an attempt to augment and extend existing field teaching in disciplines such as geography, geology and ecology. The main objective of that project was the development of virtual fieldwork software tools to support learning, however, the concept may also prove applicable for remote inspection and auditing for utilities and for planning scenario development (Raper, et al., 1998).
Furthermore, it is suggested in this paper that the approaches demonstrated here are indicative of what the next generation of geographic information handling might look like. The applications are conceptually and practically “open systems” in design and are capable of integrating with many other forms of geographic information handling. The challenge now is to design new forms of integration between the growing forms of geo- referenced multidimensional and multimedia data types.
9
Virtual Reality, Virtual Worlds and now Virtual Earth had always been centre of attraction for scholars because of their wide range of application in social science and mostly in the field of education. The current developments of web 3D technology had given a new light to the Virtual Earth Environments with rich media experience.
Following are the short glimpses of existing relevant geographic and geo VR systems
(Thorne, 2003).
Digitalearth
An up-to-date site for GIS systems, not directed at VR but a lot of recent open source initiative is showing up there (Java based OpenMap, GeoServer, GeoTools).
Terralib
Terralib (www.terralib.org) is an open source GIS from Brazil’s National Institute for
Space Research. It is designed to store all data in a spatial relational database.
Vtp
The Virtual Terrain Project (VTP) at www.vterrain.org is a truly 3D project. It is written in
C++ and can be used for visualizing both real world data and synthetic terrain. The project aim is a whole VE type system.
10 Terravision II
Terravision II is the latest version of SRIs terrain visualization system that is now open source. Its Geo-Web extensions were an enabling technology for an open, global coordinated geographical infrastructure but are not open source. Probably the best example of an open VE system to date, Terravision II has no current wide industry support even though based largely on open standards and now open source. Indeed, there is no VE system enjoying wide industry support. Even so, Terravision was a fantastic project with some truly impressive looking results as reported in Leclerc,
2000a.
NASA World Wind
NASA made available a large database of 2D Earth images and has created a number of videos of 3D models of parts of the planet or the whole Earth. There are three dedicated Earth NASA sites: Earth’s Observatory, the Visible Earth and Blue Marble.
The Earth’s observatory site allows users to build their own animated globe (or animated flat earth) based on a variety of selectable environmental parameters. You can also see satellite image snaps of areas of interest, such as increased pollution effects from El Nino or an image of the Kimberly in northwest Australia. The blue marble site is dedicated to the most detailed whole earth satellite imagery that has been made freely available so far. The Visible Earth site has over 5000 more detailed snapshots from satellites, showing areas of Earth as they are: such as pictures of the smoke from fires over the Amazon. However, there are no online 3D immersive Earth models for users to explore. NASA’s DE Web Map viewer (link from the government DE site)
11 portals provides 2D information with zoom and pan much like other 2D geographic portals. It implements OGC WMS Implementation Specification 1.1.2 (January 2002).
OpenMap
OpenMap is an open source JavaBeans based programmer’s toolkit by BBN
Technologies. The client for this system has both 2D and 3D views. However, the 3D view, which shows the Earth as a globe, is always top-down – essentially little more than the standard 2D top-down view. You cannot navigate freely in a full 3D immersive environment: the controls are limited to zooming in and out.
Google Earth
This is an example of creating a VE repository and making it available (at a price) for the general user and then seeking applications. It is in use by targeted audiences such as Real Estate etc, it is also an example of an augmented Earth with a wide net cast to also capture incidental or unintended uses. Google Earth is full 3D at low altitude and appears to be modeled on a smooth sphere at higher altitudes.
CubeWerx
This is a 2D system, not really a VE - it is an online 2D map server, a “Spatial Data
Warehouse”. The main points to note are that it is an OGC compliant WMS, Cascading web download server, OGC compliant Web Feature Server, Spatial Data Warehouse.
12 Federal Geographic Data Committee National Geospatial Clearing House
This clearing-house is a collection of over 250 spatial data servers. One of these servers, for example, is run by ESRI. On the site there is an ESRI NSDI Wizard (a Java applet), which walks the user through to accessing the data they want (if available).
Earth Today
This site shows “Our Dynamic Planet” which is just an online presentation with images or animated images.
The GLOBE program
GLOBE is a portal for worldwide network of students, teachers and scientists with an environmental mandate. Sponsored by NASA, NSA, US EPA and US Department of
State it is a primary and secondary school-based education and science program. It falls short of publishing to the portal for others to then view: they can only contribute data for scientists to analyze. This site allows users to create their own maps from the information available – including nice printer friendly versions or cube foldable versions.
They can collaborate, propose activities and join existing activities.
Military
There are a few military and military-oriented commercial systems that provide – at some considerable expense – 3D Earth modeling with detailed information and object embellishments.
13 The technology to immerse people in computer generated worlds was proposed by
Sutherland in 1965 and realized in 1968 with a head-mounted display that could present a user with stereoscopic 3-Dimensional view slaved to a sensing device tracking the user’s head movement (Sutherland, 1965,1968). The advancement of computer graphics knowledge is itself tied to the enormous increase in processing power and decrease in cost. Also together with the development of relatively efficient and unobtrusive sensing devices, has led to the emergence of participatory immersive virtual environments (Fisher, 1982; Fisher et.al 1986; Teitel, 1990). Virtualization as defined by Ellis- "the process by which a human viewer interprets a patterned sensory impression to be an extended object in an environment other than that in which it physically exists" (Ellis, 1991).
The pure essence of Virtual Reality is that we are transported bodily into a computer generated artificial environment. We all recognize our own habitation in that artificial environment through our body becoming an object (Slater, Usoh, 1994). These ideas itself spark quite revolutionary forms of virtual communication in GIS world. The participatory immersive virtual earth environment could be seen as an important aspect of current public participatory GIS movement Public Participation Geographic
Information Systems (PPGIS) was born, as a term, in 1996 at the meetings of the
National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) (Sieber, 2006)
(Public Participation GIS, NCGIA Workshop 1996). PPGIS aims to bring the academic research in GIS and mapping to the local level in order to promote more knowledge production. PPGIS is about empowerment and inclusion of marginalized populations, who have little voice in the public arena, through geographic technology, education and
14 participation. It has intervened in multiple ways to try to ameliorate uneven access to
GIS, digital spatial data, spatial logic that could be included in a GIS (Elwood, 2006).
In 1998, the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science included a fivefold GIS and society research agenda within its definition of GIS research: critical social theory, social history of GIS, legal and ethical issues, institutional issues, and public participation GIS (PPGIS) (Eimes, Epstein, McWaster, Niemann, Poore,
Sheppard and TuNoch 2005).
Considering the above mentioned concerns for ease of use, its academic applications and then educating people that virtual earth environment could serve as efficient medium of knowledge production in different sectors of society. We aimed to restructure and developed a system which could be used easily in an online virtual class room environment for educating students not only about the world heritage but also about the remote places which could be difficult to access by a mass of students at a regular phase and especially when it comes to student of lower grade class concerning the security and cost factors of taking them actually there. These virtual earth environments had proven track record of public interest and in a way can serve as a medium for public participation in development of future GIS. We have focused in our research to make a model which is easy to use by public and more accessible plus attracting students from all the grades together to play and learn with it while establishing it as an efficient teaching medium.
15 An important aspect of our application is public participation for filling up the gap between available geographic information and digital geographic information. Recently
Goodchild termed it as volunteered geographic information (VGI), a special case of the
more general Web phenomenon of user generated content . Web now is suddenly
flooded with extreme applications focused on geographic information and its application.
Wikimapia, MS Virtual Earth, GE, OpenStreetmap are opened up for public to use their
APIs and UIs to create, add and solve the geographic information puzzle. Almost every
day a new application is being added with certain new features for presenting the digital
geographic information voluntarily. In an article (Citizens as sensors: the world of
volunteered geography) recently published on GeoJournal (November 2007) Goodchild
reviews this phenomenon, and examines associated issues: what drives people to do
this, how accurate are the results, will they threaten individual privacy, and how can
they augment more conventional sources? He compares this new phenomenon to
more traditional citizen science and the role of the amateur in geographic observation
(Goodchild, 2007).VGI activities focus on the creation of more elaborate representations
of the Earth’s surface so this volunteer effort can potentially fill a yawning gap in the
availability of digital geographic information. These are just a few examples of a
phenomenon that has taken the world of geographic information by storm and has the
potential to redefine the traditional roles of mapping agencies and companies. We
would be dependent upon the participation of graduate student at University of
Cincinnati for making local digital geographical information available to our application
for it success. When we focus on local geographic information system we aim to create
a digital web of information which would be used in long term for further study of local
phenomenon’s and changes that takes place in the neighborhood. And can have varied
16 implications and applications of geographic importance. Elwood (2007) imagined - VGI as a phenomenon that might, with careful research and practice, become a more systematically available resource that can strengthen public domain spatial data for public, private, academic, and nongovernmental actors, as well as for ordinary citizens.
17 3. Motivation
VE affords opportunities to experience environments which, for reasons
of time, distance, scale, and safety, would not otherwise be available to
many young children, especially those with disabilities (Cromby et al.,
1995 ).
3.1 Innovations in Geographical History
Geographical information is recorded in a wide variety of media and document types.
There are millions of reports, images and maps, plus computer databases and digital maps along with numerous of Web pages. Recently much attention had been given to the development of computer systems to retrieve geographically specific information from the relatively unstructured but immense resource of documents that compose the
World Wide Web (eg.Larson 1996, McCurley 2001) (Edwards, McCurley, Tomlin 2001).
Our research starts with a simple concept of creating an archive of geo-referenced spatial database. It’s a web based model application with a new approach for archiving geographical history. Using current technologies events can be recorded and commented by students, researchers and geographers giving them a chance to map current excavation and geographical findings anywhere in world. It will help bringing their work live to world in the shortest period of time. This research aims at making geographical community more informed through the applications of the tools modeled and implemented here. We have seen as long and lively debate on the term
Geographical History and Historical geography (Baker 2007) and its meaning during the
18 past 100 years. Instead of extending the debate and more importantly taking a clue from the debate that Geographical history is of importance - this research proposes a new cutting edge model for recording and preserving it in our own innovative way. The motivation is to show the community that the current technologies can be implemented and used as a medium to educate the present generation as well as informed the future generation about our present in more sophisticated way.
19
4. Research Goal
Our research goal is to extend and develop a managed, comprehensive and easy to use Virtual Earth Environment. This Virtual Earth Environment will use modern technologies to manage rich geographical information in 3D Virtual world. We would create a temporal dataset of geo-referenced geographical information contributed by its user in a more systematical way than other existing applications like Google earth. Our aim is not to compete with Google Earth or any other commercial applications but to provide a model for geographical data management where users can create and manage Virtual Tours and collaborate with other users using our application. This application will also demonstrate that by seamlessly integration two different technologies we can create a rich real time browsing environment in Virtual Globe. This research will also demonstrate that how sensitive geographical information could be secured in a virtual earth environment in a simple and elegant fashion, an important function which current Virtual Earth Environments lacks. Most importantly we are not inventing any new technology but proposing a new model to show how the existing modern programming languages and publicly available Virtual Earth SDK can be integrated together to which will enhance the current capabilities of VEE . These environments can be developed targeting a specific group of interested people like in our case for Department of Geography at University of Cincinnati for use in Introduction to Graduate Geography class for creating a Virtual tour of Cincinnati.
20
5. Methodology
5.1 System Components & Architecture
One of the critical questions while developing such an application which aims to integrate two different technologies is the choice and preference of one geographic data management language over other. We would first like to introduce and give a short glimpse of such languages and answer why we used a specific language in case of our application Key hole markup language (KML) over geographical markup language
(GML). Further we will also introduce Microsoft’s DOT NET 2.0 framework and Virtual
Earth SDK which we aim to integrate for developing the desired application as proposed in our research goal.
5.1.1 GML - Geographical Markup Language
The Geography Markup Language (GML) is ‘‘an XML grammar written in XML Schema for the modeling, transport, and storage of geographic information including both the spatial and non-spatial properties of geographic features’’ (OGC 2003c). It is developed as an implementation specification by the Open GIS Consortium to foster data interoperability and exchange between different systems. GML 2.1 is based on the OGC
Abstract Specification (OGC 2003d) that models the world in terms of features. A feature is an abstraction of a real world phenomenon; a geographic feature is any real- world object that is associated with a location. GML 2.1 models the world in terms of simple features, which are ‘‘features whose geometric properties are restricted to
‘simple’ geometries for which coordinates are defined in two dimensions and the
21 delineation of a curve is subject to linear interpolation’’ (OGC 2001a). GML 3.0 can represent real-world phenomena using more complex feature types, ‘‘including features with complex, nonlinear, 3D geometry, features with 2D topology, features with temporal properties, dynamic features, coverage’s, and observations’’ (OGC 2003). In addition,
GML 3.0 also conforms to the ISO standards, including ISO DIS 19107 Geographic
Information – Spatial Schema, ISO DIS 19108 Geographic Information – Temporal
Schema, ISO DIS 19118 Geographic Information – Encoding, and ISO DIS 19123
Geographic Information – Coverage’s. GML offers standard ways to describe these spatial features and their corresponding properties in terms of GML Schemata, including schemata to describe features, coordinate reference systems, geometry, topology, time, units of measure, and generalized values. GML applications that follow these GML
Schemata standards can be interoperable. Furthermore, GML provides XLink and
XPointer mechanisms to make geospatial data interoperable. Through XLink and
XPointer, different features and feature collections, which may be located remotely, can be associated together at the feature level (Peng, Tsou, 2003).
22
Figure 2: Map making Process through GML (Zhong-Ren Peng (2004))
23 5.1.2 KML – Key Hole Markup Language
Key Hole Markup language originally developed by Keyhole, Inc is a file format to display geographical data in advanced virtual earth environments. It has been recently recognized as an industry standard language for storing, managing and displaying geographical information in advanced web based applications like one we aim to develop here. It was acquired by Google in 2004 for developing and displaying overlays on virtual globe in Google earth. We have used this language in our model because of its capability of interoperability in various applications. This file format facilitates the export and import of user developed overlays in almost most of the current web virtual earth application including our and NASA world wind.
5.1.3 SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol
SOAP is a protocol for exchanging XML-based messages over computer networks, normally using HTTP/HTTPS. The application developed here is based on SOAP architecture according to the W3C recommendation for XML based information exchange over the internet. This is obvious as we have used KML in our application which is developed and based on XML grammar for storing geographical data.
24
Figure 3: SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol (Source Wikipedia)
The framework had been designed being independent of any particular programming language. Building on this strength of freedom to use any programming language we used Microsoft Virtual Earth SDK which is written completely in JavaScript to develop
1st component for showing virtual tours and integrated it with our 2nd component which is developed using ASP.net 2.0 and Ajax 1.0.
25
Source: Wikipedia
Figure 4: ASP.Net 2.0 Client Server Architecture
26 5.2 AJAX Model for Real Time Virtual Earth Browsing
Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) is a combined group of related web development technologies which includes HTML, XHTML, Cascading Style Sheets,
JavaScript, Document Object Model, XML, XSLT and the XMLHttpRequest object.
Currently it is also the “glamour” of websites which gives user real world experience especially in case of Virtual Earth web browsing. In a normal web application model if user submits a webpage to server for fetching information, user had to wait till server process the webs request and send the webpage back to client computer. This time lag between request and response between client and serve interrupts the user browsing environment. AJAX web model removes this time lag by not sending whole page to the server and keep doing the processing behind the scene.
27
28
Figure 5: Ajax Model The synchronous interaction pattern of a traditional web application (top) compared with the asynchronous pattern of an Ajax application (bottom).
SOURCE: ADAPTIVE PATH WEBSITE
29 GIS interoperability being a dream for users and a nightmare for systems developers, is a long term goal, and federating geographic databases can be seen as a preliminary step toward full interoperability (Laurini, 1998). Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
(Mish, 1993) defines interoperability as “ability of a system (such as a weapons system) to use the parts or equipment of another system”. The term takes a range of meanings - from hardware and software to spatial data formats and models (Albrecht 1999) and semantics (Harvey, Werner, Hardy, Bishr, Rledemann, 1999) distinguishes between six levels of interoperability: application semantics, data model, database management systems (DBMS), spatial data files, hardware and operating system (OS), and network protocols.
Those levels of interoperability are used to develop a notion of geospatial information communities (GIG) or groups of users who share common language and common feature definitions (Bishr 1998). Those levels of interoperability are used to develop a notion of geospatial information communities (GIG) or groups of users who share common language and common feature definitions (Bishr 1998). The discussion on the general architectural model and systems was aimed to introduce such common languages which could be used to achieve such interoperability and this would be reflected again in our methodology of developing such application. In the above discussion of we covered the general system architecture which should be followed while using the mentioned technologies. The choice of using a specific technology was a crucial part of this system development, especially when we are looking to make an interoperable application which could be modified in future according to needs. We had used the latest technologies while developing this system to make sure our system can
30 serve the educational community for long term and does not get redundant while competing with upcoming technologies and can be easily worked upon whenever required.
Our methodology part now includes the restructuring and integrating the above mentioned architecture to fulfill our aim of developing an interoperable 3DVirtual Tour application. We have initially develop two individual components using the combination of languages and systems described earlier and then integrated both of the components to present a comprehensive, secured and easy to use application which we had termed as EGIS Virtual Tours. Our two components were based on homogeneous federated database where we have two different homogeneous databases. A thorough discussion of the about mentioned technologies, languages, systems and literature review had given us a deep insight of the problems faced by the previous virtual worlds and a way to tackle such problems through the use of current technologies. This has helped us to implement the problem solving approaches in our methodology while developing, deploying and distributing the current application to the end users.
5.3 Application Components
We named our application EGIS Virtual Earth Application. We used and integrated above mentioned technologies to develop our comprehensive application to manage the spatial information in a secure and seamless way. Our application not only extends the current existing virtual earth environments but also provides a model to store, manage and present geo-referenced information in a seamless fashion. It is very important to
31 understand the core structure of this application for someone who wishes to contribute to the advanced GIS research initiatives of integrating Virtual Worlds with the mapping capabilities of other application and enhancing it with spatial analysis capabilities. This application could be extended with little efforts and integrated with current dominant GIS software’s like ARC GIS. The database holds the key as all the information stored in it should be accessible to other applications for achieving any of the current or future research aims. It is for this reason an emphasis is given in this paper about the technological aspect of integration. We developed two different components and integrated those using current technologies which we will demonstrate here.
32 5.3.1 Component 1 - Mapping Component
Figure 6: Component 1
33
Our complete EGIS application consists of two components. The component one consists of ASP.net 2.0 webpage with virtual earth map control on it. For our application we used interface first to browse in the Virtual earth and developing basic functionalities of searching in VEE, fetching Bird’s Eye Imagery, Viewing the map in 2D and 3D mode, Overlaying the satellite imagery over maps. So whenever user requests through our EGIS application that request is processed by component one. Component one uses Virtual Earth Map Control to fetch the map, satellite imagery and geospatial data related to it from the V3D database. The virtual earth map control displaying 3D earth surface and various other information overlays on it. The simplest code to have 2D maps display on a webpage can be written as:
This mapping component serves our application as a basic platform for browsing earth both in 2D and 3D mode. One important point to note here is this is a web based mapping component in comparison to Google earth. So we preferred this model as it does not require the end users to install any type of additional software like Google
Earth desktop software for accessing the Geographical Web Worlds. It is also easy to
34 use and can be accessed anywhere with an internet connection. We used Microsoft
Virtual Earth SDK to develop and integrate it in to our EGIS web application. User interacts with the mapping component through our application interface by browsing through Virtual world. It provides rich browser experience in VEE. Whenever user request a map in 3D/2D mode through our user interface in the web based EGIS application, it is forwarded to the Interface 1 (Virtual Earth Map Control). The virtual earth map control in turn queries the satellite imagery of that specific place and if the imagery, map data and any other additional data is available for the specified coordinates then the it is sent back from Virtual Earth Server to our application which, which is then displayed on our main interface. Every time user request to fly to specific geographic location the process is repeated. All the behavior related to the Virtual Earth
Environment like Bird’s Eye view/Zoom in and Zoom Out/changing views are performed by this component in our application. Any functionality related to web services is processed through the MAP POINT Web service interface although our database remains same i.e. V3D database. One can also implement the display of KML files by using the MAP POINT web services Most of the programming code written for fetching maps from the server to the interface is in JavaScript and further to display in it on web interface is done through the C# and ASP.net 2.0. The Virtual Earth Window with in our application is capable of functioning independently, which gives user freedom to browse to any part of world even if it is not included in the tour and if not integrated with component 2 which we will see next for managing geo referenced data. Most importantly component one can as function as an independent application within our full
EGIS application. It is developed and integrated such that it is has direct integration in our application when geo-referenced information is not requested from component 2
35 and it gets automatically attached with component 2 when such a request is made by the client.
36 5.3.2 Component 2
Component EGIS 2 Application
ASP.Net Membership API
Security Check – Access Authorization REAL TIME GEOREFRENCE DATA D INFORMATION SUBMISSION REQUEST REQUEST
ASP.NET 2.0 Client Server Implementation ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Implementation
DATA UPLOAD TO SERVER
Georeferenced Data EGIS Application
MS SQL 2005 DATABASE
Figure 7: Component 2
37
SQL 2005 UC Database for Component
2 Private User Geotagged Geotagged Timeline Lat& Research Videos Images Data Long Data
Microsoft V3D Database for Component 1 Lat Long Satellite 3 D Birds Public Imagery Models Eye Uploaded Data Data Imagery Data Data Check
Timeline Data Direct Request Decision Upload/Download
& Database Path
Precision Satellite (Lat & Long)
Fetch coordinates
Processing
User Request
Figure 8: Data flow Diagram
38 Using Dot Net Framework 2.0 for integrating and geo-referencing the user uploaded data for creation of temporal dataset
After creating the core Virtual Earth Environment in our application where user can browse any place on the earth .Our goal was to create a component from where user can upload the videos, images, text or any geographical data related to any geographical location on the earth and that should automatically get mapped in to the
Virtual Earth Environment corresponding to that Geographical Location.
Also we had to build a temporal dataset with in our online archive of model. All this functionalities were processed by component two. Component two handles the entire user request for uploading information to MS-SQL 2005 database and geo-referencing it with the map. All the information related to a place is displayed on our user interface when user flies to a specific place within our application. Our Second component basically checks for the user authorization and process all other requests related to data submission in our EGIS application.
Our database SQL 2005 UC stores the user uploaded information like video, images, text in 3 tables. For better performance and faster uploading the technique for converting video and images in to byte stream is used before pushing it in to database;
All these tables are related to each other through unique Lat & Long coordinates and student ID’s. We used a unique Time Stamping feature for our timeline tool for recording the data in to the database. Now the way the database works is that V3D has its own database for imagery and information related to any particular place uploaded by any
39 other user except the user of our EGIS application. So whenever our data is uploaded to EGIS application it is not directly mapped or geo-referenced to any particular place.
This is the main advantage of our application from security perspective and this is where our application is useful for displaying secured data. Also this is where the importance of component 2 comes in to picture. Component 2 on the top of the application verifies the user authorization to allow them the access the EGIS database and in turn all the other information. Now the next step is to combine information from both EGIS database and V3D database and display it on our application whenever user requests a map of a particular place. In this step it is important that we should keep the real time user browsing environment intact removing any delay factors due to multiple requests from two different databases. This has been done and achieved by finally integrating both component one and two while using the AJAX technology and DOT Net platform. We have explained this final integration in section 5.4.4
5.3.3 Ajax Implementation for Real Time User Experience
In our application client request a geo-referenced information by clicking on the link referenced to the map and a request is sent to the ASP.net Server which process the request the send back the requested information to the client. One of the major problems in this implementation was that ASP.net page has to be sent to the server for processing after each request is submitted. The server after processing the request creates a new page every time and sent it back to the client. This processing time disturbs the theme of real time user experience in VEE. WE used one other technology know as AJAX. Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), is a combination of related
40 web techniques used for creating interactive web applications. This increased responsiveness and interactivity of web pages by exchanging small amounts of data with the server "behind the scenes" so that entire web pages do not have to be reloaded each time when there is a need to fetch data from the server.
41 5.3.4 Final Integrated Model Application
EGIS Application
One Way Direct One Way Direct Integration Integration
Integration VIA ICallback Interface
ICALLBACK INTERFACE
Component Component 1 2
Figure 9: Final Integrated Model Application
42
Our EGIS application is developed by combining the component one and two together using ICallback interface of ASP Dot Net platform. ICallback interface facilitate the asynchronous calls back to server methods on Virtual Earth server without posting back the web page to the server. The maps from V3D are called through the JavaScript code and needs server side processing while the results are sent back to our EGIS application. ICallback is implemented in our application by using the
ICALLBACKEVENTHANDLER interface. This interface consists of two methods; one of them is used to call from JavaScript (client-side code) and other one return the result asynchronously back to JavaScript function. So a user can reap the benefit of the both the components of our application by this integration. Individually, both the components works fine like the first one can fetch you the maps and data on that particular map from the V3D database. On the other hand the component two can serve the data uploaded by EGIS user exclusively. For example in the time line recorder the data is fetched from our SQL 2005 UCEGIS database which is time stamped. The primary constraint is of user authorization is enforced while accessing information from this database. A step further in our design when both the components are combined using ICallback
Interface, the web page (main interface) can be visualized now divided in to two parts, although practically it’s just one web page but with two different components working together on same page, one side displaying the 3D maps from V3D database called by callback and the other half displaying the egis data (video,images,text) through Ajax data binding. As soon as callback returns a result (map) from V3D database our application checks the unique coordinates and mapped it with all the data which is residing in EGIS database and displayed in other half our web page. The data keeps
43 changing with the coordinates and user at any point of time can refer to the additional secured and geo-referenced information in our EGIS application.
Final EGIS Web Application - Web Flow and Screen Shots
STUDENT
Virtual Time Line Update View Classroom Recorder Tour Profile
LOGOUT
Figure 10: Web Flow - User Interface
44
Screen Shots
Figure 11: Student Login
45 Our main interface is where user with role of student can browse the Virtual Earth
Environment and where he can share the information in more collaborative way then the existing Virtual Earth Environments. Once the Admin /Professor authorize the user with role of student for accessing the application, student can log in to the application by user the logging details provided by him. Student get four different functions once he gets in to the application. Following are those four functions -
• Virtual Class Room
• Time Line Recorder
• Update Tour
• View Profile
46
Figure 12: Main Interface
47 Time Line Recorder
Time Line Recorder page displays the temporal dataset geo-referenced information from the MS-SQL Database and Virtual Earth Database in an interactive way to the user. This information is being recorded and using the combined inputs from the student and professor. This is our own unique way to collect record and display the historical geographical data. It enhances the Virtual Earth System with important information and makes the whole application a comprehensive virtual class room environment for any geographical tour. It is difficult to describe the advanced instructiveness of this page in words, AJAX technology is used here to give user a real time browsing environment.
48
Figure 13: Time Line Recorder
49
Virtual Class Room
This is the page where student can browse the tours created in Virtual Earth
Environment. He sees all the geo-referenced information including satellite imagery, videos and any other information uploaded by the user. He can also add shape files created in arc map on the Virtual Earth another unique feature in our application and could also draw poly-line and polygon. All other default functions of virtual earth environment like zoom in, zoom out, 2D mode, 3D mode, Bird’s Eye View and tilting of earth are also available to browse through the environment smoothly and explore the world.
50
Figure 14: Virtual Classroom
51 Tour Organizer
In this section the student can upload videos, images and text mapped to places in a
Virtual Tour created by the Professor. This simple design permits user to simply upload and submit the contents and then automatically geo-referenced it to the Virtual Earth
Environment. This is unique and simple design different from the existing virtual earth environment. This does not require user to be a pro for geo-referencing the information in the virtual earth environment. This allows even lower grade students to play around and learn in Virtual Earth Environment. User Interface of EGIS application is itself self explanatory.
52
Figure 15: Tour Organizer
53 Admin Section
Professor of the class is user in admin role for this application. He has access to all the sections of the website. He will be managing the user with role of student and also will manage the virtual tours. Admin can create, update and delete the information related to the user in role of student including providing and limiting the access to the application.
Admin/Professor can add as many as required students for each virtual tour and the information entered here would serve as a part of the input to our time line recorder page.
A yearly class wise temporal dataset would be generated and maintained based on this information combining with other student uploaded information in next section.
Professor in manage tour part of this section will create tour heading and add tour places by browsing within the virtual earth environment. He can also do it just by entering the GPS coordinates if had one for a particular place and Virtual Earth will automatically move him to the particular place
54 Web Flow – Administrator (Professor)
PROFESSOR
Manage Student Manage Tour LOGOUT
Figure 16: Admin Section
55
Figure 17: Admin Interface
56
Figure 18: Tour Categories
57
Figure 19: Adding Places
58
Implementation of ASP.Net 2.0 Membership API
ASP.NET 2.0 Membership API (Application Programming Interface) is used to implement the security of application and for our customized geo-database. All the custom virtual tours which incorporate the coordinates of a sensitive place will be secured through this function. Also the pictures, videos related to the entire places provided by the user can be kept secured and admin can decide whom to give access to such information. This is a one of the unique feature of the application which makes it different from the existing Virtual Earth applications.
Figure 20: Application Security Model
59 6. Results - Small Demo Virtual Tour
UC • Public Research University in Cincinnati, Ohio
• Huge diverse international student body around 2,500 students from over 100
countries
• Notable athletics alumni include: Baseball Hall of Famers Sandy Koufax and
Miller Huggins
• Basketball Hall of Famers Oscar Robertson and Jack Twyman
• Boston Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis, Denver Nuggets forward Kenyon
Martin and tennis great Tony Trabert
Figure 21: UC- Aerial View
60
Figure 22: Bird’s Eye View
61 Museum
• The Cincinnati Museum Center located at Union Terminal
• Built in 1931
• Consists of three museums and the Robert D. Lindner Family OMNIMAX Theater
• Museum of Natural History and Science - exhibits different Ohio Valley
environments
• Cincinnati Historical Society Museum - largest regional collections in the U.S.
• Cinergy Children's Museum - nine interactive exhibits, including Waterworks,
Energy Zone, Little Sprouts Farm, and Kids at Work
Figure 23: Museum
62 Newport Levee
• The most popular attraction in Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky
• Voted by Zagat as the #1 Shopping/Mall Attraction for Families in the United
States in May 2004
• Located across the river from Cincinnati
• A year-round offering of festivals, special events, live bands and a great selection
of restaurant offerings
• Entertainment venues such as the Newport Aquarium, Interactive game world at
Game Works, AMC-Newport Movie Theater
Figure 24: Newport Levee
63 Carew Tower • Tallest building in Cincinnati -49 stories tall
• A national historic landmark containing the Netherland Plaza Hotel
• Great American Insurance Building at Queen City Square scheduled to open in
2011, rising 86 feet (26 m) higher than the Carew Tower
• Designed by - architectural firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Associates, the
designers of the Empire State Building
Figure 25: Carew Tower
64
Figure 26: Carew Tower with Geo-referenced Picture
Figure 27: Carew Tower
65
Figure 28: Carew Tower
66
OHIO RIVER • Largest tributary by volume of the Mississippi River, 981 miles (1,579 km)
• Great significance in the history of the Native Americans
• Primary transportation route during the westward expansion of the early U.S
• Flows through or along the border of six states, and its drainage basin
encompasses 14 states, including many of the states of the southeastern U.S.
Figure 29: Ohio River
67
Figure 30: Zoomed In
68 Cincinnati Zoo • Second-oldest zoo ,Opened in 1875
• Rated (on numerous occasions) as one of the top zoos in the country
• Founded on 65 acres (260,000 m²) in the middle of the city
• World renowned for its breeding programs, especially for cheetahs
Figure 31: Cincinnati Zoo
69
Figure 32: Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden
70 Eden Park • Eden Park consists of Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati Art Academy,
Playhouse in the Park, Murray Seasongood Pavilion, and the Irwin M. Krohn
Conservatory
• Krohn Conservatory, one of Cincinnati's major tourist attractions, was opened to
the public in 1933 and essentially rebuilt after extensive storm damage in 1966
Figure 33: Eden Park
71 Downtown Cincinnati • Focused around Fountain Square, a popular public square and gathering place
for many events
• Home to numerous structures that are noteworthy due to their architectural
characteristics or historic associations including the Carew Tower
• Queen City Square is scheduled to be open in 2011- Tallest building in
Cincinnati and the third tallest in Ohio, reaching a height of 660 feet
Figure 34: Downtown
72 BIG MAC
• I-471 Bridge between Newport and Cincinnati • Bears two golden arches and is affectionately called the Big Mac Bridge by locals
actually named the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge
• Named after the father of Boy Scouts of America and dedicated February 13, 1977
Figure 35: Big Mac
73
Great American Ball Park • Located on the winding banks of the Ohio River in downtown Cincinnati, Great
American Ball Park serves as the home of the Cincinnati Reds, baseball's first
professional franchise
• Opened in 2003
• Tribute to the Reds rich history Crosley Terrace statues, Italian-marble mosaics,
famous-dates banners and a nostalgic Sun/Moon Deck some of the significant
features
Figure 36: Great American Ballpark
74 7. Conclusion and Future Research
As a new technology seeks its identity, there is bound to be ambiguity in early attempts to define it (Winn, 1993). Our early attempts to develop a virtual earth system customized and tailored for Virtual Earth Tours for the department of Geography,
University of Cincinnati sometimes seems to be more technical application rather than a research contribution. But it’s a fact that geographical literature is full of debates over considering GIS as a tool or GIScience. Rather than going in to the debate we had tried to make positive contribution towards the debate by developing another GIS application model which can prove to be a useful means for research, academics and visualization.
The point of this early project was to introduce students and researchers to such environments that can provide them a new platform for managing the geographical information in a 3D environment and serving other users geographical information they needed and with which they could interact as naturally as they could with the real world.
This application is an attempt to demonstrate that current popular technologies can be used to build geographical applications which can fuel the research initiatives in the field of GIS and its cross collaboration with other disciplines like we amalgamate here geography with computer science. We showed how Virtual Earth Environments can be used easily to geo-referencing research data in a secure way and then using it to teach students in virtual class room environment. The application developed here is not just limited to the virtual tour of Cincinnati as we proposed earlier but could be used to develop any type of educational tour in a 3D environment by collecting and organizing georeferenced information from anywhere in the world. Our main aim of developing online geographical knowledge management tour was successful achieved through the
75 integration of Microsoft Virtual Earth SDK, AJAX, ASP.net 2.0, KML and MS SQL database. The Time Slider component would serve as most important part of archiving the geographical history and making it available to the users all over the world in fastest and unique in virtual earth environment over the 21st century mass communication
medium (Internet).
Our data model although primitive but is a new start to boost the systematic GIS data
production and application at new level. We aim to provide a new approach towards
VGI by creating such an application but as Daniel Sui (2007) states that “Obviously not
all domains of GIS applications benefit equally from this kind of practices. I don’t think
VGI will automatically obsolete many of the conventional GIS practices by government
or industry, but how to interface VGI with the data collected by conventional means will
be worth exploring ”. Through our primitive data model we have tried to explore such
possibilities to develop a local spatial temporal dataset on top of existing VGI application
like MS Virtual Earth. Sui (2007) states – “With more data created via VGI at the local
and personal level, VGI will retrieve time-geography to the fullest extent as Hägerstrand
advocated 40 years ago”. Our data model and application is a small but significant part
of that vision which would be useful in collecting and exploring time-geography as
Hagerstrand vision it. We have aimed to give a platform for better data representation
models, data mining and visualization techniques that are scalable and interoperable
across multiple computing platforms by demonstrating the cross collaboration of various
programming languages to create this application and integrating our simple custom
database with more complicated MS Virtual Earth giving opportunity for VGI participants
to add local content .
76
Once deployed on the University Servers we believe this online virtual world will not only serve our primary purpose of Virtual Tour of Cincinnati but will also facilitate and will lay grounds for starting online virtual class room environments where core geographical education can be served to mass audience similar to NASA Core Program for education to primary schools students.
Future Recommendations
• This application could be integrated with high end 3D models built in Collada, VRML or KML formats and a true 3D tour using advanced software’s like VRSCAPE could be created.
• Virtual Tours can be categorized as general and sensitive tours and different access levels could be created for different users.
• Our application can now access the places and spots anywhere in the world and the tags created to a particular place in a different Virtual Earth Application but this is not true Vice Versa. Virtual Tours created by users of this application can be made available to other Virtual Earth Application system.
• Multiple Shape files can be overlaid on the Virtual Earth in future with advanced GIS analysis capabilities
• Google Earth created virtual tours can be imported in this application. Google earth creates KMZ file for each tour which can be run within this application.
77
8. References
• Albrecht, J. (1999). Towards interoperable geo-information standards: a comparison of reference models for geo-spatial information . The Annals of Regional Science 33: 151-l 69.
• Baker, A.R.H. (2007). Classifying Geographer History . The Professional Geographer, 59(3) 2007, pages 344–356.
• Ball, M. (2005). Google verifies that GIS is media . GeoWorld, December Issue, page 5
• Bishr, Y. (1998). Overcoming semantic and other barriers to GIS interoperability . International Journal of Geographic Information Science 12(4): 299-3 14
• Bishr, Y. A., Pundt, H., Kuhn, W., Radwan, M. (1999). Probing the concept of information communities- a first step toward semantic interoperability . In: M. Goodchild, M. Egenhofer, R. Fegeas & C. Kottman (Eds),Interoperating Geographic Information Systems, Kluwer, Norwell, MA, pp. 165-l 80
• Chen, C. H., Yang, J. C., Shen, S., & Jeng, M. C. (2007). A Desktop Virtual Reality Earth Motion System in Astronomy Education. Educational Technology & Society, 10 (3), 289-304 .
• Cromby J. J., Standen P. J., Brown D. J. (1996). The potentials of virtual environments in the education and training of people with learning disabilities. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research , 40 (6), 489–501 doi:10.1046/j.1365- 2788.1996.805805.x.
• Deshpande (4 February, 2007). Google Earth agrees to blur pix of key Indian sites , Times News Network. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Google_Earth_agrees_to_blur_pix_of_key_Indi an_sites/articleshow/1559236.cms
• Dimanche (3 June, 2007). Message to the World . http://motic.blogspot.com/2007/05/message-au-monde-message-to-world.html
78
• Earnshaw, R. A., Gigante, M. A., Jones, H. (1993). Virtual reality systems . London: Academic Press.
• Edwards, J., McCurley, K., Tomlin, J. (2001). An adaptive model for optimizing performance of an incremental web crawler . International World Wide Web Conference ISBN : 1-58113-348-0, pp: 106-113.
• Eimes, G., Epstein, R., McWaster, B. Niemann, B. Poore, E. Sheppard, and D. TuNoch. (2005). GIS and Society: Interrelation, Integration, and Transformation . CRC Press. 287-312.
• Ellis, S.R. (1991). Nature and Origin of Virtual Environments: A Bibliographic Essay. Computing Systems in Engineering, 2(4), 321-347.
• Elwood, S. (November 2006). Critical Issues in Participatory GIS: Deconstructions, Reconstructions and New Research Directions . Transactions in GIS, Volume 10, Number 5, November 2006 , pp. 693-708(16)
• Fisher, S. (1982). Viewpoint Dependent Imaging: An Interactive Stereoscopic Display. SPIE 367, 41-45-20.
• Fisher, S. (1986 ). Telepresence master glove controller for dexterous robotic end effectors . SPIE Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision.
• Fisher, S.,McGreevy, M., Humphries, J., Robinett, W. (1986). Virtual Environment Display System . ACM Workshop on 3D Interactive Graphics, 23-24.
• Goodchild, Michael F. (2007) . Citizens As Sensors : The World Of Volunteered Geography
• Google Earth for Windows (26 October, 2007). Google Earth screenshot of Blurred out image of the Royal Stables in The Hague, Netherlands . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Royal_Stables.jpg
79 • Harvey, F., Werner, K., Hardy, P., Bishr, Y., Rledemann, C. (1999). Semantic Interoperability. A central Issue for sharing geographic information. The Annals of Regional Science 33. 213-232.
• Hearn, L. (20 July, 2006). Chinese X-file excites spotters . The Sydney Morning Herald.http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/chinese-xfile-excites- spotters/2006/07/20/1153166503699.html
• Kalawksy, Roy S. (1993). The Science of Virtual Reality and Virtual Environments, Reading . MA: Addison-Wesley.
• Laurini, R. (1998).Spatial multi-database topological continuity and indexing: a step towards seamless GIS data interoperability. Geographical Information Science, Vol. 12, No. 4,373± 402.
• Microsoft Virtual Earth. http://www.microsoft.com/virtualearth/product/coverage.aspx%
• Mish, F.C. (1993). Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition. Merriam-Webster, Springfield, MA.
• Muchaxo, J. (1998). SkeleTIN: A Tool to Optimize Terrains for Real Time Rendering . GIS PLANET Annual Conference Proceedings .
• Myers, J.L. (1953). Geographical history in Greek Lands . Clarendon Press, Oxford, U.K.
• OGC Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.® (OGC). http://www.opengeospatial.org/
• Peng, Z.R., Tsou, M.S. (2003). Internet GIS: Distributed Geographic Information Services for the Internet and Wireless Networks . New York: John Wiley & Sons.
• Public Participation GIS, NCGIA Workshop (July 1996). Orono, Maine, US, 10- 13 .
80 • Raper, J. F., & McCarthy, T. (1994). Virtually GIS: The new media arrive . Association for Geographic Information Conference, pp. 18.1.1±6.
• Raper, J., McCarthy, T., Williams, N. (1998). Georeferenced Four Dimensional Virtual Environments: Principles and Applications . Comput., Environ. and Urban Systens, Vol. 22, No. 6, pp. 529±539.
• Sieber, R. (2006). Public Participation and Geographic Information Systems: A Literature Review and Framework . Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 96/3:491-507
• Slater M., Usoh M. (1994). Body Centred Interaction in Immersive Virtual Environments . Department of Computer Science and London Parallel Applications Centre, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, U.K.
• Daniel Sui (2007). A tetradic analysis using McLuhan’s law of the media Position paper for the Specialist Meeting on Volunteered Geographic Information, Dec. 13-14, 2007. Texas A&M University
• Daniel Sui, Goodchild M.F (2001). Are GIS Becoming New Media? International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Vol. 15, No. 5, pp. 387-390.
• Daniel Sui (2005a). G for Google? What can we learn from Google’s success so far? GeoWorld (formerly GIS World). March, 18-22.
• Sutherland, I.E. (1965). The Ultimate Display . IFIPS Conference, 2, 506- 508.Sutherland, I.E. (1968). Head-Mounted Three-Dimensional Display . Joint Computer Conference, 33, 757-764.
• Techshout (10 July, 2006). Google Earth poses security threat to India, ISRO Chief seeks Dialogue .
• http://www.techshout.com/internet/2006/10/google-earth-poses-security-threat- to-india-isro-chief-seeks-dialogue/
81 • Teitel, M. A. (1990). The Evephone, a Head Mounted StereoDisplay . SPIE, 1256 Stereoscopic Displays and Applications.
• Thorne, C. (April 2003). Earth’s Avatar- the Web Augmented Virtual Earth . Ping Interactive Broadband .
• Wikipedia (2008). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth#cite_note-32#cite_note-32 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth
• Winn, W. (August 1993). A Conceptual Basis for Educational Applications of Virtual Reality . Human Interface Technology Laboratory, Washington Technology Center, University of Washington. Report No. TR-93-9
• World Tribune (6 September, 2005). Google Earth images compromise secret installations in S. Korea.
• http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/TEMP/ea_skorea_09_06.html
82