Semantic interoperability for collaborative spatial design

  • Authors:
  • Wout Hofman

  • Affiliations:
  • TNO, the Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2009 conference on Techniques and Applications for Mobile Commerce: Proceedings of TAMoCo 2009
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Mobile devices offer integrated functionality to browse, phone, play music, and watch video. Moreover, these devices have sufficient memory and processing power to run (small) applications based on for instance Google Android and the iPhone/iPod OS. As such, they support for instance Google Earth to visualize your (urban) environment with all functionality offered by Google. User interaction for spatial design can thus become one of the functionalities. It allows a user to view a design with a mobile device on the location where that design is going to be realized, and communicate with other users utilizing various technologies (speech, Twitter, blogs, mail). Spatial design, especially in existing Urban Areas is complex and involves many stakeholders, each with their own interests and view on spatial design. In densely populated areas, many different aspects play a role, such as mobility, noise, air quality, safety and esthetics. The modeled response of (future) inhabitants to the quality of the (future) urban environment is becoming more and more important in the planning process. Interoperability between various devices and applications is a prerequisite for all users and all devices. Semantic is one aspect of interoperability that allows all applications to automatically process and visualize data. Semantic interoperability is also required for integration of computational algorithms to produce for instance noise maps, air quality maps as well as indicators on accessibility and transparency to stakeholders via various devices needs to be supported. The same semantics can not only be used to visualize the future, but also the past and changes in the past (timeline). It allows tourists to see a city in the past using mobile devices. This paper presents a way forward for development of integrated, device independent, collaborative spatial design systems.