Developing new technologies to support the translation of complex environmental information into knowledge

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One of the major challenges facing societies today is the sustainable management of our natural resources.  This program of research seeks to support communities in their sustainable management efforts by developing new technologies to support the translation of complex environmental information into knowledge that can be used to achieve these goals.  One of the most difficult problems facing any group of individuals tasked with sustainable management is the sheer complexity of the problem.  Sustainability is defined in many ways.  Numerous issues are encapsulated in the term sustainability from a variety of perspectives; economic, ecological and social.  Not only are there a multitude of issues to be dealt with but there is a seemingly infinite number of combinations of these issues, which yield large numbers of possible future scenarios.  Our goal is to translate these future scenarios (typically scientifically defined) into more simple representations (images) using environmental visualization techniques.  In addition, to visualizing these scenarios we hope to develop a suite of software tools aimed at making these visualizations easy to comprehend and explore.  This research also seeks to deliver these visualizations (and associated information) through the use of new portable devices and multi-media enriched experiences as well as attempting to make the interaction with this information more intuitive by adding physical controls to the interface (knobs, sliders, etc.).   Lastly we hope to test these technologies in real-world settings.  For example, we intend to work with the people charged with managing the Yungas Biosphere Reserve in Northern Argentina to adapt these tools for use in landuse planning.  We also hope to expand the use of these tools into other application areas including; urban growth and development in the Greater Vancouver Regional District, balancing tourism and marine protection in Pulau Banggi and addressing the concerns of mercury pollution in the Amazon Basin.  It is our aspiration that these technologies not be developed solely for their own sake but that they are brought to bear on some of the more important problems of our time.