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

当今社会面临的主要挑战之一是自然资源的可持续管理。该研究项目旨在通过开发新技术，支持将复杂的环境信息转化为可用于实现这些目标的知识，从而支持社区的可持续管理工作。任何负责可持续管理的个人面临的最困难的问题之一是问题的复杂性。可持续发展的定义有很多。从不同的角度来看，“可持续性”一词包含了许多问题；经济、生态和社会。不仅有大量的问题需要处理，而且这些问题的组合似乎是无限的，这产生了大量可能的未来场景。我们的目标是使用环境可视化技术将这些未来场景（通常是科学定义的）转化为更简单的表示（图像）。此外，为了可视化这些场景，我们希望开发一套软件工具，旨在使这些可视化易于理解和探索。这项研究还试图通过使用新的便携式设备和多媒体丰富的体验来传递这些可视化（和相关信息），并试图通过在界面上添加物理控制（旋钮、滑块等）来使这些信息的交互更加直观。最后，我们希望在现实环境中测试这些技术。例如，我们打算与负责管理阿根廷北部Yungas生物圈保护区的人员合作，将这些工具用于土地利用规划。我们还希望将这些工具的使用扩展到其他应用领域，包括；大温哥华地区的城市增长和发展，平衡邦吉岛的旅游业和海洋保护，解决亚马逊盆地汞污染问题。我们的愿望是，这些技术的发展不仅仅是为了它们自己，而是为了它们对我们这个时代的一些更重要的问题产生影响。

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.