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。这个研究项目寻求通过开发新技术来支持社区的可持续管理努力，以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。任何负责可持续管理的个人群体面临的最困难的问题之一是问题的绝对复杂性。可持续发展有多种定义。从不同的角度将无数问题概括在可持续发展一词中；经济、生态和社会。不仅有大量的问题需要处理，而且这些问题似乎有无限多的组合，这产生了大量可能的未来情景。我们的目标是使用环境可视化技术将这些未来情景(通常是科学定义的)转化为更简单的表示(图像)。此外，为了将这些场景可视化，我们希望开发一套软件工具，旨在使这些可视化更易于理解和探索。这项研究还寻求通过使用新的便携式设备和多媒体丰富的体验来提供这些可视化(和相关信息)，并试图通过在界面上添加物理控件(旋钮、滑块等)来使与这些信息的交互更加直观。最后，我们希望在真实世界的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尤加斯生物圈保护区的人员合作，使这些工具适用于土地利用规划。我们还希望将这些工具的使用扩大到其他应用领域，包括；大温哥华地区的城市增长和发展，平衡普劳邦吉的旅游业和海洋保护，并解决亚马逊盆地汞污染的关切。我们的愿望是，这些技术不仅仅是为了它们本身而开发，而是被用来解决我们时代的一些更重要的问题。

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.