FOSS4G NA 2016
Tangible Landscape
Cognitively grasping the flow of water
Brendan Harmon, Anna Petrasova, Vaclav Petras, Helena Mitasova, & Ross Meentemeyer
Tangible Landscape
A tangible user interface powered by open source GIS
Tanigble interaction with GIS
With Tangible Landscape you can hold a GIS in your hands - feeling the shape of the earth, sculpting its topography, and directing the flow of water.
History
An evolution of Illuminating Clay and the Tangible Geospatial Modeling System
Image source: MIT Media Lab
How-it-works
Tangible Landscape couples a digital and a physical model through a continuous cycle of 3D scanning, geospatial modeling, and projection
Features
A collaborative environment for tangible freeform modeling, object detection, real-time geospatial analytics, 3D rendering, and immersion / VR
Intuitive scientific modeling with Tangible Landscape
Tangible Landscape is designed to enable a rapid iterative process of observation, hypothesizing, testing, and inference
Difference in water depth
The difference between the reference water depth and 1. itself, 2. mean of digitally sculpted water depth, 3. and the mean of tangibly sculpted water depth
Open source
Fork us on GitHub
Repository with experiment instructions, scripts, data, and results
Tangible Landscape plugin for GRASS GIS
Further reading
Read our book and give it a try