Tangible Landscape

A tangible interface for intuitive geospatial modeling.

Planting design with Tangible Landscape

Team: Anna Petrasova, Brendan Harmon, Vaclav Petras, Payam Tabrizian, & Helena Mitasova

With Tangible Landscape you can hold a model of a Landscape in your hands, feeling the shape of the earth and sculpting its topography. When you sculpt new landforms you change the flow of simulated digital water, creating new streams and lakes. You can plant forests by simply placing pieces of colored felt and immediately see 3D renderings with the new trees.

Tangible Landscape is an open source tangible interface powered by GRASS GIS and Blender. Tangible Landscape couples a physical model with a digital model of a landscape so that you can naturally feel, reshape, and interact with the landscape. This makes geographic information systems (GIS) and 3D modeling far more intuitive and accessible for beginners, empowers geospatial experts, and creates new exciting opportunities for developers - like gaming with GIS.

How-it-works? A real-time feedback cycle of interaction, 3D scanning, point cloud processing, geospatial computation and projection, and 3D modeling and 3D rendering.

Collaborative
Tangible freeform modeling
Object detection & classification
Real-time geospatial analytics
Real-time 3D rendering
Virtual Reality

Diagram of Tangible Landscape

Publications

Books

Petrasova, Anna, Brendan Harmon, Vaclav Petras, Payam Tabrizian, and Helena Mitasova. 2018. Tangible Modeling with Open Source GIS. 2nd ed. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89303-7.

Petrasova, Anna, Brendan Harmon, Vaclav Petras, and Helena Mitasova. 2015. Tangible Modeling with Open Source GIS. 1st ed. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25775-4.

Papers

Millar, Garrett C, Payam Tabrizian, Anna Petrasova, Vaclav Petras, Brendan Harmon, and Ross K Meentemeyer. 2018. “Tangible Landscape : A Hands-on Method for Teaching Terrain Analysis.” CHI ’18 Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173954.

Harmon, Brendan A, Anna Petrasova, Vaclav Petras, Helena Mitasova, and Ross Meentemeyer. 2018. “Tangible Topographic Modeling for Landscape Architects.” International Journal of Architectural Computing. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478077117749959.

Tabrizian, Payam, Brendan A Harmon, Anna Petrasova, Helena Mitasova, and Ross K Meentemeyer. 2017. “Tangible Immersion for Ecological Design.” In ACADIA 17: Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture, 600–609. Cambridge, MA. http://papers.cumincad.org/cgi-bin/works/Show&_id=caadria2010_044/Show?acadia17_600.

Tonini, Francesco, Douglas Shoemaker, Anna Petrasova, Brendan Harmon, Vaclav Petras, Richard Cobb, Helena Mitasova, and Ross Meentemeyer. 2017. “Tangible Geospatial Modeling for Collaborative Solutions to Invasive Species Management.” Environmental Modelling & Software 92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2017.02.020.

Tabrizian, Payam, Anna Petrasova, Brendan Harmon, Vaclav Petras, Helena Mitasova, and Ross Meentemeyer. 2016. “Immersive Tangible Geospatial Modeling.” In Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, 88:1–88:4. GIS ’16. San Francisco, CA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2996913.2996950.

Harmon, Brendan A, Anna Petrasova, Vaclav Petras, and Helena Mitasova. 2016. “Computational Landscape Architecture: Procedural, Tangible, and Open Landscapes.” In Innovations in Landscape Architecture, edited by Jonathan R Anderson and Daniel Ortega. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Innovations-in-Landscape-Architecture/Anderson-Ortega/p/book/9781138860681.

Harmon, Brendan A, Anna Petrasova, Vaclav Petras, Helena Mitasova, and Ross K Meentemeyer. 2016. “Embodied Spatial Thinking in Tangible Computing.” In TEI ’16: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction. Eindhoven, Netherlands: ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/2839462.2854103.

Harmon, Brendan A, Anna Petrasova, Vaclav Petras, Helena Mitasova, and Ross K Meentemeyer. 2016. “Tangible Landscape: Cognitively Grasping the Flow of Water.” ISPRS - International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences XLI-B2: 647–65. https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLI-B2-647-2016.

Petrasova, Anna, Brendan A Harmon, Vaclav Petras, and Helena Mitasova. 2014. “GIS-Based Environmental Modeling with Tangible Interaction and Dynamic Visualization.” In Proceedings of the 7th International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software, edited by D.P. Ames and N. Quinn. San Diego, California, USA: International Environmental Modelling and Software Society. http://www.iemss.org/sites/iemss2014/papers/iemss2014_submission_131.pdf.

Tateosian, Laura, Helena Mitasova, Brendan A Harmon, Brent Fogleman, Katherine Weaver, and Russell S Harmon. 2010. “TanGeoMS: Tangible Geospatial Modeling System.” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 16 (6): 1605–12. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2010.202.

Workshops

Petrasova, Anna, Vaclav Petras, Brendan A Harmon, and Helena Mitasova. 2016. “Using GRASS GIS through Python and Tangible Interfaces.” In FOSS4G NA 2016. Raleigh, NC. https://grasswiki.osgeo.org/.

Presentations

Harmon, Brendan, Anna Petrasova, Payam Tabrizian, Vaclav Petras, and Helena Mitasova. 2017. “Tangibly Smart: An Interactive Watershed in Your Hands.” In World Bank Watershed Days. Washington, D.C. https://ncsu-geoforall-lab.github.io/tangible-landscape-talk/worldbank2017.html#/.

Harmon, Brendan A, Anna Petrasova, Vaclav Petras, Helena Mitasova, and Ross K Meentemeyer. 2016. “Tangible Geographies.” In Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference 2016. London.

Harmon, Brendan A, Anna Petrasova, Vaclav Petras, Helena Mitasova, and Ross K Meentemeyer. 2016. “Tangible Interaction for GIS.” In FOSS4G NA 2016. Raleigh, NC.

Mitasova, Helena, Anna Petrasova, Brendan A Harmon, Vaclav Petras, Payam Tabrizian, and Ross K Meentemeyer. 2016. “Tangible Landscape: Open Source Environment for Geospatial Learning, Science, and Community.” In GeoForAll Webinar. GeoForAll. https://youtu.be/jUw5cKm08DE.

Harmon, Brendan, Anna Petrasova, Vaclav Petras, Helena Mitasova, Jelena Vukomanovic, and Ross Meentemeyer. 2016. “Serious Gaming with Tangible Landscape.” In Coffee & Viz. Raleigh, NC. https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/event/coffee-viz-serious-gaming-tangible-landscape.

Harmon, Brendan, Anna Petrasova, and Vaclav Petras. 2016. “Serious Gaming with Tangible Landscape.” In Coffee & Viz. Raleigh, NC. http://ncsu-geoforall-lab.github.io/coffee-and-viz/hunt.html#/9.

Petrasova, Anna, Brendan Harmon, and Helena Mitasova. 2014. “GIS-Based Modeling with Tangible Interaction.” In FOSS4G 2014. https://vimeo.com/106854721.

Harmon, Brendan A, Helena Mitasova, and Anna Petrasova. 2014. “Tangible Geospatial Modeling for Landscape Architects.” In 2014 Geodesign Summit. Redlands, California: Esri. http://video.esri.com/watch/3170/tangible-geospatial-modeling-for-landscape-architects.

Mitasova, Helena, Brendan A Harmon, and Stephen B Blundell. 2013. “Exploring Topographic Changes Impacts on Land Surface Processes Using Tangible Interfaces.” In Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, 723. Denver, CO: Geological Society of America. https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2013AM/webprogram/Paper229789.html.