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Supporting participation in planning new roads by using virtual reality systems

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Abstract

A road planning process runs through several phases, takes several years, incorporates many decision-making procedures and includes numerous experts and interest groups from different areas. Today, Virtual Reality (VR) systems can benefit this process. By simulating different future alternatives, together with their possible environmental impact, a common understanding of the consequences of the respective alternatives can be obtained. Furthermore, since many of the models are obtainable from the Internet, a wider public can be reached already in the early phases of the planning process. The goal of the paper is to provide a better understanding of the use of VR models for supporting involvement and collaboration in the road planning process. The background data are from two large road planning projects through cultural heritage areas in Sweden. Observations on using VR models to support public participation, and facilitate communication between different interested parties, are presented. The results argue for the benefits of using VR models during the whole road planning process and shed further light on a range of social issues associated with using this technology.

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Notes

  1. (Up to date the 9 October 2006) http://www.hydro.com/en/our_business/oil_energy/exploration/cave.html.

  2. (Up to date the 9 October 2006) http://www.rug.nl/rc/hpcv/projects/landscape.

  3. (Up to date the 9 October 2006) http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/geographic.html.

  4. (Up to date the 9 October 2006) http://www.uea.ac.uk/∼e313/virtual.html.

  5. (Up to date the 9 October 2006) http://www.urbansim.org/index.shtm.l

  6. (Up to date the 9 October 2006) http://www.fit.fraunhofer.de/projekte/arthur/index_en.xml.

  7. (Up to date the 9 October 2006) http://www.iti.gr/intelcities.

  8. (Up to date the 9 October 2006) http://clime.tkk.fi/.

  9. CAVE™ is a trademark of the University of Illinois at Chicago, originally designed by Cruz-Neira et al. (1993).

  10. e-Science “means science increasingly done through distributed global collaborations enabled by the Internet, using very large data collections, terascale computing resources and high performance visualization. In the future, e-Science will refer to the large scale science that will increasingly be carried out through distributed global collaborations enabled by the Internet.” (Woolgar 2003, p. 11).

  11. In this paper the terms professional and expert refer to the people involved in the project due to their professional role.

  12. Linköping is a city near Norrköping.

  13. http://www.dynagraph.se/produkter/roadview.html (RoadView was developed by Dynagraph AB).

  14. People who had broadband and better desktop computers could use the larger model, but those who had only modem connection or a desktop computer with less performance could use the smaller ones.

  15. The costs can vary depending on developers, the length of the road, details and geographical conditions. This approximately cost was given by Dynagraph AB for a 70-km road.

  16. In the beginning of 2006 the government requested additional data, and at present SRA is waiting for the government to approve the suggestion.

  17. Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman, inventors of the Globus approach to the Grid, define the Grid as an enabler for Virtual Organisations: ‘An infrastructure that enables flexible, secure, coordinated resource sharing among dynamic collections of individuals, institutions and resources.’ It is important to recognize that resource in this context includes computational systems and data storage and specialized experimental facilities.” (Woolgar 2003, p. 11)

  18. (Up to date the 18 Jan 2006) http://www.accessgrid.org.

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Kristina Balot, Erik Bohlin, Lars Bråthe, Jon van Leuven, Tomas Matsson, Susanne van Raalte and Maria Spante for support with this study.

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  1. Department of Technology Management and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Ilona Heldal

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Heldal, I. Supporting participation in planning new roads by using virtual reality systems. Virtual Reality 11, 145–159 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-006-0061-3

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