Over the past decade or two, dramatic advances in computing technology have provided a technological basis for studying social systems by simulating them in a computer as opposed to trying to capture their essence in formal mathematical models and equations. So if you want to study the effect of changes in an urban system today, you build the existing system in your computer and do the experiments with different possible changes there. In short, you have an urban system “in a box” to play with instead of having to do the experiments with the system in the real world.
A typical simulation of the above sort leaves the investigator looking at the system from the outside. It’s like flying over the urban landscape and looking down on it as various changes are introduced. But the outside perspective on almost anything is quite different than looking from the inside. It’s the exo, not the endo, perspective. Recent software and hardware developments in augmented and virtual reality open up the possibility of taking the endo perspective on the city, essentially parachuting down from the plane and entering into the city as a resident, not a disengaged tourist.
Consider some of the advantages of AVR to stakeholders in urban development:
- AVR allows stakeholders to share data and city perceptions. In short, to see “beyond the walls”
- AVR offers huge opportunities to visualize complex urban systems, and to enhance these systems by virtual or real environments, as well as to create an emotional environment to learn, understand, and act together to build and live in a smart city
- Instead of just seeing the city from the outside, as with a normal simulation, AVR allows one to actually experience the urban environment with three senses: sight, sound, touch. Probably one day soon the other two senses, smell and taste, will join this list.
In order to create true AVR simulations of urban areas, we will need good 3D models of cities, buildings and transport connections. These must come with the relevant associated data, which will then be processed by AI applications for the specific urban areas involved.
A real-world example of such an AVR model was done recently in Helsinki, Finland for the Clarion Hotel. Similar examples have been created in which the AVR enables interaction with and reporting from systems responsible for building maintenance and other industrial processes.
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