Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

“Visualising the project landscape”: a spatialisation describing workload attributes as terrain

  • Thematic Issue
  • Published:
Environmental Earth Sciences Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Spatialisations, the products of rendering non-spatial concepts in (typically, map and landscape) spatial representations, have been effectively applied to news stories and project workload. The latter has previously been implemented in a Virtual Geographic Environment (VGE) using a landscape metaphor. This was done by translating the work attributes of duration to landscape area and difficulty to the height of elevated features in the landscape, to produce a simple scene. This work proposes and implements an extension of the workload 2.5D terrain surface (landscape) based on the additional work attributes of project uncertainty (translating to terrain roughness), and relative importance of the project (translating to centrality of the project area in the entire scene). Importantly, each project is divided into subtasks, each possessing its own duration, difficulty, certainty and importance which translates into a correspondingly more detailed and realistic hill in the virtual environment. This implementation visualizes projects and their subtasks as ‘islands’ with ‘hills’, each generated from objectively-defined (duration and definition of subtasks) and subjective (difficulty, certainty, importance) data. Results on several types of data (workload-related and non-workload related) are presented to demonstrate the data independence of the closed computational algorithm. This represents a novel application for the VGE, featuring a non-specific naïve geography rather than the usual specific virtual environment that is tied to a real location. Finally, limitations to the computational method are reported on and proposals for future development are presented (e.g. the modelling of semantic proximity of projects).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Bertin J (1983) Semiology of graphics. Esri Press, Redlands, CA

    Google Scholar 

  • Cammack RG (2003) Cartography, virtual reality, and the internet: integrating abstract models of the environment via the internet. In: Peterson M (ed) Maps and the Internet. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 359–370

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Che W, Lin H, Hu M, Lin T (2014) Reality–virtuality fusional avatar-based noise measurement and visualization in online virtual geographic environment. Ann GIS 20(2):109–115

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen M, Lin H, Hu M, He L, Zhang C (2013) Real geographic-scenario-based virtual social environments: integrating geography with social research. Environ Plan B Plan Des 40(6):1103–1121

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chernoff H (1973) The use of faces to represent points in k-dimensional space graphically. J Am Stat Assoc 68(342):361–368

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crutcher LA, Lazar AA, Feiner SK, Zhou MX (1995) Managing networks through a virtual world. IEEE Parallel Distrib Technol 1995:4–13

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fabrikant SI (2001) Visualizing region and scale in information spaces. In: Proceedings of 20th international cartographic conference, ICC 2001, pp 2522–2529

  • Fabrikant S, Skupin A (2005) Cognitively plausible information visualisation. In: Dykes J, MacEachren A, Kraak M-J (eds) Exploring geovisualisation. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 667–690

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Fillatreau P, Fourquet J-Y, le Bolloc’h R, Caihol S, Data A, Puel B (2013) Using virtual reality and 3D industrial numerical models for immersive interactive checklists. Comput Ind 64(9):1253–1262

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Forsyth P (2013) Successful time management, 3rd edn. Kogan Page, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Germanchis T, Cartwright W, Pettit C (2007) Virtual queenscliff: a computer game approach for depicting geography. In: Cartwright W, Peterson M, Gartner G (eds) Multimedia cartography, 2nd edn. Springer, Berlin, pp 359–368

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Gong J, Lin H (2006) Collaborative virtual geographic environment. In: Balram S, Dragicevic S (eds) Collaborative geographic information systems. IGI Global, Hershey PA, pp 186–207

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Goodchild MF, Mark DM (1987) The fractal nature of geographic phenomena. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 77(2):265–278

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hägerstrand T (1970) What about people in regional science? Pap Region Sci Assoc 24:7–24

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Halpin H, Zielinski DJ, Brady R, Kelly G (2008) Exploring semantic social networks using virtual reality. In: Sheth A et al (eds), ISWC 2008, LNCS 5318, pp 599–614

  • Hudson-Smith A (2008) The visual city. In: Dodge M, McDerby M, Turner M (eds) Geographic visualization –concepts, tools and applications. Wiley, Chichester, pp 183–197

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • International Standards Association (ISO) (1998) ISO 9241-11:1998—ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals (VDTs) — Part 11: guidance on usability. https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:9241:-11:ed-1:v1:en. Accessed 30 May 2015

  • Kohonen T (2001) Self-organizing maps. Springer, Berlin

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kraak M (2003) The space-time cube revisited from a geovisualisation perspective. In: Proceedings of the 21st international cartographic conference (ICC) Durban, South Africa, 10–16 Aug 2003, pp 1988–1996

  • Laurini R, Thompson D (1992) Fundamentals of spatial information systems. Academic Press, Waltham, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Lin H, Zhu J, Gong J, Xu B, Qi H (2010) A grid-based collaborative virtual geographic environment for the planning of silt dam systems. Int J Geogr Inf Sci 24(4):607–621

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lin H, Chen M, Lu G, Zhu Q, Gong J, You X, Wen Y, Xu B, Hu M (2013a) Virtual geographic environments (VGEs): a new generation of geographic analysis tool. Earth Sci Rev 126:74–84

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lin H, Chen M, Lu G (2013b) Virtual geographic environment: a workspace for computer-aided geographic experiments. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 103(3):465–482

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lopes CV, Lindstrom C (2012) Virtual cities in Urban planning: the uppsala case study. J Theor Appl Electron Commer Res 7(3):88–100

    Google Scholar 

  • Lu GN (2011) Geographic analysis-oriented virtual geographic environment: framework, structure and functions. Sci Chin Earth Sci 54(5):733–743

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacEachren AM (1992) Visualizing uncertain information. Cartogr Perspect 13(Fall):10–19

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mandelbrot BB (1983) The fractal geometry of nature. WH Freeman and Co, New York 495

    Google Scholar 

  • Meng L (2009) Affordance and reflex level of geovisualization. In: Lin H, Batty M (eds) Virtual geographic environments, pp 136–150

  • Moore AB, Bricker M (2015) “Mountains of work”: spatialisation of work projects in a virtual geographic environment. Ann GIS. doi:10.1080/19475683.2015.1057227

    Google Scholar 

  • Okabe A, Boots B, Sugihara K (1992) Spatial tessellations. Concepts and applications of Voronoi diagrams. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • OpenSimulator (2015) OpenSimulator. http://opensimulator.org. Accessed 30 May 2015

  • Romero M (2009) Time awareness tool for enhancing group times’ coordination in the virtual workspace. In: Schneider M et al (eds) Workshop proceedings of the 5th international conference on intelligent environments, pp 333–337

  • Sacks R, Gurevich U, Belaciano B (2015) Hybrid discrete event simulation and virtual reality experimental setup for construction management research. J Comput Civil Eng 29:1. doi:10.1061/(ASCE)CP.1943-5487.0000366

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sampaio AZ, Martins OP (2014) The application of virtual reality technology in the construction of bridge: the cantilever and incremental launching methods. Auto Constr 37:58–67

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Second Life-Linden Research Inc. (2015) Second life official site—virtual worlds, avatars, free 3D chat. http://secondlife.com. Accessed 30 May 2015

  • Skupin A, Agarwal P (2008) Introduction: what is a self-organizing map? In: Agarwal P, Skupin A (eds) Self-organizing maps: applications in geographic information science. Wiley, Chichester, pp 1–20

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith B, Mark D (2001) Geographical categories: an ontological investigation. Int J Geogr Inf Sci 15(7):591–612

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tózsa I (2014) The architecture of 3D administration. Public Admin Res 3(1):68–79

    Google Scholar 

  • Wysocki RK (2009) Effective project management: traditional, agile, extreme. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang S, Moore AB (2014) The usability of online geographic virtual reality. In: Isikdag U (ed) Innovations in 3D geo-information sciences. Springer, Switzerland, pp 225–242

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the lecturers at the School of Surveying who provided workload parameters for generic components of taught university papers. We would also like to thank Peter George in the Department of Information Science at the University of Otago for maintaining the OpenSimulator virtual world grid.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geodäsie und Geoinformation, Technisches Universität München, Motorstraße 22, 80807, Munich, Germany

    Marc Rußwurm

  2. School of Surveying, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Antoni Moore

Authors
  1. Marc Rußwurm
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Antoni Moore
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Antoni Moore.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Rußwurm, M., Moore, A. “Visualising the project landscape”: a spatialisation describing workload attributes as terrain. Environ Earth Sci 74, 7159–7172 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-015-4757-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-015-4757-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation