What: Google Mapping Technology for Nonprofits
When: September 26-28, 2011, 8:30am – 5:00pm
Where: Morris J Wosk Centre for Public Dialogue at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia
Who should attend?: This workshop is intended for Canadian nonprofit technology specialists.
More information: http://vancouver.earthoutreach.org/home
First, I would like to apologize for the lack of recent posts under the LVIZ blog, but I and other contributors were traveling a lot, visiting various conferences and had report deadlines to match. In return, I will post several conference reviews over the next weeks with the biggest conference still to come in August: SIGGRAPH 2011 in Vancouver! The conference season started with the most important conference on human-computer interaction; CHI from May 7-12 at the new Vancouver conference center. CHI was far too large that I could address all session here. Instead I will focus on the sustainability workshop and the two sustainability sessions that were part of this year’s CHI.
The sustainability workshop at CHI was organized by Leo Bonanni (MIT Media Lab, USA), Daniela Busse (Sap Labs (Palo Alto), USA), John C Thomas (IBM TJ Watson Research Center, USA), Eli Blevis (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA), Marko Turpeinen (HIIT, Finland), and Nuno Jardim Nunes (Univ of Madeira, Portugal). Every participant had prepared position papers which were first presented and discussed. During the second half of the one-day workshop, IBM researcher John C. Thomas, who is also involved in IBM Smart City, presented the pattern language approach (cf. Christopher Alexander’s pattern language) as a method to grasp the fuzzy categories of sustainability. The unconventional approach produced an impressive variety of sustainability patterns. Co-organizers Leo Bonanni and Marko Turpeinen also announced a Green Hackathon in Stockholm on September 30, 2011. Interviews with some of the workshop participants are also covered by the Sustainable Lens blog from Australia which is presenting sustainability issues as online radio shows.
On Wednesday, two sustainability sessions took place. The first session started of with a presentation by Conor Linehan from the Lincoln Social Computing Research Centre on Guidelines for Designing Educational Games. Linehan referred the evaluation of behavioral change through educational computer games to the Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) approach in psychology. The presentation was awarded and provided very valuable approaches for the evaluation of computer tools with an educational goal. The majority of the following presentations addressed the change of individual behavior through the visualization of individual consumption patterns, e.g., energy or water consumption. Most presentations were very nicely designed but from my point of view, some lacked from oversimplified conceptualizations of individual behavior change through more information. In the case of BeeParking, car use as an unsustainable behavior was even made more convenient through a smart parking system. In contrast, I was more impressed by the work of Philips Research in the Netherlands, who presented a game that is supposed to raise family awareness and change behavior about electricity use (download the paper here) and by James Pierce investigation of reacquisition and dispossession practices around second-hand objects (download the paper here).
It is good to hear that sustainability has its own SIG at CHI and it was even proposed to propose a sustainability track on its own which might lead to a higher number of sustainability papers at CHI. Either way, it is great to see that sustainability is also a topic inside the human-computer interaction community and I am sure that there is more to come.
The AGIT symposium (www.agit.at) presents about 200 presentations, discussions and workshops about geoinformation and related disciplines in the German-speaking area. Paper abstracts can be submitted until February 1, 2011; other submissions (product presentation, forum and workshops) will close February 21, 2011.
Themes:
Methods and technologies:
Salzburg July 6-8, 2011
AGIT is a well established conference where every year many members of the German-speaking geoinformation community come together. Now the call for papers for 2011 will open from December 1, 2010 to February 1, 2011.
Themes in 2011 will be:
Methods and Technologies
For more information and registration please see www.agit.at
Immersion has developed as part of the EU’s V-City project, a collaborative tabletop interface to interact with 3d city environments. The prototype was shown at Siggraph 2010. The multi-view support allows two users to view different viewpoints of the model at the same time from the same 3d mockup.
The following call for papers was first published at Digital Urban
We have a final call for papers in geographic/urban visualisation – the deadline for abstracts has passed but as we are running a workshop send them to us via the contact page and we will sort out the initial submission process.
The Joint International Conference on Theory, Data Handling and Modelling in GeoSpatial Information Science will be held on May 26th to 28th 2010 in Hong Kong.
This conference will be a notable event in the international community of Geo-spatial information Science (GISc) in 2010, organized by: Commission II of the International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) and Commission of Geographic Information Science and Commission of Modelling Geographical Systems of the International Geographical Union (IGU). The conference will join together the Symposium of Technical Commission II of ISPRS, the Symposium on Spatial Data Handling and the Conference on Modelling Geographical Systems from IGU.
ISPRS is a society regrouping scientific societies from more than 100 countries working in domains related to photogrammetry, remote sensing and geographical information science. 2010 will be a special year for the society as it will be celebrating its centenary anniversary. The ISPRS Technical Commission II Symposium is organised every four years alternately with the ISPRS Congress and is among the major events in ISPRS calendar regrouping leading scholars from the GISc and related communities. Last editions of the symposium were held in Ottawa, Canada (2002) and Vienna, Austria (2006) jointly with SDH.
You can find the submission guidelines and template from here.
Also take a look at the new Geovisualisation and Virtual Reality site (its hosted in CASA) where you can sign up to become a member.
CITIES FOR EVERYONE: Liveable, Healthy, Prosper
Promising vision or unrealistic phantasy?
The role of Urban Planning and Urban Technologies on the path towards improved Quality of Live, Health, Sustainability and Prosperity in our Cities
will be the topic of
REAL CORP 2010 – 15th International Conference on Urban Planning, Regional Development and Information Society
in
Vienna / Austria from 18 – 20 May 2010,
www.corp.at
The CALL FOR PAPERS is open until December 23rd 2009 (abstract, approx. 1000 characters; full paper until Feb. 28th).
______________________________________-
CITIES FOR EVERYONE: Liveable, Healthy, Prosper!
Promising Vision or Unrealistic Phantasy?
Cities are places of competition, stress, inequalities, traffic jams, environmental stresses and strains and permanent struggle.
Cities often are an aggressive environment, not only for children, the elderly and the weak.
But even more then that cities are the centers of economy, culture, creativity, science and innovation and therefore provide the best perspectives and biggest chances for many people—CITIES ARE ATTRACTIVE!
Meanwhile more then 50 percent of world population lives in cities, soon it will be about 70 percent.
REAL CORP 2010 asks for CITIES FOR EVERYONE, that are LIVEABLE, HEALTHY and PROSPER!
Is this a promising vision we should work on or is it an unrealistic fantasy? Is it possible to keep and even improve the advantages of cities and reduce the negative effects? Or does the one require the other?
What are the possibilities and contributions of URBAN PLANNING and REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT?
And where can ICT, URBAN-, TRANSPORT- and ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES help to improve quality of live, health, sustainability and prosperity in cities.
Some of the major aspects and questions to be dealt with and on which we invite you for high-quality paper submissions are:
· Examples and Visions of „Liveable Cities for Everyone“
· Keeping Balance: Managing Complex Urban Infrastructures
· Housing and Real Estate perspectives, High-Tech & Low-Cost Housing
· Perspectives for Future Transport and Mobility
· Re-mixing the Urban Fabric, Future Housing and Working Environs
· Urban and Environmental Technologies to improve Quality of Life
· Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) in the Urban Context
· Healthy Cities / Health in Cities
· Safety and Security vs. Privacy and Total Surveillance
· Data, Information and Knowledge Infrastructures for Planning, Management and Decision Support
· Understanding Cities: Tools and Technologies to support Decision Makers, Citizens and Experts in their Understanding of Cities
As REAL CORP 2010 is co-organized with ISOCARP, the International Society of City and Regional Planners (www.isocarp.org) and REAL VIENNA, the CEE/SEE-focused Real Estate and Investment fair (www.realvienna.at), it is an explicit goal to enhance the experts-dialogue between Real Estate Business, Urban Planning and Technology Providers.
There will also be a buisness-exhibition and possibilities to present companies and products – if interested please contact us per email at office@corp.at
REAL CORP 2009
is a joint event and co-organized by
* CEIT ALANOVA – Central European Institute of Technology, Department for Urbanism, Transport, Environment and Information Society ( www.ceit.at),
* CORP association ( www.corp.at)
* ISOCARP, the International Society of City and Regional Planners ( www.isocarp.org)
* REAL VIENNA, the CEE/SEE-focused Real Estate and Investment Fair (www.realvienna.at)
It would be great to welcome you to Vienna in May 2010 as a speaker or participant.
As usual, complete information and latest news is always available on the website
The following announcement refers to the forthcoming symposium of Visualization in Engineering in Karlsruhe, October 15:
Inhaltlich dreht sich das Symposium um die Kommunikation von Inhalten rund um das Bauwesen mit den Schwerpunkten Wasserbau und Wasserwirtschaft, Straßenbau, Verkehrswegebau, Raumplanung, Landschaftsarchitektur und -planung. Der Fokus des Symposiums liegt im Bereich der Vermittlung komplexer Inhalte mittels Visualisierungstechniken wie zum Beispiel klassische Bildretuschen, Animationen, gemischte Medieninhalte aus Film und Animation, Analysevisualisierungen und Fluidsimulationsvisualisierungen.
Ein besonderes Augenmerk richtet sich auf die Bereiche interaktive Medien, Analysevisualisierungen und neue Trends.
Voraussetzung zur Teilnahme ist die Verwendung von Planungs- oder Analysedaten als Grundlage für die gezeigten Ergebnisse.
Termin: 15.10.2009, Beginn 13:00 Uhr
Don’t forget that from September 22 – 24, 2009, Karlsruhe will host the INTERGEO, one of the world leading geoinformation conferences and trade fairs. This year, Biosphere3D is among the presenters and many other new products from the field of GIS can be expected. For more information, please visit www.intergeo.de
From June 16-18, 2010, GIS/SIT 2010, the Swiss forum for geoinformation, will take place at the University of Zurich.
Papers can be submitted electronically at www.gis-sit.ch. Deadline for papers is November 12, 2009.
The same website provides more information on the forum and will provide the detailed program in March 2010. Then, it will be possible to register at the same address online.