IMAGE OF THE WEEK
Here is an image from Alexander Klippel and Alan Taylor’s trip to the Ishi Wilderness. They collected 360 videos that they are editing to explain the history, role, and importance of fire in California. Here is one video that Graduate students Arif Masrur and Jiawei Huang helped editing. It is in stereo which has a very nice depth effect when viewed through a VR headset. This is automatic when someone visits YouTube on a mobile device, just put it in your favorite VR viewer: https://youtu.be/uClrPVdB-o8
Alan Taylor‘s project also has a website with 360 images: https://ishiwildfire.geog.psu.edu/
GOOD NEWS
Mark Simpson passed his proposal defense and comps.
Erica Smithwick participated in two of four WPSU-TV projects that received Telly Awards:
- “Managing Risk in a Changing Climate,” received a bronze Telly Award
- “Women in Science Profiles,” received a bronze Telly Award
Guido Cervone’s work was mentioned in an article in the scientific section of the Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, the second most widely circulated newspaper in Italy. The article is in Italian, and its headline, “I Sensori Siamo Noi” means “We Are The Sensors,” and talks about his work on using citizen science during disasters.
NEWS
EMS academic and alumni leaders create Open Doors Scholarships
Lee and Michelle Kump are both experienced educators — Lee as the dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) and professor of geosciences at Penn State, and Michelle, a 2001 Penn State alumna, as a reading specialist in the State College Area School District. As a result, they both have worked with many students who have financial need.
The Places in the U.S. Where Disaster Strikes Again and Again
In the last 16 years, parts of Louisiana have been struck by six hurricanes. Areas near San Diego were devastated by three particularly vicious wildfire seasons. And a town in eastern Kentucky has been pummeled by at least nine storms severe enough to warrant federal assistance.
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
Remote Studio Site Experiences: Investigating the Potential to Develop the Immersive Site Visit
Oprean, Danielle, Verniz, Debora, Zhao, Jiayan, Wallgrün, Jan Oliver, Duarte, José P. and Klippel, Alexander
Learning, Adapting and Prototyping – Proceedings of the 23rd CAADRIA Conference – Volume 1, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, 17-19 May 2018, pp. 421-430
http://papers.cumincad.org/cgi-bin/works/paper/caadria2018_309
Immersive technologies are now enabling better and more affordable immersive experiences, offering the opportunity to revisit their use in the architectural and landscape studio to gain site information. Considering when travel to a site is limited or not possible, immersive experiences can help with conveying site information by overcoming issues faced in earlier virtual studios. We focused on developing three applications to understand the workflow for incorporating site information to generate an immersive site experience. The applications were implemented in a semester-long joint architecture and landscape architecture studio focused on remotely designing for the Santa Marta informal settlement in Rio, Brazil. Preliminary results of implementing the applications indicate a positive outlook towards using immersive experiences for site information particularly when a site is remote.
Beyond Inventory and Mapping: LIDAR, Landscape and Digital Landscape Architecture
Murtha, Timothy; Golden, Charles; Cyphers, Ann; Klippel, Alexander; Flohr, Travis
Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture
doi:10.14627/537642027
Airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) applications have rapidly transformed remote sensing and scientific research of landscapes, especially research targeting ecological systems and cultural resources. While used in landscape architecture and landscape research by select research groups, it’s not broadly applied as a primary source of information in landscape ecological design and planning projects.
Augmented Reality and the Scenic Drive
Orland, Brian; Taylor, Micah; Mazurczyk, Tara; Welch-Devine, Meredith; Goldberg, Lacey; Candler Scales, Mary; Murtha, Timothy; Calabria, Jon
Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture
doi:10.14627/537642015
We are interested in the general question of how to augment the viewed landscape with representations of its otherwise invisible aspects and using these to prompt visitors to reveal previously unidentified aspects of that same landscape. We take a participatory, grassroots perspective, where expert and local knowledge are made available, but emphasis lies in the collection of new or explanatory information from the broadest feasible range of participants. This paper proposes a process for capturing not just individual experience of place, but collective experience built upon the individual. Crowd-sourced imagery and sound “bites” populate an augmented reality (AR) environment and prompts visitors to the AR to consider and respond to those originating experiences with their own. We provide and project additional environmental data to prompt embellishments, corrections or additions. In our prototype, the goal is to locate as-yet-unidentified valued highway landscapes, but the general approach has application in numerous other settings where understanding collective grassroots experiences in the landscape is essential for its protection and preservation.