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Urban-Wilds
Augmented Mobile Reality Research |
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| Urban-Wilds & MetaTree Project: Citizen scientists have successfully contributed to a diverse spectrum of imaging-based research such as image classification projects, characterization of species in images or the characterization and segmentation of craters on the moon. Additionally, while the community based image capture, editing and analysis of biological data is in pioneering stages, it still requires expert-level experience in bio-imaging for its productive use. Further empowering citizen scientists by enabling them to provide calibrated and validated contributions has the potential to accelerate discovery in domains for which bio-imaging is a rate-limiting factor. This requires transcending the “crowd sourcing” or “mechanical turk” ethos of using the human as a subroutine to accomplish discrete and simplified tasks by offering volunteers viewpoints to understand how their contributions — and the quality of those contributions — affect the overall scientific enterprise. As major cities world-wide adopt and implement reforestation initiatives to plant millions of trees in urban areas, they are engaging in what is essentially a massive ecological experiment. Existing air-borne, space-borne and field-based imaging and analysis mechanisms fail to provide key information on urban tree ecology crucial to informing management, policy, and supporting citizen initiatives for planting and stewardship of trees. Due to lack of spatio-temporal resolution, cost constraints and biological metric limitations, they are ineffective as real-time inventory and monitoring tools. Novel methods for imaging and monitoring the biological status of these emerging urban forests and encouraging their ongoing stewardship by the public are required to ensure their success. Utilizing mobile augmented reality as a primary experience in citizen science, and integrating this with social media offers new opportunities for public engagement with biological imaging research and for transforming our collective experience of the urban ecology. It also presents significant challenges such as extending the notion of immersion in locative media-based interactions taking place in urban environments on a variety of hand-held devices. Our goal is to enable real-time monitoring of urban forests, increasing the spatio-temporal resolution of the data through socially mediated citizen science while creating a collaborative and narrative exploration of the city’s urban ecology. We unfold traditional data input and query methodologies into immersive and interactive augmented reality environments to provide user interaction with multidimensional data and 3D geometries combined with live mobile handset camera views and social networks. We develop methods for extending the experience of immersion when working within a calibrated and validated workflow for citizen participation in the monitoring of urban forests. This work is one of several ongoing research streams awarded a collaborative NSF grant (DEB1053566) aimed at exploring methods and tools to allow citizen scientists to meaningfully participate in bio-imaging science. This research brings together researchers from UCSD (Ruth West, PI), University of Vermont, University of Arizona, Washington University, St. Louis and Smith College. This project is currently in development. |
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An interdisciplinary artist-researcher working with digital media and interactive technologies.
