Interactive Geospatial Interface for Historical Aerial Photographs of the City of Chicago
The development in modern hardware and software technologies enabled information visualization and its graphical presentation to achieve a qualitatively new level facilitating many projects in this sphere to be created. Increasing popularity is gained by dynamic maps as they reveal a very interesting way to visualize a travel. This method of data collection, analysis, publication simplifies the use of the information, which is a very important factor in any modern design. In this case the use of the resource will facilitate not only individuals, but entire companies either as the need of information availability is highly evaluated nowadays. Aiming this need the project itself is related to historical data visualization as its core is the ability to map the events to a specific place, allowing the best possible way to perceive information. It will include interactive geospatial interface for historical aerial photographs of the City of Chicago.
The benefits the interface can provide are various depending on the sphere it will be used:
It would be useful to know the growth of cities in a historical perspective to better understand the urbanization process. It can be highly favorable for city planning especially when talking about traffic and housing issues optimization. For example – it will be easier to identify the regularities in the population distribution dynamics and develop high accuracy predictions on the traffic load thus developing a suitable infrastructure. The amount of the houses will better correspond to the public needs removing any issues concerning overcrowding or lack of population. The housing areas can be planned more accurately so that a right proportion of educational, medical and other public establishments is provided in every region.
Ecology changes can be easily tracked. The problem is very topical for Chicago being the large city. As human activity often affects the surrounding nature many different species can just leave the areas or extinct. To prevent this it is critical to make proper evaluations of any negative influence and remove its roots. With the help of the interface wildlife habitat and birds tracking systems can be development, taking into account either seasonal migrations or anthropogenic influence.
Retrospective analysis can also enable marking disaster zones, floods, fires, storms and droughts. Though Chicago is not supposed to suffer significant losses from natural disasters, the analysis of fires and other tragedies, caused by people can display the hidden problems and improve the safety in the relevant areas.
The interface can be applied as a foundation for a more detailed virtual historic tour program development in future as with the development of VR technologies it will soon be possible to walk along the place seeing the site as it used to look in the past. The touristic value of such project is unmeasurable as it helps creating a completely customized environment with enormous functions and a variety of spheres it can be applied in being suitable for any studies and analysis.
However it is difficult to work out implement …
