If landscape visualizations are applied as tools for participation, they should provide a high level of interactivity to facilitate planning process and outcomes. This book presents evidence for this hypothesis through demonstrative case studies in the Entlebuch UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in Switzerland. In collaborative workshops, interactive real-time visualizations were used to respond directly to the dialogue, and long-term climate change impacts were illustrated through collapsing time animations. The author, Dr. Olaf Schroth, is a researcher at the University of British Columbia and has studied both geodesy and planning in Hanover, Hamburg and Newcastle upon Tyne. Since then, he has been working at the interface of planning and 3D visualization, and the book summarizes his work in the EU project VisuLands (2003-2006) and his PhD at ETH Zurich. His research is not technology-driven but rather raises critical issues from a planning perspective. Therefore, the results and hands-on recommendations address researchers as well as practitioners in planning, architecture, geovisualization, geography, cartography and computer visualization.

This new edition of The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies contains an updated and expanded selection of original chapters which explore research directions in an array of disciplines sharing a concern for ‘landscape’, a term which has many uses and meanings. It features 33 revised and/or updated chapters and 14 entirely new chapters on topics such as the Anthropocene, Indigenous landscapes, challenging landscape Eurocentrisms, photography and green infrastructure planning. The volume is divided into four parts: Experiencing landscape; Landscape, heritage and culture; Landscape, society and justice; and Design and planning for landscape. Collectively, the book provides a critical review of the various fields related to the study of landscapes, including the future development of conceptual and theoretical approaches, as well as current empirical knowledge and understanding. It encourages dialogue across disciplinary barriers and between academics and practitioners, and reflects upon the implications of research findings for local, national and international policy in relation to landscape. The Companion provides a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to current thinking about landscapes, and serves as an invaluable point of reference for scholars, researchers and graduate students alike.

The principle of public participation in policy-making and policy implementation features in many European Union directives and policy documents. It is also undeniably connected to the rise of what can be called the European e-society, in which digital technologies are expected to strengthen public involvement in democratic processes. One broad group of such technologies are commonly referred to as geo-visualisations. This book contains the results of a European project that explored the potential for using innovative geo-visualisation techniques in public participation processes for spatial planning. The approach taken in the project involved continual interaction between concept development, the technological possibilities, and their practical application in case studies conducted in Belgium, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands. The structure of the book mirrors this procedure. Three chapters discuss the general concepts of spatial planning and participation, e-interaction, and innovation in organisations. Two chapters present the results of research into the communicative potential and the usability of 3-dimensional geo-visualisations. The translation of these concepts and findings into practice is reported in five chapters devoted to the case studies. The project generated greater understanding of the ways in which geo-visualisation can help to improve public participation in the process of finding solutions to spatial planning issues. This book and accompanying DVD with extra information, is therefore a valuable resource for professionals and practitioners already working with geo-visualisations in participatory spatial planning as well as those looking to do so. They can turn to this book for insights and inspiration.

This book presents definitions, key concepts and projects in landscape research and related areas, such as landscape science and landscape ecology, addressing and characterising the international role, status, challenges, future and tools of landscape research in the globalised world of the 21st century. The book brings together views on landscapes from leading international teams and emerging authors from different scientific disciplines and regions of the globe. It describes approaches for achieving sustainability and for handling the multifunctionality of landscapes and includes international case studies demonstrating the great potential of landscape research to provide partial sustainable solutions while developing cultural landscapes and protecting semi-natural landscapes. It is intended for scientists from various disciplines as well as informed readers dealing with landscape policies, planning, evolvement, management, stewardship and conservation.

This book constitutes the refereed conference proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Industrial, Engineering and Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems, IEA/AIE 2016, held in Morioka, Japan, in August 2-4, 2016. The 80 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 168 submissions. They are organized in topical sections: data science; knowledge base systems; natural language processing and sentiment analysis; semantic Web and social networks; computer vision; medical diagnosis system and bio-informatics; applied neural networks; innovations in intelligent systems and applications; decision support systems; adaptive control; soft computing and multi-agent systems; evolutionary algorithms and heuristic search; system integration for real-life applications.