Project Beyond Maps - Immersive Exploration of Heat, Air, Sound and Motion

Prof. Dr. Bernd Fröhlich
M.Sc. Tony Zöppig
M.Sc. Karoline Brehm

This project is offered jointly with the Chair of Transport System Planning
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Uwe Plank-Wiedenbeck
M.Sc. Leon Thiebes
Dipl.-Ing. Julius Uhlmann

The quality of life in urban areas is largely determined by urban planning and the urban transport network. Road traffic has a significant impact on urban mobility, air quality, noise pollution, and the microclimate in an urban context. Currently, results from simulations of traffic, air pollutants, noise, and microclimate are often presented in engineering practice in the form of lengthy texts, tables, and complex diagrams or maps. The presentation of environmental simulations in virtual reality (VR) offers innovative ways to visualise this information. Moreover, social virtual environments (SVE) allow multiple users to join a shared immersive workspace to collaborate on urban planning problems and evaluate how different designs would affect the environmental qualities of a ”liveable city”. One highly relevant use case is citizen participation, to empower laypeople to understand the complexities of urban development projects in their community and meaningfully engage in the decision-making process. 

In this interdisciplinary project, students from engineering and computer science will work together to develop a concept for such an SVE based on the real-world planning scenario of the Weimar ”Bahnhofsquartier”. You will design an application prototype that supports users in their exploration and understanding this complex planning scenario by visualising validated simulation data of relevant environmental effects. Users will be able to compare and evaluate alternative planning variants, interactively discover the effects of design parameters on environmental qualities, and work together to discuss and form opinions about the planning problem.

Each student will contribute skills from their field of study to the development of the prototype:

• The team will collaborate across disciplines to develop the concept for the prototype and to create the necessary interface between Unity3D and the simulation program to visualise the analysis data in Unity3D.
• Students who focus on the simulation implementation will gain experience in new domains like Urban Micro-Climate and expand their experience in already known domains like Geospatial Modelling with QGSI, Computational Fluid Dynamics with ANSYS or Microscopic Traffic Simulation with PTV.
• Students who focus on the VR development will apply and deepen their knowledge about multi-user VR development in Unity3D and C#. You will explore advanced multi-user interaction concepts, such as experimenting with ego-/exocentric and multiple views on the spatial data and interaction with simulation parameters.

All participants should enjoy working in an interdisciplinary group and be able to converse in English. In addition, you should be curious about the project topics:

• interaction design for virtual reality as well as mixed reality
• environmental simulation, traffic and city planning

Before registering for this project, please ensure you meet the following course requirements:

• For Students interested in the VR implementation: Successful completion of Introduction to Virtual Reality or similar previous experience is required.
• For Students interested in the environmental modelling implementation: Successful completion of either Microscopic Traffic Simulation or Geo-Spatial Information Systems is required.

The final assessment of your work will be conducted based on the project contributions of every team member, including:

• Quality and innovation of your practical results
• Active participation in the project during and in between weekly meetings
• Intermediate and final project presentations
• Documentation