The new tools of the digital age are revolutionizing cartography. The following projects, coming from different parts of the planet, show that the science of geography is in full evolution.
Mountains of augmented reality
The Bruno Kessler Foundation (FBK), in the Italian town of Trento, is developing a tool to automate the augmented reality process – instant superimposition of data on an image – in natural landscapes. Baptized asMarmota Project, the idea is thatthe user takes a snapshot and indicates the coordinates for the system to do the rest through geographic databases. “The true potential of this instrument will become evident when thousands or millions of people register and share their photos”, indicates Michele Zanin, from the Vision Technologies Research Unit of this Italian foundation.
Watch the city move
In theSENSEable City Lab, a laboratory belonging to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the activity of mobile phones inAmsterdamwith the purpose ofvisualize, in real time,traffic jams, patterns of displacement or the citizen response in exceptional situations. This system, baptized as CurrentCity, offers the opportunity to improve the management of the city.
A geography of the coolest
The objective ofThe Geography of Buzz, launched last year by the universities of Columbia and Southern California (USA), is to quantify and understandhow the cultural scene of the great metropolises develops. It was prepared by analyzing some 300,000 photos taken at 6,000 concerts, shootings, fashion shows and other events held in New York and Los Angeles.
The information also goes to pedals
In addition to storing excess kinetic energy and returning it as extra momentum when needed, The Copenhagen Wheel – another initiative of MIT’s SENSEable City Lab – enables cyclists to create and share information about their city. While a GPS system records the position and the routes traveled, various sensors analyze the air quality, count the kilometers or receive reports on traffic. All this information is transmitted via Bluetooth to other mobiles.
Francisco Javier Alonso
