Augmented reality framework supporting conceptual urban planning and enhancing the awareness for environmental impact

This paper introduces a new augmented reality framework based on a multi-source urban planning backbone aiming at interactively investigating fast "what-if" analysis of urban planning simulations and creating awareness of possible environmental impact. The process of advanced urban planning nowadays includes the simulation of physical phenomena, its analysis, visualization and interpretation in order to evaluate the impact on the layout of the planning. For example, noise and air pollution, annoyances due to both nearby transportation infrastructure and urban traffic have become a serious concern for citizens. In order to provide major aid to the involved stakeholders, especially city managers, new techniques for the preparation, representation and interpretation of the typically large amount of resulting simulation data are required. These must be designed in order to enhance the perceptual and cognitive processes of users to facilitate faster interpretation and decision making. Hence, we introduce a new augmented reality framework which not only allows users to visualize but also to analyze physical phenomena in fast "what-if"- scenarios. By changing boundary conditions, parameters and re-simulating at interactive rates results can be augmented into real world planning layouts. Augmenting reality, urban planning and layouts with resulting simulation data through real-time visualizing tools provides a new and efficient interactive post processing unit for the exploration and analysis of the environmental impact due to changing conditions.