Dr. H. Ferhan Kilical, Dr. Adil A. Kilical

GIS - IMAGE DATABASE ENVISIONS FOR PLANNING AND DESIGN: DOWNTOWN WASHINGTON, D.C. APPLICATION

Visual materials and the presentation of these materials are important for many professions. These include, but are by no means limited to, architecture, planning, history, art, and environmental sciences. GIS offers tremendous capabilities which are especially useful when the subject matter is geo-referenced and dealing with spatial relational databases and immense amounts of data. For example, ArcInfo and ArcCad were used to develop a system and prepare an image database for downtown Washington, D.C. ArcView v2.0 allows the end-user and decision maker the ability to display, browse, query, and analyze the data within the system.

This demo package also enables the user to make intelligent queries by targeting various attributes of the coverages. It also helps the user to explore and develop various alternative attributes or subjects for further investigation. For instance, initial queries might be to display the buildings built during a certain period of time, in a certain building style, with a certain construction system, and/or at a certain location such as district or street.

The footprint of such buildings would be highlighted on a map of the area. Further, the hotlink function would allow the user to see all locations from which photographs were taken, in and around the designated building, and pick a particular location to view the building as seen from that location.

This kind of GIS package can be utilized within a range of markets including, but not limited to: Real Estate, Planning Agencies, Architecture and Construction Management Firms, Facilities Management Offices, Public School Systems, Transportation Planning and Traffic Assessment Studies, Environmental and Historic Preservation Agencies.

INTRODUCTION

We live in an exciting time where new tools for using electronic media are rapidly evolving towards a whole new digital world. These tools change the way we live, think, educate, learn, entertain, and the way we do business. It can be said that a new Renaissance is appearing, relating the arts and sciences as well as influencing urban planning and design. This paper focuses on this modern Renaissance in terms of urban planning and design, image databasing, and GIS. "Virtual Community Takes Hold," "When the Rubber Doesn't Hit the Road," "Super Cyber Surfers," "3D: A Whole New Look in Multimedia," and "Little Dish TV", are some of the very common title heads we are seeing nowadays. Thus, the way we gather and work with information is rapidly changing. Just think of what you were doing a few years ago, think of what you are doing now, and envision what the future will be like very soon.

Presently, a shift from verbal to more visual modes of thinking and expression is occurring. The visual image itself is vital to the work of user, yet connections with identifying information and underlying context are essential information. Major advancements in digital imagery accomplished during the past several years introduced a highly developed software, and increasingly economical and powerful desktop computers enabling a completely new manner of storing, displaying, reworking, and presenting visual texts, photographs, and drawings. Accordingly, the new technology of digitized visual imaging has already begun influencing the way we do planning, design and engineering. Through the use of new technology and the digitized image, it became possible for a vast number of images to be available for immediate searching, manipulation, and transmission.

Even more importantly, through the incorporation of databases of visual information, these images can be related to each other according to their various attributes and characteristics. Professionally speaking, the authors believe that soon almost everything will be performed through computers, and our role will turn more and more towards being information managers and/or decision makers.

Within the aforementioned guidelines, this paper presents a brief walk-through of a planning and design application using GIS based digital image database for the historical downtown Washington, D.C. Further, some ambitious envisions for GIS based digital image database such as the incorporation of 3D walk-through and video clips are discussed.

APPLICATION

This system combines convergent technologies and integrates both raster and vector graphics with databases, combining GIS, CAD, 3D Studio and computer imaging in a wholistic way. One can easily make horizontal and vertical drill-downs making graphics, image, tabular and text information that is organized in a spatial manner available to everybody.

Since the footprints and images of buildings, streets, and urban open spaces are organized on their geographic locations, powerful GIS software such as ArcInfo and ArcCad were employed for the application. ArcView, a user friendly tool, established the interface for the end-user of the system. The recent advancement in ArcView with the introduction of version 2.0/c enables the incorporation of images and having multiple windows. In short, the application incorporates such a digital image management system that permits basic visual texts to be filed and accessed in multiple ways, allowing cross comparisons within a specific project or issue related topics.

Each design work will have attributes associated with their context, such as location, name of the project, street address, year built, style, material, function, remarks, and images. There will be more themes created besides the building footprints. One such theme created for Washington D.C. is the "lots" layer, defining the divisions in the historical downtown. This layer covers plazas, open spaces, and elements of streetscape.

The GIS database, along with project attributes and images, will contain other information to allow search and query for special needs of the professional field. For design and planning professionals such attributes could be climate, vegetative cover, land use, demography, zoning, topography, geological areas, historic sites, wetlands, and flood zones. The more varied the attributes, more specific queries may be accomplished.

The project being quite large and complex, the authors began with historical downtown Washington, D.C. as the first modular component of the project. AutoCAD Release 12 for Windows, courtesy of Autodesk, was used to draw all building footprints based on several maps and aerial photographs of the city (Scott and Lee 1993), streamlining the building footprints to minimize the number of arcs as much as possible. ArcInfo and ArcCad 11.3 for Windows, courtesy of Esri, were used to create the final topology for individual layers.

An "image" theme consisting of points was also created, each point representing the actual location the image was taken from. Images of the buildings, either prints or slides, are scanned using a slide or flatbed scanner, in a format readable by ArcView such as TIFF or GIF. After the query is done, the hotlink icon can be activated. One simply picks up the hotlink, places on the point that was queried and views the image.

In order to make a query, one picks up the "hammer" icon and sets up the query using Boolean relationships. In case a particular building is searched for, such as the White House, one activates the "?" button, enters the text "White House". The footprint polygon of the White House is automatically highlighted and zoomed to its extents also displaying the image points. This query can also be done in various ways.

The authors are currently working on integrating a 3D walk-through theme within the ArcView application. Similar to hotlink for still images, points will be used to activate a short 3D walk-through and animation. In this application a 3D walk-through and animation of the Mall area from downtown D.C. will be displayed. The DXF files of buildings in the Mall area are imported into 3D Studio. The three-dimensional drawings of these buildings are rendered and then animated.

ENVISIONS

The cities should definitely be treated as a single unit although they have complex planning problems and strong forces that drive their solutions. There are many competing interests striving to exert their influence over the urban fabric of the city, the result of which makes up the city. Historically, the most distinguished and dominant are the politicians. Their view of any problem is the effect the solution will have on the balance of power. The economists look at the economic benefits and/or drawbacks of any given solution in terms of tax bases, localized economic issues, etc. On the other hand, the sociologist looks at the less tangible social consequences of particular options such as crime rates and resident attitudes.

Engineers and architects are mainly concerned with the physical and structural environment. The structures created or destroyed, as well as the spaces in between these structures form the basis for the architects' and engineers' decision process.

The physical city has three layers: underground, ground and overhead levels. The underground level consists of all the installations that occur underground, such as mass transit systems, waste disposal systems, and utilities. Ground level consists of activities taking place at or close to ground level, such as roads, buildings, and most human activities. Overhead level activities include radio transmission, airspace, and pollution.

Traditional GIS is a very powerful tool all through the planning process. In this paper, along with traditional GIS thinking, we would like to concentrate on visual aspects, electronic media presentation, and telecommunication issues. The system that the authors are working on can easily be applied in research as well as master plan review and revision. All data such as soil, vegetation, hydrology, topography, landuse, infrastructure, streets, districts, parcels, zoning, etc. will be already available in the system. Further, all the relevant data about the existing buildings such as its age, materials used, function, architectural style, historically registered or not, name of the architect, and the images, AutoCad drawings, and 3D walk-throughs of the buildings will also be in the system. In some cases, if possible, video clips will be integrated by means of a customized hotlink function.

As Jack Dangermond pointed out at the 1994 National Capital Area ArcInfo Users Group, Annual Regional Conference at the University of Maryland, College Park, nowadays many businesses use cash registers to collect information on a company's inventory and revenues with each transaction. Using a similar approach, a considerably perfected comprehensive GIS could be the backbone of the Information Highway system.With the enormous advancements in this information age, assume that the traditional work place has totally changed. As the aforesaid data shall be available in cyberspace, architects and engineers shall have access to recent data on plots, zoning regulations, setbacks, traffic counts, soil conditions, street vistas, etc. through advanced communication devices such as Internet or cable channel. The planner, designer, engineer or developer will have a better sense of what the land is like, soil conditions, how far is it from wetlands, hydrologic conditions of the site, how much money is needed for drainage, foundation requirements,etc.

Additionally, photographs of the surrounding buildings shall reveal what the physical environment is like: architectural styles, walk-throughs of some of the existing buildings, video clips with sound, daily traffic and parking conditions, nearby natural sites, parks etc. In short, it will give in-depth wholistic feeling with the images, text and relavant data and also would allow one to make some mathematical calculations. The same scenario can be applied to other planning issues such as transportation planning, as well.

Thus, Planning Agencies can create better environments because the digital spatial data helps to perceive things better. Correspondingly, public hearings and multi-media presentations can be held using a very accurate simulation of the new project and its impact on the surrounding environment. All such changes and/or new projects shall be reviewed, and either rejected or approved by the Planning Agency authorities. Then, these "transactions" shall be immediately registered to update the recent changes in the physical environment.

Such information transactions on planning and design issues is not far from reality as both the State and local governments see telecommunications as a key driver for greater productivity and a better economy. It should also be mentioned that Congress is rewriting the telecommunications law.

REFERENCES

Scott, Pamela, and Antoinette J. Lee. Buildings of the District of Columbia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Jack Dangermond. National Capital Area ArcInfo Users Group, Annual Regional Conference at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD. December 1994.

Tod Newcombe. "Is Imaging Right for You?" Government Technology, pp.1, 54. April 1995, vol. 8, no. 4.

Miller Brian. "Telecommunications Reform Returns to Congress", Government Technology, pp.1, 45, 46 February 1995, vol. 8, no 2.

B.G. Yovovich. "When the Rubber Does not Hit the Road." Planning. December 1994. pp. 12-17.

Mark von Wodtke. Mind Over Media. McGraw Hill, 1993.

____. Landscape Ecology & GIS. edited by Haines Young, David Green, S. Cousins. Taylor & Francis, 1993.

Kilical, Ferhan and Kilical, Adil. "Arc/Image Text" presented at 1994 Esri Users Conference." May 1994.

Krum Ted. "3-D: A Whole New Look in Multimedia" New Media vol. 5, no. 1. pp. 45 - 48. Jan 1995.

Melville C. Branch Comprehensive City Planning APA Press, 1985.

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Stover Dawn. "Little Dish TV." Popular Science. p. 6065.