Integration Methodologies for Interactive Forest Modelling and Visualization Systems
Hong Tang, Ian David Bishop · The Cartographic Journal · 2002
GIS, environmental modelling and visualization techniques are increasingly being used together in environmental and forest management practices as decision support tools. There are many attempts to produce better integration of these techniques, especially advanced visualization techniques. This paper begins with the brief review of visualizations currently used in forest management, and then examines existing systems using those visualizations. An idealized forest decision support system is then proposed.The trend for spatial decision support system (SDSS) development is the integration of GIS, modelling and visualization. This paper classifies integration methodologies in terms of integration techniques applied and summarizes their advantages and disadvantages. Each approach is then compared based on the degree of interactivity, level of integration, and implementation effort required. The paper also describes and presents the results of several system developments attempted by the authors and briefly discusses the issues considered in their development and evaluation.