Datascape has been developed by combining several visualisations technologies that Daden has previously worked on in the Second Life virtual world, including displaying Google Maps within the world (as used by Birmingham City Council), plotting real-time data from aircraft approaching Los Angeles airport, and showing RSS and twitter feeds inworld.
Daden MD David Burden said, “Although we had developed all these visualisation technologies independently, it was only when we brought them together into a single environment that we recognised the true potential of virtual worlds for data visualisation and sharing.”
Dr Robert Childs of the National Defense University spoke about the importance of Data Fusion, Situational Awareness and Information Dominance in the modern world at the recent Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds in Washington DC. Daden were the only UK company to be invited and David considers that
“These terms apply as much to businesses as to the Military, to the private sector as well as the Government sector. In the modern world we are flooded by information, and the winners will be those who can identify and use that information in the most effective and timely manner. We believe that Datascape is a significant milestone along that journey.”
Central to Datascape is its smart map-table, which as well as displaying Google Maps can also show Open Streetmap, Second Life's own map, or indeed any web based mapping (or imaging) system that deploys similar technology.
Around the central map are a number of stations, each station themeing the whole environment to a given data space – displaying maps, plotting data, show RSS/Twitter feeds and creating other visualisations as required. For instance the Air Transport theme will zoom the map into Los Angeles airport, display aircraft approach LAX from near-real-time data, set RSS screens up to show traffic and airport news relevant to the airport, and make LAX web cams available at the touch of a (virtual) button.
David continues “The Swine Flu news broke as we were developing this, so it was natural to see how Datascape could be used to track this. So we set up a Swine Flu theme and brought in RSS news from the Centre for Disease Control, Google and the World Health Organisation, displaying it as news items on the RSS screens, and plotting the stories geographically on the globe. It also prompted us to establish a permanent WHO Pandemic Alert state notice in Datascape (automatically updated hourly from the WHO web site), and the UK Home Office Terror Alert state too.”
As well as the visualisation systems, Datascape also provides ready access to other information sources, incorporating both Daden's Navigator web browser for Second Life, and Daden's Discourse chatbot system to provide a permanent virtual assistant within the space. Clients will be able to specify the themes, data-sources and visualisations they require, and create others on-demand.
For the future David sees such spaces as providing “virtual war-rooms” for a wide variety of organisations and social groups, beyond conventional enterprise, military and government use,
“We are particularly keen to see how such spaces can provide collaborative, responsive planning centres for natural disasters and humanitarian emergencies, allow representatives from NGOs, Governments and communities around the world to meet and plan in virtual space in a way that was previously only available to the military and intelligence agencies.”
Datascape has initially been developed on the Second Life virtual world, and could be deployed by organisations behind corporate firewalls using either Linden Lab's own enterprise solution, or through Open Sim. Daden are also looking at the potential to use it in other virtual worlds.
Datascape can be visited at any time on the Daden Prime sim in Second Life at and additional information is available at http://www.daden.co.uk/
Additional images are available at http://www.daden.co.uk/
