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Chapter 28
Raffaele De Amicis
Fondazione Graphitech, Italy
Giuseppe Conti
Fondazione Graphitech, Italy
Ambient Intelligence and
Immersive Geospatial
Visual Analytics
ABSTRACT
The unprecedented success of 3D geobrowsers, mostly due to the user-friendliness typical of their inter-
faces and to the extremely wide set of information available, has undoubtedly marked a turning point
within the geospatial domain, clearly departing from previous IT solutions in the feld of Geographical
Information Systems (GIS). This technological great leap forward has paved the way to a new generation
of GeoVisual Analytics (GVA) applications capable to ensure access, fltering and processing of large
repositories of geospatial information. Within this context we refer to GeoVisual Analytics as the set
of tools, technologies and methodologies which can be deployed to increase situational awareness by
helping operators identify specifc data patterns within a vast information fow made of multidimensional
geographical data coming from static databases as well as from sensor networks.
This shift, which essentially follows the vision of a “Digital Earth” envisaged by Al Gore a decade ago,
is bringing concepts typical of Ambient Intelligence to a wider, environmental scale. The chapter frst
presents the reasons that have brought to such a radical shift and it highlights the profound implications
at the technological and societal level. We further demonstrate how the domain of ambient intelligence
is not any more spatially limited and how the combined use of AMI and VA can be essential for the
development of new tools to be used at environmental scale level.
The convergence of technologies typical of GVA with those of AmI can be crucial within several mission-
critical tasks, typical for instance of environmental management and control. These can be signifcantly
enhanced through the adoption of paradigms and technologies typical of Ambient Intelligence including
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61692-857-5.ch028