A digital twin is a digital representation of real-world physical product, system, or process. Digital twins potentially offer a much richer capability to model and analyze real-world systems and improve environment sustainability.In this work, an integrated 3D GIS and VR model for scenarios modeling and interactive data visualisation has been developed and implemented through the Digital Twin technology at the Glensaugh research farm. Spatial Multi-criteria Analysis has been applied to decide where to plant new woodlands, recognizing a range of land-use objectives while acknowledging concerns about possible conflicts with other uses of the land. The virtual contents (e.g., forest spatial datasets, monitored climate data, analyzed carbon stocks and natural capital asset index) have been embedded in the virtual landscape model which help raise public awareness of changes in rural areas.The Digital twin prototype for Glensaugh Climate-Positive Farming was used at the STFC workshop 2021, GISRUK 2022, 2022 Royal Highland Show which provides an innovative framework to integrate spatial data modelling, analytical capabilities and immersive visualization.Audience feedback suggested that the virtual environment was very effective in providing a more realistic impression of the different land-use and woodland expansion scenarios and environmental characteristics. This suggests considerable added value from using digital twin technology to better deal with complexity of data analysis, scenarios simulation and enable rapid interpretation of solutions.Findings show this method has a potential impact on future woodland planning and enables rapid interpretation of forest and climate data which increases the effectiveness of their use and contribution to wider sustainable environment.

Fashion industry emissions, resource use, and waste are attracting increasing consumer and government attention, with broad agreement that a new approach is required along the supply chain. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, a move to digitalisation facilitated an accelerating interest in digital applications, including immersive technologies such as augmented and virtual reality. This systematic literature review explores the intersecting topics of fashion, immersive technologies, and sustainability to determine the trends, examine the solutions offered, and discuss the implications of immersive technologies for sustainability. Four resources were consulted (Scholar, SCOPUS, WOS, and ProQuest), resulting in 74 articles for the review. Grey literature was included due to the currency of the topic and gaps in the available academic literature. The findings highlight immersive technology uses in the fashion industry, which are part of a move towards sustainability. These technologies are used to reduce online returns, educate consumers, reduce waste in design and manufacture, and remove the need for physical items. However, issues include high energy costs, consumer reluctance, and skill shortages. Results suggest future research and industry discussions should focus on empirical studies to measure the sustainability impact of immersive technologies, monitor technology diffusion and uptake, and measure the industry skills gap.

Textile and fashion brands convey core values through marketing, and in slow-fashion heritage brands this often includes skilled craftsmanship, authenticity, sustainability, and provenance. As industry digitalisation continues, brands are employing immersive technologies - virtual (VR) or augmented (AR) reality - however there is scarce evidence of these being used to communicate craftsmanship or provenance. To explore this potential, survey participants were shown immersive and traditional marketing content and perceptions of brand image were sought. The immersive content elicited new brand associations compared with the traditional content, which may be desirable if targeting a younger or more fashion-forward demographic. However, the immersive content was less effective at inspiring participants to make a purchase, with many participants overwhelmed by the virtual environment. The research concludes that effective immersive content should incorporate a streamlined representation of brand identity and core values, utilising an accessible platform while the adoption of VR headsets remains limited.

Fast and effectively disposable fashion has seen clothing reduced to transient items, worn for a short period of time then discarded. This has pushed down prices, moving textile and clothing production to low-cost labour countries and decimating the traditional Scottish textile economy. Fast fashion drives consumer demand for newness and uses finite resources that are damaging to the environment. In 2019, the pressure to move towards a more sustainable fashion and textile industry is intense. Traditional textile manufacture using natural, renewable sources that are inherently long-lasting offers a slow fashion alternative, epitomized by the Harris Tweed handweaver community in Scotland. Fashion has embraced digital, with growing online sales and increasing focus on digital content. This presents an opportunity to redress the balance by using technology to shape a sustainable future for traditional textiles. Utilizing an interpretive paradigm and inductive approach, an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded networking grant is presented as a qualitative case study, investigating how immersive technologies can be used to safeguard the future of traditional textile products, to educate contemporary, global audiences on the provenance and human hand behind manufacturing processes and to encourage consumption of products with longevity. This explanatory case study finds that fashion brands are using immersive technologies for virtual changing rooms or creative customer experiences but are not exploiting the possibilities of immersive technologies in engendering a sense of place or people behind the product. Findings also reveal that the Harris Tweed Authority and Harris Tweed Hebrides brand successfully use landscape to convey a sense of place, but are under-utilizing the handwoven value and sustainable, slow fashion credentials of Harris Tweed. China is identified as a potential place for Harris Tweed to gain valuable market share, with increasingly wealthy Chinese Generation Z consumers seeking individual exclusivity and sustainability in their clothing purchases, criteria that embody Harris Tweed.

Forests and woodlands offer many benefits to people. They can provide timber and food, store carbon to help deal with the effects of climate change, decrease flooding and soil erosion, and provide recreation for people and habitat for a multitude of species we care to conserve. Scottish forests cover roughly 19% of the country. The Scottish government has the ambition to add several thousand hectares a year over the next decades, to support the rural economy, the environment, and communities. It is important that a substantial proportion of the expansion is made up by native trees and shrub species due to better habitat for wildlife. These challenges were explored with a case study of virtual forest landscape from Cairngorms National Park (CNP) which was used to test preferences for scenarios of future woodland expansion. Spatial Multi-criteria Analysis (sMCA) has been applied to decide where to plant new forests and woodlands, recognizing a range of land-use objectives while acknowledging concerns about possible conflicts with other uses of the land. The tools used in the development and implementation of the 3D model were PC and Mobile based, and enable the incorporation of interactive functionality for manipulating features. Model inputs comprise 5m DTM, 25cm Aerial Imagery, 3D Tree Species, GIS layers of Current Forest and Woodland Expansion inside CNP. Afforestation animation has been attached in Google My Maps. This is through setting different keyframes by storyboard camera path animation around the area of CNP. Stereo panorama has been applied to selection of woodland expansion scenarios (e.g. Broadleaved potential corridors, Conifer potential corridors), which is viewed with mobile technology and Virtual Reality (VR) equipment. The 3D model with simulation of woodland expansion was used at the event of 2019 Royal Highland Show and European Forest Institute Annual Conference 2019. Audience feedback suggested the enhancement of user interaction through VR has potential implications for the planning of future woodland to increase the effectiveness of their use and contribution to wider sustainable ecosystems.

Immersive Technology has been widely discussed in various applications; the development of this technology creates an experience which is not possible in our physical reality. The rapid development of computer software and hardware makes the 3D visualisation and simulation of real-world scenarios could be represented in much higher resolutions. Recent studies show that visualising natural disasters immersively could be beneficial to increase people’s awareness and prepare the public for future event. In a recent research project, we visualized and simulated a flooding event, Storm Frank, in 2015 and its damage to the local residence of a town called Ballater outside Aberdeen, UK on Virtual Reality form. To provide accurate simulation, topographic data and real-world environmental data such as weather, rainfalls, river level data etc., are applied and analysed in this project. This immersive experience provides significant opportunities for effective communication among all users. The project used 3D modelling and simulation of the flooding encompasses the development and exemplification of the model of the town and real scenario flooding event, retrieving data from various sources such as geographical data and environment data. The gamification of this application shows great potential to be used for public engagement event, policy making and educational purposes.

Rate-Distortion (RD) performance of Distributed Video Coding (DVC) is considerably less than that of conventional predictive video coding. In order to reduce the performance gap, many methods and techniques have been proposed to improve the coding efficiency of DVC with increased system complexity, especially techniques employed at the encoder such as encoder mode decisions, optimal quantization, hash methods etc., no doubt increase the complexity of the encoder. However, low complexity encoder is a widely desired feature of DVC. In order to improve the coding efficiency while maintaining low complexity encoder, this paper focuses on Distributed Residual Video Coding (DRVC) architecture and proposes a simple encoder scheme. The main contributions of this paper are as follows: 1) propose a bit plane block based method combined with bit plane re-arrangement to improve the dependency between source and Side Information (SI), and meanwhile, to reduce the amount of data to be channel encoded 2) present a simple iterative dead-zone quantizer with 3 levels in order to adjust quantization from coarse to fine. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms DISCOVER scheme for low to medium motion video sequences in terms of RD performance, and maintains a low complexity encoder at the same time.

This paper proposes a 3D-2D-3D algorithm for doors and windows detection in 3D indoor environment of point cloud data. Firstly, by setting up a virtual camera in the middle of this 3D environment, a set of pictures are taken from different angles by rotating the camera, so that corresponding 2D images can be generated. Next, these images are used to detect and identify the positions of doors and windows in the space. To obtain point cloud data containing the doors and windows position information, the 2D information are then mapped back to the origin 3D point cloud environment. Finally, by processing the contour lines and crossing points, the features of doors and windows through the position information are optimized. The experimental results show that this global-local approach is efficient when detecting and identifying the location of doors and windows in 3D point cloud environment.

The Sponge City concept has been promoted as a major programme of work to address increasing flood risk in urban areas, in combination with wider benefits for water resources and urban renewal. However, realization of the concept requires collaborative engagement with a wide range of professionals and with affected communities. Visualization can play an important role in this process. In this research, a sponge city flood simulation and forecasting system has been built which combines hydrological data, topographic data, GIS data and hydrodynamic models in real-time and interactive display in a three-dimensional environment. Actual and design flood events in a pilot sponge city have been simulated. The validation results show that the simulated urban water accumulation process is consistent with the actual monitoring data. Use of advanced virtual reality technology can enable simulations to be placed in the wider design context including enhanced awareness of multiple functions of urban ecosystems. This procedure can therefore reduce the information communication gap and encourage innovation regarding low impact development required for sponge city construction.

Mitigating and adapting to climate change includes a requirement to evaluate the role of future land uses in delivering robust integrated responses that are sensitive to local landscape contexts. In practice, this emphasises the need for community engagement, planning and inclusive decision-making. Community engagement may be potentially facilitated by the use of spatially explicit quantitative scenarios of land-use change in combination with interactive visualisation. This requires a coherent framework to integrate spatial data modelling, analytical capabilities and visualisation tools in a format that will also engage diverse public audiences. These challenges were explored with a case study of virtual landscapes from N-E Scotland that was used to test preferences for scenarios of future land use. Visualisations employed texture-based rendering rather than full photo-realistic rendering to facilitate interactivity and this provided additional scope for audiences to explore multiple future scenarios compared to the present landscape. Interactive voting in a virtual landscape theatre suggested preferences for visual diversity, good stewardship and perceived naturalness that should be considered in developing planned responses to change. Further investigation of preferences was conducted using interactive 3D features located within the landscape. Study findings are reviewed against objectives for inclusive engagement in the Digital Earth agenda and used to make further recommendations on the use of scenarios and visualisation tools. In particular, technical advances in user engagement need to be developed in conjunction with emerging good practice that addresses ethical, behavioural and inclusion issues so that the content is presented in as transparent and unbiased format as possible.

. Many flood warning systems were developed for 2D environments and limited on specific flood hazard. With the purpose of overcoming these disadvantages, it is necessary to propose new methodologies and techniques for 3D real time flood simulation. In this paper, a novel flood hazard warning system has been proposed. It describes and defines the relationship between the different parts of the simulation system in order to offer not only numeric data or figures, but also more meaningful and appealing 3D visual information. Consequently, the performance of this simulation system depends on the quality of the three sub systems: 3D real world modelling system with GIS data, 3D environment reconstruction system and 3D flood simulation system. A new flooding model has been developed which can handle dynamic flood behaviour and predict inundation areas in real time. In order to validate our flood warning system, the region of Tewkesbury in England has been simulated with a potential flood. The flood spreading process is shown during different time and the detailed inundation area is presented for further disaster evaluation. The study achieved two main objectives: implementing a useful flood simulation with real world model and reconstructed environment for flood hazard warning; producing a friendly simulation system interface for either a decision maker or experienced user.

Many flood warning systems were developed for 2D environments and limited on specific flood hazard. With the purpose of overcoming these disadvantages, it is necessary to propose new methodologies and techniques for 3D real time flood simulation. In this paper, a novel flood hazard warning system has been proposed. It describes and defines the relationship between the different parts of the simulation system in order to offer not only numeric data or figures, but also more meaningful and appealing 3D visual information. Consequently, the performance of this simulation system depends on the quality of the three sub systems: 3D real world modelling system with GIS data, 3D environment reconstruction system and 3D flood simulation system. A new flooding model has been developed which can handle dynamic flood behaviour and predict inundation areas in real time. In order to validate our flood warning system, the region of Tewkesbury in England has been simulated with a potential flood. The flood spreading process is shown during different time and the detailed inundation area is presented for further disaster evaluation. The study achieved two main objectives: implementing a useful flood simulation with real world model and reconstructed environment for flood hazard warning; producing a friendly simulation system interface for either a decision maker or experienced user.

Wind energy is identified as having a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emission, and Scottish Government targets for the generation of energy from renewable sources. Public policy emphasises the importance of using an ecosystem approach, and the role of public engagement in decisions about future uses of land and sea. A prototype 3D model was developed to present a loch with hypothetical wind turbines on the west coast of Scotland. The model was used to identify issues arising between the growing interest marine renewables, land use changes in line with changing policy and the potential effects on existing seascapes and marine industries and activities. An interface has been developed to provide interactive movement of features in models, including hotkeys to: (i) Switching between images (e.g. 1:50,000 map and aerial images) and GIS Data layers (e.g. Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) designations); (ii) Introducing new features (e.g. houses, wind turbines, trees); (iii) ‘drag and drop’ features, guided by the audience. The virtual reality model was tested with a range of different audience types at events in Oban, on the west coast of Scotland, and Aberdeen on the east coast through Virtual Landscape Theatre (VLT) and Oculus Rift. Factors identified for detailed testing included the significance of lighting conditions on the east and west coast, sea state on perceptions of seascape and wind energy generation, and people’s activities at different times of the day.

The objective of this paper is to report on the development of prototype models for use in raising public awareness of changes in urban areas, focusing on green spaces, and testing responses to scenarios of change. Specifically, the focus is on the design of appropriate types of outdoor features for community planning and engagement. This modelling is fulfilled using the Autodesk Maya, Google SketchUp and ArcGIS software packages together in a novel combination of spatial and visualisation tools. The experiment results show evidence that different types of 3D iconic symbols with interactive communication will influence participation and decision making in land use planning.

Marine renewables are identified as having a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emission, and Scottish Government targets for the generation of energy from renewable sources. Public policy emphasises the importance of using an ecosystem approach, and the role of public engagement in decisions about future uses of land and sea. A prototype 3D model was developed to present alternative designs of a hypothetical windfarm offshore of the island of Tiree, on the west coast of Scotland. The model was used to identify issues associated with the development of offshore windfarms, including alternative options for the heights of wind turbines, and factors such as sea state and atmospheric visibility. A virtual reality environment (Virtual Landscape Theatre) was used as the medium with invited groups from schools and youth groups, university students, natural heritage managers, planners, and the general public, enabling fly-throughs, exploring specific views, and switching between windfarms with alternative designs of turbine height. Factors identified for detailed testing included the significance of lighting conditions on the east and west coast, sea state on perceptions of seascape and wind energy generation, and people’s activities at different times of the day.

The recent advancement of motion recognition using Microsoft Kinect stimulates many new ideas in motion capture and virtual reality applications. Utilizing a pattern recognition algorithm, Kinect can determine the positions of different body parts from the user. However, due to the use of a single-depth camera, recognition accuracy drops significantly when the parts are occluded. This hugely limits the usability of applications that involve interaction with external objects, such as sport training or exercising systems. The problem becomes more critical when Kinect incorrectly perceives body parts. This is because applications have limited information about the recognition correctness, and using those parts to synthesize body postures would result in serious visual artifacts. In this paper, we propose a new method to reconstruct valid movement from incomplete and noisy postures captured by Kinect. We first design a set of measurements that objectively evaluates the degree of reliability on each tracked body part. By incorporating the reliability estimation into a motion database query during run time, we obtain a set of similar postures that are kinematically valid. These postures are used to construct a latent space, which is known as the natural posture space in our system, with local principle component analysis. We finally apply frame-based optimization in the space to synthesize a new posture that closely resembles the true user posture while satisfying kinematic constraints. Experimental results show that our method can significantly improve the quality of the recognized posture under severely occluded environments, such as a person exercising with a basketball or moving in a small room.

The objective of this paper is to report on the development of prototype models for use in raising public awareness of changes in rural areas, focusing on green spaces, and testing responses to scenarios of change. Specifically, the focus is on the design of appropriate types and speeds of movement of features. This modelling is done using the Maya and ArcGIS software packages together in a novel combination of spatial and visualisation tools. The experiment results show evidence that different types of animation with interactive communication will influence participation and decision making in land use planning.