A prototype spatial data environment for urban design

Abstract

This paper describes an interdisciplinary research project aimed at developing a prototype system for representing spatial data. The project involves researchers and teachers in urban design, computer aided design and photogrammetry. The paper first highlights the spectrum of information used in urban design contexts that guided the approach we adopted in developing the prototype system. We next describe how the acquired data are transformed into useful information by associating with data items (i) textual records stored in a relational database management system and (ii) image, video and audio data. Finally, we present extensions of the prototype as a design decision support tool and close with some open research issues.