Solstice, Volume XVII, Number 2, 2006

Announcement: 3D Atlas of Ann Arbor, 2nd Edition*

Sandra Lach Arlinghaus Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor of Mathematical Geography and Population-Environment Dynamics
School of Natural Resources and Environment, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Please set screen to highest resolution and use a high speed internet connection.
Please download the most recent free version of Google Earth^®. Make sure the "Terrain" box in Google Earth^® is checked.

The animated scene in Figure 1 offered city officials and others an oppotunity to see where contours of the landscape are in relation to existing buildings in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. Those who were ambitious could download either Cosmo^® or Cortona^® virtual reality players and then drive around inside the scene to consider how water might fill the contours the Allen Creek drainage basin in an emergency situation. This scene was first published in Solstice, 2005. It is composed of a sequence of three linked virtual reality files. The first one, of a peaceful downtown set to a backdrop of music from Beethoven's (Sixth) Pastorale symphony, shows quite a bit of detail; subsequent linked files of the emergency do not. What none of these shows, however, is

the full extent of the drainage basin and the relation of these waters to the entire floodplain
the relation of these buildings to others in Ann Arbor
the relation of buildings, streets, waters, or anything else in the scene to the surface of the Earth.

Figure 1.. Animated sequence of screen shots taken from three linked virtual reality models, above. To get the full experience, enter the scene and drive around!

Google Earth^® software offers a straighforward manner for incorporating the full floodplain, for viewing all digitized buildings in relation to aerials of the entire city, and for placing everything on the surface of the Earth. As one moves around, the pointer offers a read-out not only of position, in terms of latitude and longitude but also of elevation (in units chosen by the reader). The concepts learned* in the creation of the files of Figure 1 (using a combination of ArcView^® GIS software from ESRI^® together with 3D Studio Max^® from AutoDesk^® coupled with simple editing of .vrml files in a text editor) aided greatly in the leap to their direct placement in Google Earth^® .

Go directly to the recently published 3D Atlas of Ann Arbor, 2nd Edition via this link
or
Go to the eBooks section of the Institute of Mathematical Geography webpage

OR DOWNLOAD THE FILES BELOW--DRIVE AROUND IN THEM...

GLOBAL FILES--if the buildings do not show when first downloaded into Google Earth^®, put check mark(s) in appropriate box(es) on the left. Once files are opened in Google Earth, parts of one may be viewed with parts of others.
File showing all buildings--all the same color (maize)

File showing all buildings--two colors. In this file, buildings of The University of Michigan (UM)are blue (cyan) and those within the boundary of the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) are maize.

File showing all buildings along with textured blocks fit into the maize DDA buildings--download all the non-textured buildings and then select from among textured blocks as your equipment permits.

OR DOWNLOAD THE SAME FILES FROM THE GOOGLE^® 3D WAREHOUSE.

COVER ART SCREENSHOT APPEARS IN FIGURE 2, BELOW

Figure 2. Overview of buildings positioned against aerials on the surface of the Earth. The "balloon" markers offer reference points to a coordinate system so the driver through the virtual scene does not get lost.

*The author wishes to thank Professor Klaus-Peter Beier, the staff of the 3D Laboratory at Duderstadt Center of The University of Michigan, and selected students in Engineering 477, for their continuing support of the 3D Atlas of Ann Arbor project.

Solstice: An Electronic Journal of Geography and Mathematics, Volume XVII, Number 2
Institute of Mathematical Geography (IMaGe).
All rights reserved worldwide, by IMaGe and by the authors.
Please contact an appropriate party concerning citation of this article: sarhaus@umich.edu
http://www.imagenet.org