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The main aim of the project is to present a volcanic hill, which lies in the north part of Edinburgh, as a three-dimensional model. This model has been designed to be made available on the internet as a series of pictures which represent the steps leading to a final product. In addition, simulation of a flight over Arthur's Seat will be available, in order to show the area from different angles, different heights and different directions. As a result two landscapes are compared - a realistic one created by ARC/INFO a commercially available Geographical Information System and an artificial rendered visualisation created with a package called Vista Pro.
This project reflects the continued growth of the popularity of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) across social and environmental science, with applications in business, government and public participation in decision-making. The Department of Geography at the University of Edinburgh is at the centre of these developments.
Project undertaken by Robert A. Fillinger and Malgosia Luc-Szczachor in conjunction with Bruce M. Gittings at the Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh.
Arthur's Seat is a
volcanic hill situated about one mile from the centre of the
City of Edinburgh towards
South-East. Its top lies 823 feet above sea level (251 m).
It is also one of the main recreational places in Edinburgh with its spectacular view over the whole city, and the Firth of Forth towards the North Sea.
About the project
It demonstrates the functions that the
ARC/INFO Geographical Information System provides for Terrain Modelling
Absolute accuracy for the data layers is difficult to
determine because of the various distortions caused by the use of maps of
different scales and processes of plotting, scanning, digitising
Operating systems, software packages and
languages used were: Arc/Info, ArcTIN, ArcEdit, VistaPro, AML, HTML.
Data capture
plotting - a pair of aerial photographs for the Arthur's Seat area was
plotted using an analytical stereoplotter
scanning
- a photograph of Arthur's Seat and a map of the region were scanned
digitising - various data layers were digitised to assist with the terrain
modelling process
from an old map in order to collect
some data in arc format to build hard breaklines on the model
building topology in ARCEDIT
Data processing
The terrain model was created and processed on a UNIX platform, using Arc/Info V7.0
Building the TIN
Creating a three-dimentionl model from ARC/INFO point, line and polygon coverages.
establishing the surface
orientating the view
specifying where and how
the surface view will be drawn
meshes of lines in specific intervals,
called a fishnet
point, line, polygon coverages
image
contour lines
Exporting TIN into Vista Pro
creating a lattice from the TIN
converting the lattice into USGS format DEM
Vista Pro
Creating a Landscape Simulation
Created by Robert Fillinger, Malgosia Luc and Bruce Gittings
at the Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh.