Virtual Reality for Smart City Visualization and Monitoring

In the present Internet of Things (IoT) era, smart city components (e.g. Smart buildings, Smart infrastructures, etc.) are increasingly embracing cutting edge technologies to support complex scenarios that include decision-making, prediction and intelligent actuation. In this context, there is an increased need for information visualization, so as to propagate information to end users in a smart, sustainable, and resilient way. Currently, despite the growth of the IoT sector, many IoT operators only provide static visualizations. However, interactive data visualizations are required to achieve deeper and faster insights, beyond what is available in existing infrastructure, towards supporting decision-making by city authorities; while offering real time information to citizens. This paper builds on top of ongoing research work carried out at the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Laboratory of ICS-FORTH in the domain of visualizing and interacting with information in Ambient Intelligence environments, in order to propose the design of an interactive Smart City Visualization framework. In this context, advanced user interaction techniques can be employed, including gesture-based interaction with high resolution large screen displays in alternative contexts of use and immersive VR experiences. To this end, several gesture-based interaction techniques have been validated to propose a sufficiently rich set of gestures that are adaptable to user and context requirements and are ergonomic, intuitive, and easy to perform and remember, while remaining metaphorically appropriate for the addressed functionality. Additionally, Big Data visualization is accomplished by employing 3D solutions. The proposed design supports experiencing and interacting with information through VR technologies and large displays, offering improved data visualization capacity and enhanced data dimensionality, thus overcoming issues related to data complexity and heterogeneity.