HYDROSYS – A mixed reality platform for on-site visualization of environmental data

Modern mobile devices and networks facilitate the development of increasingly graphical mobile GIS applications. We advance the field with the HYDROSYS system, a heterogeneous platform integrating multiple data sources and components. Our key contributions are 1) scalable on-the-fly streaming of environmental sensor data, 2) highly graphical mixed reality representations, 3) access to near real time simulations and other physically-based computations, 4) support for semantically meaningful public participation and 5) integration of the heterogeneous system, balancing the use of standardized formats and optimized mobile transmissions. Our complex system builds on use cases ranging from hydrological professionals and municipal authorities to the environmentally-aware public. We present the challenges, solutions and implementation of the system, providing observations on potential bottlenecks and other issues.

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