Sustainable development concerns the relationship between people and the environment over time. Our ability to understand the cause-effect interactions is greatly enhanced by combining, interpreting and communicating knowledge from different scientific disciplines. New visualization techniques simultaneously portray the spatial and temporal dimensions of such interactions, allowing the user to identify trends and patterns over time and space. By allowing us to visually and interactively investigate the scientific information stored in Web-based environmental and socio-economic data sets, these techniques will help us to more effectively evaluate the potential impacts of today's decisions.

The objective of the Visualization of Integrated Knowledge for Sustainable Development Decision Making project is to assess and develop visualization techniques that effectively translate complex scientific information into a form that readily communicates the current and anticipated impacts of different human actions on our environment to policy/decision makers and to the Canadian public. This project addresses the visualization component of three theme projects in the SDKI Program, namely urban analysis, forest disturbances, and mine rehabilitation, as well as that of the Pathways decision support project. Through graphic and cartographic visualization on the Web, it aims to bridge the gap between the scientists who supply complex, quantitative data and the decision makers who develop policies related to sustainable development of natural resources of Canada.

User-controlled views of environmental and socio-economic information in underlying geospatial databases will be powered within a virtual "decision support" environment. Each view will portray the information in a different way:

1. static or dynamic;
2. passive or interactive;
3. single type of information or integrated images.

Outputs from the project include:

• Vizualize the Evolution of Ottawa -
  To celebrate Ottawa's 150th anniversary, the SDKI-VIS project team has developed a unique demonstration, which we hope you will find interesting, informative and fun. This demonstration provides you with an overview of the presentation from a new perspective.

• Identifying user needs for visualization of geo-spatial data [PDF, 3.6 Mb, viewer] for sustainable development decision making.
  
• Researching web-based cartographic and scientific visualization techniques to identify how these may be used to encourage more use of geo-scientific information in SD decision-making.
  
• Assessing how these techniques can be further developed and used to improve the user interfaces of Decision Support Environments, for example for interactive historical 3D terrain fly-overs and in the use of maps in SVG format ("SVG maps for People with Visual Impairment")
  
• Testing alternative approaches for improving visualization of geo-scientific information in a DSS interface being implemented in one of the other SDKI projects. Click on "Visualization" to see the Canada Rover example.
  
• Designing and developing multi-user, multi-modal visualization techniques to meet the specific needs of the four SDKI projects, initially focusing on the project PATHWAYS: Web-based Decision Support System and Planning Framework. This talking map of Nunavut is an example of a multi-modal product.
  
• Collaborative decision making, crucial to accomplishing sustainable development, will be facilitated by an SDKI-Visualization partnership with Consultants TGIS, who have developed a map- and image-based Internet conferencing system (GeoConference)