Visualizing Nitrogen Pollution Through a Vrgis Application

By Petros Panteleon

Abstract
In this paper, nitrogen deposition in the nearby area of the river Rhine is being studied. It is an invisible phenomenon, that increases the productivity of the agricultural services, but it has also many negative effects, being part of the total air pollution in the atmosphere. There are various ways to visualize any type of information. It can be either in 2D or in a 3D geovisualization. Within this research, nitrogen deposition visualized with both ways (2D and 3D). The projection of the 3D geovisualizations were made through a VRGIS application, where it was attempted to show the different nitrogen deposition values representations plus the different LOD’s of the represented objects with the VR views that were found based on scientific research. Then the thesis experiment was carried out in order to invest in which extend the participants of this experiment potentially understand the nitrogen deposition effects, but also to compare the effectiveness of the 2D geovisualization with the 3D ones, but also the effectiveness of the VRGIS application. These were evaluated based on some proposed indicators that were calculated based on the participants responses. These showed that that the proposed 3D geovisualizations were comparably way more effective than the conventional one according to the measurements of the proposed indicators. Furthermore, the contribution of the VR in the effectiveness in the understanding of the nitrogen deposition was evaluated as positive. Finally, visualizing a non-tangible environmental phenomenon can be challenging, because of its various aspects that can be visualized (variation of values, or intensity of the phenomenon), but again people sometimes are not fully convinced for its existence, especially if it is invisible. If there is a convincing narrative that can be combined with a “complete” geovisualization, it can be assumed that this can motivate people to start including the facing of any environmental issue in their daily actions.