Universities across the globe are recognizing the need to implement sustainable landscaping practices in order to support wildlife, improve water quality and positively impact human health and wellbeing. Georgia Insti...Universities across the globe are recognizing the need to implement sustainable landscaping practices in order to support wildlife, improve water quality and positively impact human health and wellbeing. Georgia Institute of Technology learned that such sustainable practices, when properly aligned with overarching campus goals, can also enable continuous, collaborative decision-making and student engagement. The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) is a leading research university situated on 426 acres of land in midtown Atlanta, Georgia, with a student population of 27,000 (Fall 2017). An urban oasis in the center of town, Georgia Tech’s campus offers 312.5 landscaped acres, 3.5 naturalized acres and 110 acres of buildings. The campus is also a level II certified arboretum boasting 12,000+ trees in its urban forest. Prior to the 1990s, Georgia Tech was commonly referred to as a concrete and brick campus with very little landscape. However, in 1999 all that changed when the Georgia Tech administration decided to invest in sustainable landscaping, including the recruitment of qualified staff with specific skill sets to take on this challenge. The Institute’s initial landscape master plan objectives were to reduce impervious surfaces such as surface parking lots, increase woodland coverage and enlarge the tree canopy. A significant amount of sustainable landscape practices and collaborative methods grew from these initial objectives. Establishing a plan with clear goals, having the support of executive leadership and employing the right team members enabled the Georgia Tech campus to be transformed from a concrete jungle to a forested, urban oasis in less than 20 years.展开更多
Science and policy increasingly request for sustainable development and growth.Similarly,Digital Earth undergoes a paradigm shift to an open platform that actively supports user engagement.While the public becomes abl...Science and policy increasingly request for sustainable development and growth.Similarly,Digital Earth undergoes a paradigm shift to an open platform that actively supports user engagement.While the public becomes able to contribute new content,we recognize a gap in user-driven validation,feedback and requirements capture,and innovative application development.Rather than defining Digital Earth applications top down,we see a need for methods and tools that will help building applications bottom up and driven by community needs.These should include a technology toolbox of geospatial and environ-mental enablers,which allow to access functional building blocks and content in multiple ways,but-equally important-enable the collaboration within partially unknown stakeholder networks.The validation and testing in real-life scenarios will be a central requirement when approaching the Digital Earth 2020 goals,which were articulated recently.We particularly argue to follow a Living Lab approach for co-creation and awareness rising in relation to environmental and geospatial matters.We explain why and how such a Digital Earth Living Lab could lead to a sustainable approach for developing,deploying,and using Digital Earth applications and suggest a paradigm shift for Virtual Globes becoming forums for research and innovation.展开更多
文摘Universities across the globe are recognizing the need to implement sustainable landscaping practices in order to support wildlife, improve water quality and positively impact human health and wellbeing. Georgia Institute of Technology learned that such sustainable practices, when properly aligned with overarching campus goals, can also enable continuous, collaborative decision-making and student engagement. The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) is a leading research university situated on 426 acres of land in midtown Atlanta, Georgia, with a student population of 27,000 (Fall 2017). An urban oasis in the center of town, Georgia Tech’s campus offers 312.5 landscaped acres, 3.5 naturalized acres and 110 acres of buildings. The campus is also a level II certified arboretum boasting 12,000+ trees in its urban forest. Prior to the 1990s, Georgia Tech was commonly referred to as a concrete and brick campus with very little landscape. However, in 1999 all that changed when the Georgia Tech administration decided to invest in sustainable landscaping, including the recruitment of qualified staff with specific skill sets to take on this challenge. The Institute’s initial landscape master plan objectives were to reduce impervious surfaces such as surface parking lots, increase woodland coverage and enlarge the tree canopy. A significant amount of sustainable landscape practices and collaborative methods grew from these initial objectives. Establishing a plan with clear goals, having the support of executive leadership and employing the right team members enabled the Georgia Tech campus to be transformed from a concrete jungle to a forested, urban oasis in less than 20 years.
文摘Science and policy increasingly request for sustainable development and growth.Similarly,Digital Earth undergoes a paradigm shift to an open platform that actively supports user engagement.While the public becomes able to contribute new content,we recognize a gap in user-driven validation,feedback and requirements capture,and innovative application development.Rather than defining Digital Earth applications top down,we see a need for methods and tools that will help building applications bottom up and driven by community needs.These should include a technology toolbox of geospatial and environ-mental enablers,which allow to access functional building blocks and content in multiple ways,but-equally important-enable the collaboration within partially unknown stakeholder networks.The validation and testing in real-life scenarios will be a central requirement when approaching the Digital Earth 2020 goals,which were articulated recently.We particularly argue to follow a Living Lab approach for co-creation and awareness rising in relation to environmental and geospatial matters.We explain why and how such a Digital Earth Living Lab could lead to a sustainable approach for developing,deploying,and using Digital Earth applications and suggest a paradigm shift for Virtual Globes becoming forums for research and innovation.
