NEWS
The 7th ISDE International Lectures concluded successfully on November 15, 2023, with outcomes that provoked contemplation. It is worth mentioning that this event was organized by the Internation Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) in collaboration with the Working Group IV/5 Extended Reality and Visual Analytics of International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS). The theme of “Cognition, Visualization, and Extended Reality” was introduced to the lecture audience by four presenters, who also elaborated on important ideas, including successful color use in visualization, all web-based modern human-computer interactions, XR at FHS, and XR in Mining Education. Their lectures, which were heavily illustrated and included a wealth of sources, offered a novel viewpoint on Digital Earth.
Izabela Gołębiowska, an associate professor at the University of Warsaw, Poland, gave a lecture themed “Color in cartography: On successful color use in visualization”. After she introduced the origin of this project, she showed examples to give the opinion that “color is not only beautiful”. After that, she listed several examples to analyze the standards of a good color scheme, the field that uses rainbow colors, and factors that need to be considered when using RC. Furthermore, she came to the conclusion that the visualization community gradually moved away from using the RC, and RC is not a good fit to show order in values.
Luciano Abriata, a senior scientist at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Switzerland, engrossed the audience with a presentation themed “Work and education involving molecules made easier with modern human-computer interactions: All web-based”. He opened this report with the topic “People make all our tools for the web”, and then introduced three advancements, namely MoleculARweb, MolecularWebXR which was out since October 2023, and HandlMol. Finally, he thoroughly demonstrated how these websites work by showing experiment videos and extensive pictures.
Koos de Beer, an XR specialist and consultant working with the University of Pretoria, delivered a talk titled “XR at FHS”. First and foremost, he introduced immersive teaching at the University of Pretoria. Then he demonstrated in detail each component of the exposure, engagement, enablement, and learning spaces for using XR as a teaching tool.
Jannie Maritz from University of Pretoria, South Africa delivered a lecture themed “XR in Mining Education”. He covered three following topics in his lecture: teaching facilities, application, and research. Next, he exposed more details about each part by using exemples such as the 3D Cinematic Theatre as a teaching facility, and applications including Mobile AR, Geological Hazard, Checklist Training identification, etc.
The 7th ISDE International Lectures was moderated by Arzu Cöltekin, Victoria Rautenbach, and Azile Mdleleni. Over 4,900 participants from around the world attended the 7th Lectures through Zoom, the ISDE Bilibili platform, and other academic streaming platforms.
The ISDE International Lectures are organized by the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) and supported by the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals (CBAS). It is a series of online events which feature invited lectures by well-known international experts in the field of Digital Earth. The event will invite speakers to give lectures every two months. The purpose of the events is to bring international scholars in the relevant research fields of Digital Earth together to exchange academic perspectives, share research results, and disseminate the most cutting-edge and authoritative concept of Digital Earth.
