Planning and designing natural and urban environments with an adaptive visualization framework: the case of Pazhou Island, Guangzhou, Pearl River Delta

In the planning and design of natural and urban environments, visualization plays an increasingly important role. It has become a core component of communication and dissemination within the various formats of project representation, environmental assessment, workshops, and stakeholder involvement in general. However, as a practical technology, the outputs of our visualizations are, too often, regarded as a static product rather than as a living and evolving tool in and of itself, often due to the inherent restrictions present in both the analog and digital technologies used in data curation and visualization creation. In this paper, we argue that with the increasing complexity and usability of digital technologies, we are now capable of bringing a heightened level of interactive dynamism to planning and design, improving the communicative power of landscape visualization. We introduce a theoretical adaptive visualization (AV) framework, designed to support project meetings and stakeholder interactions with iterative planning and design elements. To demonstrate the merits of the framework, we develop an augmented reality application following AV principles; we discuss the novel design interactions afforded by integrating alongside traditional analog and digital data sources, in an interactive and dynamic application. This is highlighted by a case study from the Pearl River Delta region, with a focus on planning and design for flood risk mitigation.