Digital 3D models are used in almost all areas of design and engineering from drug discovery through to architectural design optimization. With the advent of new imaging technologies such as more advanced remote sensing systems and consumer 3D cameras, there is a new capability to capture models that are both deep and broad in detail. Currently there is a range of different software packages for editing 3D data but each is rather specialised to its domain. If data is to be exchanged between different users then the most usual way of doing this is to export files from one machine, move the file and import it on another machine. This can be facilitated by various file-sharing systems, but the unit of access is a file on a local file system. This presents multiple problems: as models grow in complexity managing them in files becomes problematic, collaborative editing is very hard and tracking of changes becomes challenging. In addition in the next few years, we should expect 3D model sizes to grow in size and detail at increasing rates. This will be driven both by consumer editing and scanning tools, but also increasing use of commercially scanned and produced models. One can extrapolate from the current extensive but crude representations of cities on Google Earth, or the highly detailed, but ultimately limited in scale models in modern video games, to imagine that models will reach 10^9 - 10^11+ polygons in scale within the next decade. There is a domain where collaborative access to large models has been solved: Internet storage of documents. Systems as diverse as Wikipedia and Google Docs demonstrate that by decoupling storage from viewing and editing, extremely large repositories of information can be built. In Open3D we will design the necessary algorithms and services that allow the hosting of 3D models of such scale on the Internet. Such 3D models, however, are fundamentally different from text counterparts: 3D models extend across space (e.g. 2-manifold data), lack an obvious extrinsic parameterization, and can have large variations in local details; while, text documents have a natural linear ordering making them much simpler to work with. Our observation is that while models may be big, the spatial scope of an editing or visualisation is usually limited. Thus we can imagine a network protocol that can exchange model assets based on spatial queries, rather than file access. Further, we can imagine that we can perform locking and revision control on this model to prevent inconsistent model states across multiple editors. Through Open3D's unique set of facilities we want to enable synchronous collaborative modelling of a unified model with the minimum of interference in the user experience. By doing this we hope to enable a new crowd-sourcing effort to develop large-scale models in a couple of domains. In particular, in our impact plan we target creating a virtual model of part of London, and an open access anatomical model of the human body.

An ontology is a precise specification of the meanings of a vocabulary of concepts. In computer systems, ontologies provide a tool for robust and flexible manipulation of diverse data. They can support transfer of information between systems, and also allow the presentation of information to be customised to a user's requirements.The domain of geography is one where there is a real and widely recognised need for ontology. Geographic Information Systems are of increasing importance in both commercial and governmental planning. Effective use of these systems requires high-level, flexible mechanisms for accessing the data. Moreover, in many situations one would like to combine information from several sources that may organise their data in very different ways.The geographic realm presents particular challenges to the formulation of an adequate ontology. Geographic classifications are highly affected by ambiguity, vagueness and context sensitivity; so establishing a precise relationship between geographic terms and the physical reality they describe is problematic.The proposed project seeks to develop an ontology based on rigorous principles of knowledge representation using formal logic. This will build on foundational theories of space, time, material objects and processes, which have been a focus of previous research conducted at Leeds. These theories will provide a framework within which specifically geographic concepts and relationships will be defined.The representation used to express our ontology will explicitly model of the vagueness present in the high-level vocabulary of natural language. It is proposed to employ a novel approach called Standpoint Semantics . This models the variable meaning of vague concepts in terms of threshold values for objective properties. For instance a relevant property for distinguishing lakes and rivers is rate of water flow. A given standpoint is associated with a particular choice of threshold separating bodies considered flowing from those considered still . (Prototype software has already been developed at Leeds that implements a standpoint semantics for geographic water features. It allows concept definitions to be inspected and modified, and will automatically label a map in accordance with these definitions.)Detailed ontology construction will focus on the geographic realm and in particular on concepts relating to a) hydrographic features (lakes, rivers, canals, marshes etc), b) the built environment (buildings, roads, towns etc).which have been the subject of pilot projects at Leeds.During the course of the project we shall develop a web-based resource to enable collation and maintenance of our ontology and will allow researchers around the world to access our theories.The project will involve close collaboration with the Research and Innovation group of Ordnance Survey, UK's national mapping agency, who will be providing geographic data, expertise and a significant financial contribution to the project. Ordnance Survey have recently undertaken a major upgrade of data-storage and delivery systems and are collating their map data within a feature-based object-oriented framework known as MasterMap . In order to organise and provide flexible access to this data they wish to develop an ontology that would enable this information to be interpreted at a conceptual level. This would allow integration with other data sources and customisable presentation of map information.Collaboration is also planned with the Laboratory for Applied Ontology in Trento, the Institute of Formal Ontology in Information Systems in Saarbrucken and the Institut fur Geoinformatik in Muenster.

A passenger in an aircraft requires information about a flight at a very different level of detail from the pilot. A map of an entire country on a computer screen shows far less detail than a map of single town on the same screen. For certain kinds of data, reducing the level of detail is a relatively well-understood process, but for other kinds this reduction is a challenging problem. This project is concerned with reduction in level of detail for data associated to networks in geographic information systems. Examples of such networks are roads, rivers, railways, electricity distribution networks, etc.Manipulation of level of detail, or granularity, is vitally important for any kind of system for managing processes and detecting events in geographical networks. For example: congestion and accidents on roads, floods in rivers, or terrorist attacks on railways. Such systems require some level of human intervention, and to do this effectively requires the ability to zoom in and out of the data in various ways. Changing the spatial level of detail, or 'scale' in traditional paper-based maps, is only one of the requirements -- it is also necessary to deal with classification of the things represented (ontologies), and with time at different granularities.Features in geographical information are usually classified by what kind of thing they are: here is a house, there is a school and that is a railway station, and they are all buildings . In a large scale (i.e. detailed) map we generally work with a classification that is itself detailed. Besides showing individual buildings, such maps can make fine distinctions between many different kinds of building. At smaller scales, as the separate buildings merge into undifferentiated built-up areas on the map, the classification becomes coarser too. The level of detail in classification is termed ontological granularity.If dealing with a map showing, say, traffic flow along streets in a city, we might need to see how levels of traffic vary over a single day or at a given time over a number of different days. In both of these examples, temporal granularity is involved -- grouping together and selecting periods of time.The challenge that this project addresses is the combination of these three kinds of granularity: the spatial, the ontological, and the temporal. In varying one kind of level of detail, what changes are necessarily imposed in the other kinds of level of detail? Some simple examples are easily understood: if a church and an adjacent house become represented at a smaller scale by a single entity, it might get classified simply as a building. However, general theoretical principles are lacking; the project will develop these and will evaluate them in collaboration with the Ordnance Survey. The principles will be used to specify operations for changing level of detail in network-based geographic data.The evaluation will be based on a major resource for UK network data: the Integrated Transport Network. This is a layer within Ordnance Survey'sMasterMap providing two themes: the Roads Network (containing all navigable roads in Great Britain) and Road Routing Information (containing additional information such as one-way streets and other restrictions). The project will also make essential use of the expertise of Professor Michael Worboys, Chair of the Department of Spatial Information Science and Engineering, University of Maine, who will be based in Leeds as a visiting researcher.

The Places of Poetry will create a distinctive digital map of England and Wales, onto which crowd-sourced poems of place, heritage and identity will be pinned in the course of a public campaign in the late-spring and summer of 2019. The project aims to prompt reflection on national and cultural identities in England and Wales, celebrating the diversity, heritage and personalities of place. The project thus combines a model from the past - the early seventeenth-century epic of national description, Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion - with a commitment to the value of creative practice in the present day. Poly-Olbion has been the subject of an editorial and critical project led by the PI on this application, Andrew McRae. That project also involved some public-facing work, supported further by the Heritage Lottery Fund, which helped to demonstrate the power today of both Drayton's work and the distinctive county maps published with the poem, by the engraver William Hole. Meanwhile, the poet Paul Farley (Co-I on this project), has spent a number of years working on a twenty-first-century reconceptualization of Poly-Olbion (due for publication with Faber in 2019). This led to the collaboration at the heart of 'The Places of Poetry'. The new map of England and Wales will draw heavily upon the iconography of Hole's original works, but will be amended as necessary and lightly updated. Since Drayton and Hole only covered England and Wales, The Places of Poetry will also limit itself to these two British nations. The map will be overlaid upon Ordnance Survey data, with functions enabling users not only to zoom in and out, but also to slide between the two maps. Users will be encouraged to pin poems to particular places. The map will be pre-populated with a selection of historic (out of copyright) pieces; however, the project's central aim is to generate original work. The project website, with the map as its central and defining image, will aim to introduce users to the poetry of place, heritage and identity, and will provide materials designed to coach them through their own compositions. After a period of preparatory work, The Places of Poetry will be promoted through the course of an intensive campaign in the summer of 2019. This will include: a launch event, BBC radio programmes, a national writing-workshops tour, a short film, and social media activity. The project involves strategic collaborations with The Poetry Society and The Ordnance Survey. Although the project is technically freestanding, a positive response to the present application will trigger further applications (already in advanced states) to the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Arts Council, for a parallel package of work that would significantly enhance the reach and value of the project. This will be centred on activities with major regional arts and heritage partners, and involving a programme of poets-in-residence. It will focus on particular user-communities (e.g. age, location, background), and different kinds of heritage (e.g. pre-historic, Roman, agricultural, industrial, religious, natural). The website will remain open for contributions for ten weeks. Towards the end of this period, the PI will write a reflective article about the project. As a legacy, there may be opportunities for commercial development, while the site will remain in existence after the project closes, as an archive of the poetry of place, heritage and identity in the summer of 2019.

Access to digital services is unevenly distributed across the UK and the urban-rural divide is particularly pronounced. A great deal of effort is being invested in providing universal access, but the development of services that meet rural demand is also needed to engage rural communities in Digital Britain and enhance their stake in the Digital Economy. This project seeks to bridge the rural divide through the development of novel mapping services that augment a broad range of activities underpinning the rural economy; activities such as walking, cycling, canoeing, bird-watching, and other everyday activities that sustain the rural economy. Specifically, the project seeks to develop community-based maps that enhance our engagement with the countryside and novel data services that enable individuals to input and/or access digital content in the field. By developing these services in the wild through direct user participation, the research will provide a blueprint for broader roll-out and provision of services that meet rural need.Current digital mapping services largely focus on urban environments. Google Maps, for example, offers rich street views of urban settings but such views of rural space are largely absent. Google My Maps offers users tools to map out their own routes and add content, such as photographs, video, and textual descriptions, but these are laborious and lack a great deal of contextual relevance. New developments in mobile, location and sensor-based or 'ubiquitous' computing now make it possible for users to move beyond the urban fringe and herald the spatial expansion of computing out from the city and into rural locations that have long been marginalised due to technological limitations, and the development of new online 'Web 2.0' services open up new possibilities for augmenting and sharing field-generated content. This project seeks to leverage new developments in ubiquitous computing and Web 2.0 to enhance our engagement with the rural environment and augment the activities that drive the rural economy.The project seeks to meet its aims through the interdisciplinary and user-led development of a 'rural ubicomp toolkit' that will enable people to create and share community-based maps that represent their distinctive interests and concerns. Thus, and for example, the toolkit will enable users to sketch routes out to indicate interesting pathways through rural space. Sketches will be augmented by GPS data generated in the field. When in the field, users will be able to access community content based on their location, in order to have contextually relevant information fed to them at appropriate points in their journey. Users will also be able to add to the evolving corpus of community knowledge by uploading geo-tagged content via mobile devices. The toolkit will also support more immediate social aspects of our engagement with the rural landscape by enabling content to be accessed, added to, and viewed via situated displays and mini-projectors in visitor centres.The results of the project will be an Open Source toolkit that provides a blueprint for the broader deployment of DIY sensor hardware, software APIs for mobile experience capture, representation and sharing, and tools for ordinary users to create engaging public events. The project is supported by the RCUK Horizon Digital Economy Hub, Ordinance Survey, the Countryside Council of Wales, Mark Williams MP, and the Minister for Rural Affairs in Wales.