• The principal investigator:  Sandra Lach Arlinghaus
• Students, teaching staff, and faculty in Engineering 477, Virtual Reality, College of Engineering, The University of Michigan
• Students:
• 2003:  Taejung Kwon, Adrien Lazzaro, Paul Oppenheim, Aaron Rosenblum
• 2004:  Nikolai Nolan, Rasika Ramesh, Itzhak Shani
• 2005:  Alyssa J. Domzal, Ui Sang Hwang, Kris J. Walters
• Teaching Staff, Graduate Student Instructors:
• 2003:  Thana Chirapiwat, Jamie Cope
• 2004:  Thana Chirapiwat, Jamie Cope, Bonnie Bao
• 2005:  Jamie Cope, Brian Walsh
• Faculty, 2003, 2004, 2005:  Professor Klaus-Peter Beier.
• Other faculty and external advisors:
• 2003:  Matthew Naud, Environmental Coordinator, City of Ann Arbor; John D. Nystuen, Prof. Emeritus, University of Michigan
• 2004:  Matthew Naud, Environmental Coordinator, City of Ann Arbor;
• 2005:  Matthew Naud, Environmental Coordinator, City of Ann Arbor; Paul Lippens, Intern, City of Ann Arbor; Braxton Blake, Composer and Conductor of Music, Edmond Nadler, Adjunct Prof. of Mathematics.
• Staff in the 3D Laboratory, Duderstadt Center, The University of Michigan:  Professor Klaus-Peter Beier, Director of the 3D Laboratory; Scott Hamm; Steffen Heise; Brett Lyons; Eric Maslowski; Lars Schumann
• City of Ann Arbor staff:  Matthew Naud, Paul Lippens, Wendy Rampson, Chandra Hurd Gochanour, Alexis Marcarello, Merle Johnson, Jim Clare
• Members of the Downtown Residential Taskforce, Downtown Development Authority, City of Ann Arbor:  Susan Pollay, Executive Director DDA; Fred J. Beal, Jean Carlberg, Robert Gillett, Karen Hart, Douglas Kelbaugh, William D. Kinley, Steve Thorp, Frances Todoro, Wendy   Woods. Substantial citizen input also from Brian Barrick, Ray Detter, and Peter Pollack.
• The University of Michigan:  Donald T. Uchman, Coordinator of Space Graphics, Space Information and Planning, Plant Extension--AEC

There are thousands of files present to create a variety of images for use in application.  Specifically,

    * there are extruded buildings, textures, streets, terrain, hydro, for the entire Downtown Development Authority
    * there are extruded buildings representing residences and businesses throughout the entire city (about 35,000 in all)
    * there are extruded buildings for the entire University of Michigan
    * there are modeled buildings for selected locations in the Downtown Development Authority.

New files from the City this past fall, for extruded structures for the entire city and for contours at a 1 foot contour interval, opened the door to consider preliminary environmental management applications involving floods.  The software and the files that can be created is a moving target.  Thus, it is important to have guidance from city officials and from interested members of the public to know where it is important to direct future effort.

The general strategy proceeds as follows.

• First, pilot projects are performed on small sets of data.  This step is critical to ensure that no systematic error is introduced into the entire study.  There will always be isolated individual errors but the goal of multiple pilot projects is to remove systematic error and establish systematic procedure that will extend to larger studies.
• When pilot projects are complete, they are shown to a wide audience to get feedback.  Feedback is then incorporated into the next round of pilot projects.
• Finally, the systematic strategy is extended to the entire region of interest.
• Then, feedback is sought, once again, to determine direction for application.  The cosmetic features, many of which take time, that get developed are done so in response to feedback.  Content guides development of substance; cosmetic features come later.

• Digitize all structures in Ann Arbor making sure not to include the building shadow or rooftops in the digitized files.
• Obtain heights for all structures in Ann Arbor.
• Assessor’s data for photos or heights
• Field-check UM building heights of buildings with substantial basements.
• Obtain photographic textures of all structures in Ann Arbor:  use a cherry-picker down the street centerline?
• Clean photographic images:
• Stretch isosceles trapezoidal images to rectangles to fit building faces.
• Remove foreground (use clone stamp tool)
• Apply photographic images to all structures.
• Obtain GPS coordinates of buildings if needed for Google Earth purposes.
• Model buildings with interesting rooflines; to date only 101 N. Main and City Hall have been modeled and they both need to be redone (as they are old pilots).
• Model streetscape:  streets, lights, furniture, and so forth.
• Add links to show building interiors, voice links to identify buildings, sounds, and so forth.
• File size consideration; layering of model with kiosks to link one layer to another—show different levels of detail at different scales.

• More in planning
• More in emergency management
• Game or other possible fund-raising efforts based on the models
• Systematic strategy for modeling a flood (with Edmond Nadler)
• Training strategies