BUDI: Building Urban Designs Interactively A Spatial-Based Visualization and Collaboration Platform for Urban Planning

BUDI (Building Urban Designs Interactively) is an integrated 3D visualization and remote collaboration platform for complex urban design tasks. Users with different backgrounds can remotely engage in the entire design cycle, improving the quality of the end result. In BUDI, the display and interactive environment were designed to seamlessly expand beyond a traditional two-dimensional surface into a fully immersive three-dimensional space. Clients on various devices connect with servers for different functionalities tailored for various user groups. A demonstration with a local urban planning use-case shows the costs and benefits of BUDI as a geographic information visualization and spatial-based collaborative platform. We consider the trade-offs encountered when trying to make the collaboration seamless. Specifically, we detail the multi-dimensional data visualization and interaction the platform provides, and outline how users can interact with and analyze various aspects of urban design.