Developing dynamic virtual geographic environments (VGEs) for geographic research

Abstract

It has been over 15 years since the concept of Virtual Geographic Environments (VGEs) was formally proposed (Lin and Gong 2001). Although the thinking about VGEs never stops since it was born, and the continued development of VGEs has brought about significant achievements resulting from this concept (e.g., Goodchild 2009; Gong et al. 2010; Konecny 2011; Lu 2011; Priestnall et al. 2012; Lin et al. 2013a, b, 2015) as well as related technologies and implementations (e.g., Xu et al. 2011, 2013; Chen et al. 2012, 2013a, b; Zhang et al. 2015a, b; Zhu et al. 2015), there are still some misunderstandings about this ‘new’ branch of Geoscience. Questions generally are related to two concepts: the first concerns the differences between VGEs and game-like virtual worlds, similar virtual communities and cities, and digital earth; the second asks how VGEs can contribute to geographic research beyond traditional Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Maps (Aydi et al. 2013; Tung et al. 2013). The answer to the first question may be found in the term ‘geographic environment’ which refers not only to the natural surface of the earth, space, or a place, but also involves the social behaviors that interact with natural factors; it is the sphere of direct interaction between nature and society (Kalesnik 1979). An important feature of geographic environments is that they change continuously with time. Although some objects in geographic environments have relatively stable shapes (such as a rock or soils), many exist in constantly changing forms (such as vegetation, air and water), and human beings (both in groups or individual) are active throughout their ‘lives’. Given this definition, to build a virtual mirror that can reflect the real geographic environment, only considering the physical part would result only in a one-sided perspective. Moreover, dynamic geographic phenomena and processes require careful attention, a fact often overlooked by traditional systems. Thus, an ideal virtual environment