Digiplaza: a 2,5D virtual environment to support the sense of locality of geographic communities using an ontologic approach

ABSTRACT

Today, there is a growing in terest in using online communities to support either social interaction or Public Administration (PA) digital inclusion, both in geography-based communities and geographically distributed users of the Internet. In this paper we present a pseudo 3D (2,5D) configurable virtual environment that uses the "plaza metaphor" to virtually represent the natural place where citizens meet and socialize. Information exchanged among users generates a lot of data difficult to store in a structured way. We propose the use of ontologies to categorize data in order to provide to the user the right information according to his/her specific profile, context and location. The advantages of the proposed approach are an improvement of the users ' "Sense of Locality" and a better and more direct relationship between citizens and Public Administration.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.11 Software Architectures
            Subjects: Domain-specific architectures

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.2 Graphics Systems
          Subjects: Distributed/network graphics
      I.3.8 Applications

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
2, 5D virtual environment, digital inclusion, ontologies, public administration, sense of locality