ALFRED CHEN
Cherish the Great Earth
Abstract
The Earth is our means of life and the very existence for people's survival. The Earth is the Mother for all human kinds and our sweet home as well. The Earth provides us with ample natural resource and it is exactly the significant basement for social development and survival. It means the eternally invaluable values for human society. How to make people respect, protect and cherish the Earth is exactly the goal to put people's opinions about science development into practice. It is expected that the national basic policies with the insistent effort to protect resource can protect and utilize resource in more efficient and reasonable ways.
The economic society can be incessantly developed harmoniously. In 2007, UNESCO proposed the research report titled Case Studies on Climate Change and World Heritage and indicated that five major world heritage categories to be damaged by global warming include 1)the glacier world; 2)the oceanic creature world; 3) the terrain creature world, 4)the anthropological remain world and; 5) the historical cities and the tribe world.
There have been 830 places were listed as World Heritage by World Heritage Committee till 2006. The applet - GOOGLE EARTH (GE) can allow people with the access to view the satellite pictures, maps, 3D buildings from everywhere beneath the Earth, or even explore the galaxies in sky. It is available to probe the abundant geographic contents. The information of browsed spots can be shared with others. Additionally, with the Application Programming Interface (API) released from GOOGLE, it is GOOGLE service spirit that every user can enjoy whatever service available from GOOGLE, not only limited to programming developers. Thus, on the service integration available from Google, the service contents are also quite comprehensive with the lowest threshold for users to access.
In view of this, our digital design group applies GOOGLE API to daily life. Through various devices (e.g.: desktops, notebooks, cell phone), the tangible and intangible assets on Earth can be built and stored via the GE platform. With the GE platform, the disappeared world heritages for a long time can be revived. The following three directions were developed: 1) GE Land: in Google Earth, SketchUp is used to establish appearance model of relic and building; Quest3D was used to virtually build the inner space. So that Google Earth provides not only the outer view but also inner space almost like real; 2) GE Sea: 70.8% of the area on earth is sea; therefore only 19.2% of the land on earth was explored. Valuable undersea world is worth our exploitation and preserve.
3DsMax is used to build the ecology; benthos information is used for interactive teaching; 3) GE Air: on condition that land and sea are included in GE, then the beautiful sky must be also included. Natural ecology environment phenomenon such as migration of the endangered species of black-faced spoonbill can be recorded in GE through combining GE dynamic simulation and navigation function; so that people get to understand migration journey of valuable migrant birds. In addition, it is also available for recording natural ecology. When people face the invaluable historical remains, building clusters, monuments and natural environment, the lines between various nations and peoples can be surmounted with the heritages passing onto upcoming generations. The irreparable and common natural and cultural heritages of all human kinds can be well propagated.
Our Digital Design Group will utilize dynamic simulation and navigation record function of GE, digital set-up of SketchUp and 3DsMax and transact of Quest3D virtual environment in order to include the beauty of cultural remains, historical architectural motif, undersea world, and ecology in water and blue sky in GE. We describe application achievement of valuable world asset through the combination of science technology and art.
Speaker's Bio
Alfred Chen has been Professor and former Dean of the College of Design (Creative Media) of Kun Shan University in Taiwan. His professional services include Director of the Research and Education Institute for Industrial Design at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, Professor and Head at the Department of Industrial Design of National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, Manager of China Industrial Design and Packaging Center, Senior Research Associate at Design Processes Lab of Illinois Institute of Technology in USA, Visiting Scholar at the Department of Design of The University of Kansas in USA, President of China Industrial Designers Association, etc.
He has been giving lecturers and professional presentations internationally and gained a wide recognition and reputation. For the year of 2008, the major invitations have included: 1) The keynote speaker and technical committee for TECHNARTE 2008, 2) The keynote speaker for International Conference of Information Communication & Digital Media 2008, 3) The lecturer for the 2008 Post-Design International Conference, 4) The paper presentation for The Conference on Service Creativity and Application 2008, 5) The Guest Lecturer for the National Project “Planning for Interaction Design Program”, granted by Ministry of Education of Taiwan.
He has been appointed as honorary and guest professor by numerous universities in Taiwan and People Republic of China. His name and title were published in Who’s who in Design at the 6th Asian Design International Conference in the year of 2003. He has also been appointed as an editor and/or peer reviewer of the international journals and conferences, including: 1) The International Journal of Design Studies (SCI Journal), 2) Journal Advanced Engineering Informatics (SCI Journal), 3) The Journal of Kun Shan University, 4) The Journal of Chinese Institute of Design, and 5) The Proceedings of Several Major International Conferences.
His interest in research has covered a wide area of virtual reality, augmented reality, ergonomics, human-computer interaction, industrial design, etc. His continuous effort on research has been honorably granted Academic Research Achievement Award by Kun Shan University in the year of 2005.