A digital botanical garden: using interactive 3D models for visitor experience enhancement and collection management

Abstract

Botanical gardens are important spots in urban spaces, both for researchers and for many different kinds of public. Conveying scientific information by means of an attractive digital product, on a pre-or post-visit experience, is a way of captivating the public, especially the youngergeneration, to the relevance of those gardensas repositories of knowledge and for conservation of plant speciesdiversity. This approach also facilitates communication with the general public and access tohistoricaldata. On the other hand, bringing the garden to the desktop of researchers and managers canbe an advantage, not only for an overview of the status quobut also in spatial planning matters. Thispaper describes the production of a 3D dynamic model of the Tropical Botanical Garden in Lisbon on top of a Geographic Information System (GIS).Its development included creatinga spatial database to organise data originating from a variety of sources,the three-dimensional (3D)modelling of plants, buildings and statues, the creation of web pages with historic and contextual information, as wellasthe publication of a number ofinteractive 3D scenes. Several software packages wereused, and the final outputs were published in ArcGIS Online to be explored by the public and researchers (link provided at the end of the text). The data areorganisedin a database,and most 3D modelling tasks are procedural through Computer Generated Architecture (CGA) rules. Thus,updating information or 3D models can be done without having to repeat all steps, an important feature for a dynamic botanical garden. Challenges and solutions are also addressed,providing a constructive contribution to the further implementation of similar experiences in other botanical gardens.According to a user survey carried out, the realism of the representation and the possibility of easily retrievinginformation from the objects are the most positive aspects of the project.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio