Christian Guittet,
"Information and Communication Technologies for the
Community Statistical System",
European Commission, Eurostat, L-2920 Luxembourg
Clive Best, Per Loekkemyhr, Peter Schickel,
"Multimedia Applications",
Joint Research Centre (JRC), Institute for Systems, Informatics
and Safety, I-21020 Ispra (VA)
Abstract: In Europe, research in official statistics is being carried out both in some national statistical institutes and at the Community level. To address problems resulting from this situation, Eurostat has commissioned the Joint Research Centre in Ispra to establish and operate an internet-based Virtual European Statistical Laboratory (VESL) that should become a focal point for research and training in official statistics.Its mission is to improve the transfer of knowledge, know-how and research results throughout the European Union, in order to better meet users’ needs. Emphasis has been placed on collaborative work, based on facilities to create and manage networks and communities composed of officials in national statistical institutes, professors and students in universities, researchers, industrial partners and users.
After examining a number of advanced applications in the field of shared virtual worlds, this paper describes the VRML implementation of this Virtual European Statistical Laboratory, presently under development on the World-Wide Web.
The building being ‘erected’ is not located anywhere in particular, but instead is accessible somewhere in virtual space via a ‘cyber gateway’. It will include:
- a theatre, where key sessions of ‘real’ conferences will be webcasted and discussed;
- a distributed library, based on Eurostat’s VIROS concept of a decentralised system;
- offices, where visitor's avatars will meet to discuss topics such as the preparation of the 5th framework programme, seasonal adjustment, etc.;
- classrooms, offering a number of facilities, where training and demonstration of prototypes will be organised;
- and a number of other facilities, such as a coffee shop, to encourage less formal discussions.
1. Introduction
2. Virtual worlds in the real world
2.1. Virtual worlds
2.2. Shared virtual worlds (Blaxxun's Technology for Community)
2.2.1. The second world
2.2.2. ColonyCity
2.3.1. The Mirror
2.3.2. Godzilla-The aftermath
3.1. The InfoCities Project
3.2. Virtual Helsinki
3.3. 3D Virtual Presence of the European Institutions
4. The Virtual European Statistical Laboratory
4.1. The theatre
4.2. The distributed library (VIROS)
4.3. The meeting rooms
4.4. The classrooms
4.5. The other rooms
5. Behind the scenes: some technical details
5.1. The interface layer
5.2. The access layer
5.3. The database layer
6. Conclusion
7. References
8. Authors
Research in official statistics is being carried out in some national statistical institutes and in research centres through the Research and Technological Development Framework Programmes of the European Union. There is an obvious need, at an international level, to share experience and expertise, to communicate, to benefit from local investments. In this context, Eurostat has a role to play in the dissemination of results, with a view to improving their exploitation. The problem is: how to best fulfil these tasks?
The World-Wide Web to-day clearly facilitates dissemination and communication. It gives every researcher total control of what information will be made public, and how to publish it. Additional services, such as powerful search engines, now increase the user-friendliness and usefulness of the Web. Collaborative work is facilitated, day after day. There are plenty of tools waiting to be used by official statisticians and researchers, but already at the core of many projects in many different fields including information, electronic commerce, education, entertainment,… Progress continues at a rapid pace, with the Next Generation Internet (NGI). Initiative and the continuous inclusion of new facilities in browsers and tools, so that what appears to-day to be out of reach will be fairly low-end in an incredibly short time.
However, moving from a traditional environment to a cutting-edge approach is not easy. In a way, shared virtual worlds are a modern implementation of Plato’s allegory of the cave: human beings live in a cave, with their legs and necks chained so that they can only look before them. They only see their own shadows and the shadows of all sorts of objects and forms of animals, made of various materials, which a fire blazing at a distance behind them throws on the opposite wall of the cave. They know of no other reality. At first, when any of them is freed and forced to stand up, to walk and to look towards the fire, the glare will distress him. His eyes will be dazzled by the light, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what will now be called realities. He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the "upper world". First he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men, animals and other objects in the water, and finally the objects themselves.
In just the same way, ‘normal’ Web users only chat in text mode and look at HTML pages displayed on a 2-dimensional computer-screen in front of them. When they are ‘liberated’ by the technology, their avatars can move and live in VRML virtual worlds in 3 dimensions, which are shown as 2-dimensional perspectives on standard computer screens; they can meet other avatars and, in a more advanced stage, interact with objects. Finally, one day, people will gain access to shared, immersive environments. As it can be experienced already now, this evolution is not straightforward: progress will first meet scepticism and reluctance, before being accepted as an improvement; ultimately, younger generations will take the new, improved facilities for granted.
This section reviews a selection of projects, operational or still under developments, to illustrate the state of the art in virtual worlds. Reference to any product does not however imply endorsement by Eurostat nor by the European Commission.
Hundreds, or possibly thousands, of virtual worlds are now on the Web. Some companies, like Planet 9 Studios, have seized the opportunity to build in cyberspace in the early days of 1995, before 3D browsers were even available on the Internet. At that time, these worlds were no more than low polygon models of small areas: typically, the South Market area in San Francisco.
Figure 1: The East
Shinjuku Neighbourhood in Tokyo.
VirtualTOKYO features two distinct neighbourhoods:
West Shinjuku by day (headquarters of the movers and shakers
of the international business world) and East Shinjuku by night,
a cross between Las Vegas and Manhattan's Times Square.
To-day, virtual worlds have become more elaborated, complex
models focused on providing real business solutions for the
Internet. They provide homes for a variety of applications such
as marketing, advertising, product visualisation, training,
architectural simulation, data visualisation and entertainment.
Top companies, like Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Toshiba, Nippon
Telephone and Telegraph, …, are represented in this area.
The next step will be the sharing of these virtual worlds. In the next decade, tens of millions of people throughout the world will participate in the virtual society. The common cyberspace will rely not only on the internet, but also on CATV, information super-highways and other more powerful network systems
The ‘second world’ is a shared virtual community, developed and entertained by Canal+Multimedia. This world, a modelled Paris in 3D, was born in April 1997. One originally had to get a CD-ROM to access the Community, but it is now fully implemented on-line under Blaxxun‘s VRML technology, so that one only needs a browser plug-in to enter a whole different, virtual, new life !
Figure 2: The
second world
The second world is a virtual community, living in a
modelled Paris in 3D.
Many citizens already enjoy the experience of a second life in
this world that they shape and make alive according to their
desires. Anyone can build his own homepage in 3D, accessible not
only from Virtual Paris, but also from the whole world, just like
any web page. Anyone can also create his very own part of the
town and give it a totally different look. "Claims" are
managed by citizens themselves, united for the occasion in a
"Committee".
In the ‘second world’, one can benefit from a large choice of products and services, offered by about 15 financial partners in 3D stores, join every entertainment offered, debate in fora, meet special guests, stars or specialists of virtual worlds, create any club, … To make a long list short, one can actually live there, while new places, districts and monuments are built.
Founded on 23 June 1998, ColonyCity is presently one of the most advanced virtual community available. Also based on Blaxxun’s VRML technology, dynamically created by its own residents, it has its own economy, its own social and political structures. Its purpose is the harmonious interchange of ideas and information between its members and between colonies and to give people something worthwhile to create.
ColonyCity is precisely a community of colonies, where one can build one’s own virtual house and interact with others, using avatars. This interaction goes far beyond just exploring and chatting with other people. Citizens of ColonyCity can take jobs in the community, earn "money" (community credits) which they can use to increase the desirability and value of their house by "buying" custom furniture in the VR Mall.
Houses can be bought and changed; later on citizens will even be able to sell, trade and rent them out to others. In other words there is a whole social and economic structure in ColonyCity. Anybody can participate in it with other people from all over the world, even across multiple colonies, all with their own special and unique identity.
After the beta release, ColonyCity will also feature technological advances such as shared-state where actions a citizen does with objects are simultaneously seen by people all over the world. So when he moves the sofa in his living room, his guests know where to sit now. Already passwords can be given to houses, so that only friends can visit.
Citizens will also be able to create, either for their own use or for trade, their own customised objects, houses or avatars. Some of the merchants selling "real" goods in the community will give discounts for earned community credits so that credits can go towards purchasing real-world goods and services as well.
The entertainment, television and film industry have also discovered the use of 3D environments. For instance, early this year, BT Laboratories, Sony Corporation, Illuminations Television and the BBC ran an experimental 3D shared space, based on Sony’s Community Place technology. Called The Mirror, it reflected the programme themes of the third television series of The Net. These were 3-dimensional worlds, accessible from the Internet, which enabled people to meet friends, interact with unique and beautiful environments, and become part of a new online community.
Each of these worlds had a distinct atmosphere - some contained strange life forms, or interesting challenges to amuse and confuse visitors. Others offered up opportunities to contribute to the shaping of the Mirror and its culture.
A number of special events took place, including an End of The World party, where avatars enjoyed a few virtual drinks and some ‘very low fat canapés’; they could even participate in a dancing competition: singles, couples, freestyle and ballroom…
Another particular example for an online game community, developed by Sony Corporation and Toho Co., Ltd, is based on one of the latest, big-budget Hollywood movie: Godzilla – The aftermath.
This game is a fully realised Virtual Reality environment where the user can move among, mingle and chat with others in an area of Manhattan that has been destroyed by Godzilla, the famous fantasy creature. However, before playing the action game, the user must proceed to an extensive download of the Sony Community Place Browser software and install it – which does not look to be that easy; hardware requirements are also high.
Figure 3: Godzilla –
The aftermath
Godzilla - The Aftermath is a fully realised Virtual
Reality Experience where users can move among,
mingle, and chat with others in an area of Manhattan that has
been destroyed by Godzilla.
The Community action for Trans-European Telecommunications Networks (TEN-Telecom) addresses the need to operate telecommunications infrastructure and services in the context of a competitive market. The main problem addressed is the lack of applications and services for domains of public interest, matching the socio-economic needs of citizens and SMEs. Demonstration projects have therefore been selected and partly funded to be implemented in real situations: at real sites, with the enablers and the users in a real market environment.
One of these, the InfoCities project, aims at integrating the results of initiatives by more than 40 participating cities by using common infrastructure and standards. The common technology platform, adopting Euro-ISDN, ATM and CATV technologies as available and cost competitive, will support real applications in education, health, transport, culture, electronic commerce and city information. This 10 year project has a target of 2.5 million individual and collective customers; the 2-years feasibility phase, involving 8 cities (Antwerp, Barcelona, Bologna, Den Haag, Helsinki, Liège, Manchester and Nice) and 160.000 users, started in January 1997; it addresses interoperability of services, application selection and business planning.
Part of the Public and Civic Services Work Package in InfoCities, Helsinki’s Digital Town Hall is aimed at facilitating the access to the municipality services outside office hours, as well as for the disabled part of the population and the increasing elderly population.
Under this project, the City of Helsinki, in partnership with the Helsinki Telephone Co., will develop her public information, transaction as well as cultural services, and make them available in the Helsinki Arena 2000 value added network and in the public Internet. The offer will include information on services provided by the public administration and on public events, support for electronic transactions with the authorities and for communication with the City Information Office through webphone, enhancements to the use of cultural services, city views displayed in real time and the Virtual School of Languages (a new method of teaching languages by means of interactive multimedia, through networks of various speeds).
Figure 4: Virtual Helsinki
This InfoCities Project aims at developing
Internet services for citizens.
The New Multimedia Applications include a virtual 3D meeting
point.
In particular, users will gain access to a 3-dimensional
city, where they can learn about the public services
available through the City network and move around like in the
real city by orientating themselves with landmarks such as public
buildings. They will actually surf into City services through a
3-dimensional user interface, and not only through text and
images, which has been the case so far with traditional web
pages.
The Information Society Activity Centre (ISAC) of the European Commission intends to develop a Web-based application: 3D Virtual Presence of the European Institutions, in the framework of the PROMISE programme, which is aimed at providing awareness, supporting best practices and giving an international visibility of the European Union in the Information Society.
This project will provide a coherent and attractive picture of each European Institution (Parliament, Council, Commission, Court of Justice, Court of Auditors, Economic and Social Committee, Committee of the Regions, European Investment Bank, European Central Bank, …), shown in a network of responsibility, decision making and operation of European policies. Virtual visits in policies, premises, information services, agendas, … will explain to European citizens the specific role of each institution, its way of working, its contribution to the definition of policies and decision making, its communication services, …
Based as far as possible on different existing virtual visits which have been already developed, a first prototype should be accessible to the public by 9 May 1999 (Europe Day). Limited in scope, in term of policies, institutions and languages covered, it will illustrate the complete application and allow for a review by interested directorates of the European Institutions and the public. The complete application is expected to be launched on 9 May 2000.
Figure 5: Virtual tour of
the European institutions in Brussels
Each panorama contains a series of hotspots that allow
you to move around. Doors, lifts and staircases lead you
to the place following on logically from your current position.
Other objects provide access to additional information.
The 3D Virtual Presence of the European Institutions
application should bring a visible added value to the individual
Internet presence of each Institution. The focus will
consequently be on cross-institutional navigation and efforts
towards communication, rather than on rough information delivery.
It should meet the expectation of the public at large, with an
emphasis on some groups, namely young people, women or disabled
people, taking full account of the language diversity in the
European Union.
In order to increase the understanding and the interactivity between European citizens and their Institutions, it is the intention to open the system to other European levels of government and to European bodies having a role in the development of European policies. Updates of existing chapters and addition of new chapters are expected to be decentralised in the future.
A specific focus will also be given to the equal access of European citizens to this application, for instance via the various access points close to citizens in the Member States, including the National Bureaux of the European Institutions, public libraries, schools and eventually locations such as cybercafés.
Eurostat’s project presented in this paper involves state of the art techniques in many fields of computer science. Research is developing rapidly and results that could not be described in the paper will be presented verbally at the conference.
The aim of the project is to facilitate web-based collaboration and teleconferencing by setting up an intuitive three-dimensional multi-user environment, which will ultimately consist of a set of buildings and rooms, tailored to establish a metaphor of everyday office life. In other words, it is a shared virtual world.
Figure 6: The gateway to
the Virtual European Statistical Laboratory
The laboratory is not located anywhere in particular
in the real world, nor in the virtual world of the Web;
it indeed appears to be located on no particular server,
but is accessible on a number of them, although it
is unique.
This is the Virtual European Statistical Laboratory.
Being virtual, it is not located anywhere in particular in the
real world, nor anywhere in particular in the virtual world of
the Web; it indeed appears to be located on no particular server,
but is accessible on a number of them, although it is unique.
A central element of the Virtual European Statistical Laboratory is the theatre where real meetings and events will be broadcasted. It will feature a cinema-like projection screen where conferences and workshops can be shown to all visitors. In particular, it is Eurostat’s intention to webcast here key sessions of the New Techniques and Technologies for Statistics (NTTS ’98) ‘real’ conference, that will take place in Sorrento next November. The present state of the art in webcasting of audio and video will only allow for two partial results:
Real-time streaming video and audio conferencing inside the VRML world is not feasible for the time being. It will however soon be possible to experiment with the brand new MPEG-4 standard for real-time video/audio conferencing on the Internet, to be released this October as a committee draft. This technology is indeed very promising, as it mixes digital TV, VRML and 3D graphics, and allows for transparent multimedia access whatever the source: internet, broadcast (cable, satellite) or disk (WORM, CD-ROM, hard disk).
Just outside the projection room, there will be a foyer, where the participants will have an opportunity to discuss informally the presentations they will have just heard and seen, using distributed, multi-user Virtual Reality technology.
Posters advertising other conferences will also be pinned on the walls and used as links to dedicated web-sites.
A public library is present in three dimensions: a set of free text searches in different services will deliver hits, which can be visualised as books in a bookshelf. This implies that the content of the library is updated dynamically: when a visitor enters the room a second time, a variety of topics and documents will have changed. The user then is encouraged to examine the results more intuitively and browsing the library is made easier.
Figure 7: The dynamic 3D
library
A look into the dynamic 3D library for browsing documents.
This library is based on an innovative concept, designed and
developed by Eurostat to benefit from the Web to improve
awareness, dissemination and exploitation of research results.
This concept, VIROS
- Virtual Institute for Research in Official Statistics (),
can be viewed as a Mall or Shopping Centre
metaphor: the system is as decentralised as possible, with every
participating organisation remaining entirely responsible for its
own contribution; Eurostat acts as a central co-ordinator,
ensuring that the individual contributions appear integrated into
a coherent, richer set.
VIROS has been implemented on the World-Wide Web under provisional guidelines, so that it can be validated. This approach provides a ‘best-effort’ service, with the additional benefit of making information on Research in Official Statistics more widely accessible and easier to find, even outside this framework.
In practice, when accessing the VIROS home page, the user is offered a choice between several search engines, which he can use according to his own personal preferences, and presented with a form, for selection of topics from the NORIS nomenclature on research in official statistics. His request is forwarded to the corresponding search engine to be processed, and results are displayed as returned (figure 8). Currently, documents returned by AltaVista are more numerous with less out-dated links, while those retrieved by HotBot are scored so that the documents most likely to be of interest are listed first. The visitor can then either access any document from the list received, or refine the search.
Figure 8: VIROS –
Virtual Institute for Research in Official Statistics
VIROS presently offers a choice between AltaVista and HotBot.
Using VIROS is straight-forward for users; participating
is just as easy and open to any organisation active in the field
of research in official statistics. Such participation
essentially implies that contributed information (studies,
reports, articles, papers, software, discussion groups, calls for
proposals, ...) is both public and relevant to research in
official statistics, that it is made widely available on the
World-Wide Web, and that it includes meta-information (title,
abstract and keywords) appropriate to its indexation by the
various Web search engines.
As this concept has just been launched, there is obviously room for further improvement and a number of directions will be followed:
The Virtual European Statistical Laboratory will also include a number of rooms, where visitor's avatars will meet to discuss topics such as the preparation of the 5th Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Framework Programme (1998-2002), seasonal adjustment, ...
Figure 9: The virtual meeting room
Visitor's avatars meet to discuss; here a conversation
is taking place, while images of a distant participant,
taken by an embedded web camera, are displayed on the TV screen.
The meeting rooms will be designed in such a way that the actual
theme associated to every room is made obvious. They will be
fitted with virtual bookcases, so that relevant information about
any topic related to official statistics be really at hand,
wherever it is physically located in the real world; the
availability on the spot of tools such as statistical software
and of "machines" such as 3D statistical visualisation
boards will also clearly facilitate fruitful discussions.
In scheduled meetings, certain participants may take defined roles such as the chairman moderating discussions, a lecturer giving short introductions, a librarian helping to find supporting information or an assistant responsible for preparing the minutes (and serving coffee?).
The Virtual European Statistical Laboratory will also incorporate a number of classrooms, where training in statistics and demonstration of prototypes will be organised. Participation in these activities could be subject to specific terms and conditions, defined on a case by case basis: in the final stage, when the project becomes fully operational, access to any individual activity could be limited to selected participants, or subject to the payment of a fee.
Educational multimedia material will be collected from institutions in and outside the European Union and made available in these rooms. TV sets will also be available to show audio-visual material.
Prototypes will be on display, for discussion and evaluation. For instance, European-wide comparisons with bar charts in three dimensions are much more informative than two-dimensional tables, especially when users can interact with the model. In such a prototype, the user can select a topic from a list box to access statistics that interest him: the values are then displayed as bars with varying heights, delimited by the political borders of the different countries.
Figure 10: 3D Europe
The prototype of a 3D bar chart comparison on top of a digital
elevation model of Europe.
More facilities will be offered in the Virtual European Statistical Laboratory: a reception desk where new users can familiarise with the environment, a cinema and TV sets where films or videos will be shown, standard user offices, and even a coffee shop where less formal discussions could take place; educational games, such as quizzes, will also be available. The possibility of walking in the garden will offer even more opportunities for informal meetings.
At a later stage, autonomous virtual guides could be made available to help visitors’ avatars.
Research in virtual reality, particularly related to VRML, database access, multi-user technologies, avatars, the external authoring interface, and streaming, is undertaken by and co-ordinated in the working groups of the VRML Consortium. It clearly reaches far beyond the limits of the work presented in this paper, but the most advanced results of developments in the global research community will be utilised in its framework.
The Virtual European Statistical Laboratory itself is organised in three separate layers: interface, access and database, as shown on figure 11.
Figure 11: Structure for
the Virtual European Statistical Laboratory
The Virtual European Statistical Laboratory is
organised in three separate layers:
interface, access and database.
The interface layer provides a graphical multi-user environment for three-dimensional interaction with other participants. It is implemented using the Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML); static and approved geometry are kept in this layer as well as applications and tools for the visualisation of statistics.
It is this layer which corresponds to the user's point of view that has been described in the first part of this paper.
The access layer acts as a real time server for events from the level above; all dynamic behaviours, such as changes of geometry and the motion of avatars are controlled here; it also passes requests from applications to the appropriate databases.
Figure 12: The external authoring
interface VRML/Java
The access layer acts as an intermediary between the
3D user-interface and the databases.
The access layer acts as an intermediary between the 3D
user-interface and the databases. Most of the code is written in
Java language, which is particularly useful for networking and
multi-user VRML worlds. Java can be used to generate VRML content
directly and manage user interaction to the geometry. A platform
independent solution of this type of interface, which requires no
additional software downloading, is VNet a
freeware maintained as a shared project by members of the VRML
community.
Active content of any kind can be achieved by using Java as a platform independent language. The External Authoring Interface (EAI) provides the means to mix VRML and Java and to create a powerful dynamic graphical user interface for the visualisation of databases of any kind.
For storage management and updating of databases, it is intended to use the Generic Information Server Toolkit (GIST). This is a highly flexible toolkit for the construction of Internet-based information systems, providing means for distributed user communities to populate and maintain customised searchable databases. The current release is supplied with the MySQL database and Apache web server pre-built from the JRC/CEO.
In the database layer, dynamic data is stored. This can be read, updated and changed from the access layer. Statistical data is present, as well as both restricted and public VRML-files for updating the 3D environment in the first layer.
The database layer consists of four separate databases:
The restricted VRML database will be accessible to registered users and Eurostat’s officials only. Privileged users should be able to update their content dynamically, in order to establish an Intranet-type virtual world for their own use. The same concept should be followed for classified data in the other databases.
The concepts described in this paper are quite general and obviously applicable to other domains and activities. For instance, the VIROS decentralised approach could be implemented in other fields, such as the set of press releases separately issued by Eurostat and the National Statistical Institutes, or more generally, to any other activity involving a number of independent organisations.
Practical applications of shared virtual worlds, like the Virtual European Statistical Laboratory, are quite numerous as well. These technologies can provide real business solutions to the Information Society, not only for entertainment, but also in a variety of fields such as marketing, advertising, awareness creation, culture, product visualisation, training, architectural simulation, data visualisation, …
This version of the paper was finalised on Thursday, 19 November 1998. At that time, research was still developing rapidly and many results were not available: the latest achievements will be presented verbally at the conference.
The cited URLs were checked as being valid when this paper was submitted for review (Thursday, 19 November 1998). There is unfortunately no way to guarantee their existence and validity at later dates.
European Commission, Eurostat, Luxembourg
Christian Guittet studied in Paris at École Polytechnique (graduate engineer - X 70), École Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Économique (statistician-economist - SEA 75) and Institut d’Études Politiques, before working at UNESCO and in the private sector.
He then joined the European Commission in 1979, to be responsible for applying new information technologies in the field of electronic publishing and information dissemination. He was assigned to different Directorate-Generals and was involved, in particular, in the development of user guidance services for the Euronet--DIANE network right from its beginning, pioneered the introduction of SGML (Standard Generalised Mark-up Language) in Europe with FORMEX and introduced multimedia in the dissemination of scientific and technical knowledge.
As a principal administrator at Eurostat, he is presently responsible for activities related to innovative applications of new information technologies and to the exploitation of research results.
European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy
Dr. Best has a BSc (Ist) in Physics, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Liverpool University. He has worked at CERN, Geneva where he researched in High Energy Physics, Rutherford Appleton Lab. UK and JET Joint Undertaking.
He became a staff scientist at JRC Ispra in 1988. He has many published papers. He has a long experience of scientific data visualisation and more recently in Web based information systems. He has led the development of several important advanced WWW systems.
European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy
Mr. Loekkemyhr holds a MSc. in Physics and Electronics from University of Oslo, Norway. Diverse research activities include multi-processors, embedded systems, on-board spacecraft data processing, object-oriented distributed systems, instrumentation, WWW systems and Virtual Reality.
He has worked for the European Space Agency and in the private sector, and from 1996 as scientific officer at the JRC. Current activities include WWW/VR systems and tasks related to initiation, execution and control of various European Research projects.
European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy
Mr. Schickel (Dipl. Inform. Univ.) graduated in information science with economics as a subsidiary subject from the University of Technology (TUM) at Munich, Germany. He did commissioned work for companies and research institutions involved in scientific visualisation and computer animation, medical topography, geographical information systems (GIS) and global positioning system (GPS) navigation.
He is member of the German Computer Society (GI - Gesellschaft für Informatik) and author of conference publications. His recent work, a demonstrator for Virtual Reality in geography (VRgeo), was on continuous display during the World's Fair EXPO'98 in Lisbon, Portugal.