Visualizing Building Occupancy Pattern on Campus

This paper addresses the problem of information opacity that planners and university administrators have when they have multiple sets of data that are not interconnected and how these data can be visualized. The visualization of building occupancy pattern on campus is used as an example to illustrate how this general problem can be addressed through a database driven effective visualization that supports decision-making. This paper proposes a solution using web-based 3D Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) animation dynamically generated from a database and describes a prototype in progress. The prototype displays a broad overview of building occupancy patterns across campus through 3D animation of occupancy over time. From the overview, users can navigate further to find out the details of occupancy throughout the day for specific buildings on campus