In celebration of all things geospatial, we have enhanced our augmented reality mobile application, Symphony AR, with a UK Mapping Festival feature.
Now available to download free from the Google Play Store and Apple Store, the app will give you a 3D sneak preview of the street themed exhibition space – both in real-time and as a vision of the future.
Over the duration of the event, 4 – 6 September, visitors to the Festival will be able to view their physical location in augmented reality. As you move your smartphone around the hall, futuristic eco-animations will spring to life, catapulting you into a street scene decades from now. To take part in our augmented reality treasure hunt, just collect all the animations on your phone and redeem them at the Aligned Assets stand for an AR prize.
Gaming technology for practical use
While this app has been produced to create a bit of hi-tech fun at the Festival, it was primarily designed for use by the emergency services and local authorities to translate a plethora of risk, geospatial and social demographic information, in an easy-to-process visual format.
This practical application of a technology that’s better known for gaming, will help emergency services to rapidly assess risk onsite and therefore coordinate resources more efficiently. This is achieved by providing a visual description of the location through markers highlighting hazards and dangers, in addition to 3D models of complex buildings and 2D maps of the wider scene.
The use of this smart technology is equally beneficial for local authorities, where it can be used to highlight potential risks for social workers making home visits, overlaying tourist attraction markers for places of interest or depicting specific planning information such as Tree Preservation Orders.
Common reference point
Much of this information is already available through the IT systems, but the accuracy of its translation relies heavily on human interpretation and communication. Because the Symphony AR app acts as a common reference point for all staff, everyone is responding and communicating using the same consistent information.
The implementation of augmented reality in the public sector could have a huge impact on communicating complex address information accurately, efficiently and consistently across multiple departments. This is because the address data systems they use, be it the Local Land & Property Gazetteer (LLPG) for local authorities or the Ordnance Survey’s AddressBase product used by the emergency services, tag a location identifier, ie the UPRN (Unique Property Reference Number) to every address.
Using Aligned Assets’ Symphony Location Manager, local authorities and emergency services can load and configure the data they want to be shown in augmented reality themselves. It’s easy to implement and manage, and means they can display their own spatial data in AR without the need of specialist software developers, and by configuring a link to LLPG or AddressBase, that data can then be formatted for display as AR markers.
Aligned Assets MD, Andy Hird, comments
‘We’re delighted to support the UK Mapping Festival this September. By providing our Symphony AR app we aim to help visitors understand the capabilities that augmented reality can bring to organisations. Whether you’re responsible for creating or distributing geographic data through maps, augmented reality is an exciting step change for information discovery and visualisation that can enhance the way we use maps. We envisage local authorities and emergency services becoming early adopters of this technology as it’ll help with service provision and risk assessment, as well as creating a new and innovative way of engaging with the community.’
If you’ve not seen the Symphony AR app in action, then come along to the UK Mapping Festival and experience its potential.
Alternatively, call us on 01483 717950 for more info or to organise a free demo.
