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TOWARDS THE PERCEPTIONAL WORLD: 
A MODELING FRAMEWORK FOR TRANSFORMING PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTAL 
DIGITAL DATA INTO PERCEPTIONAL DIGIRAL DATA* 
Liu Bin-yi 
Ph.D. and Associate Professor 
College of Architecture and Urban Planning 
Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, P.R. of China 
ISPRS Commission III 
Abstract: 
For the needs of landcape and urban planning, two kinds of data are normally necessary: the objective 
data such as physical environmental data (topography, geology, ecology, land use, etc.) and the subjective 
data such as sensory or perceptional data about human living world (the sense and attitude to a place, 
the sense of landscape beauty, etc.). How to get such subjective data by transforming the objective data 
will be a great challenge to the professions of photogrammetry and remote sensing. Focusing attention 
on this issue an approach to transform the physical environmental digital data into perceptional data 
for the field landscape planning by photogrammetry and remote sensing methods is provided in this paper. 
The main work of this paper is to establish a modeling framework in which the field physical environmental 
information and the field of perceptional information can be transformed from each other. Its basic work 
is to make this modeling framework operable on practical field landscape planning through holistic study 
of field theory, photogrammetry and remote sensing methods, computer information system technique and 
some special software-making, in which the following issues are introduced and discussed in detail: 
1) the theory study of the field from the viewpoint of landscape and urban planning profession; 2) the 
framework of time-space simulation of the field environmental information; 3) the transforming framework 
of field landscape perceptional information; 4) the mathematical models for some perceptional data tran- 
sformation ; 5) creation of a field landscape information system. 
Key Words: Data Transformation, Field Planning, Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing Application, Human 
Settlement, Perceptional Digital Data. 
1. Introduction measurable variables such as land use, physical 
resources inventory, environmental pollution, 
To understand and manage the living world from urban spatial structure and population distribu- 
a point of politic view of architectural sciences tion, etc.. But all that is limited to the ob- 
and arts, a new concept in the professions of jective information. It needs to be identified 
architecture, urban-rural planning and landscape whether photogrammetry and remote sensing can 
architecture termed "field" was provided by the be used in the perceptional information collec- 
author Liu Bin-yi in 1991. It is something similar tion of field which involves a lot of "unmeasur- 
to the term "field" in physics, meaning the ex- able" variables. In the studies of "time-space 
istence of time-space in which Man and his living translation and psychological calculation of 
environment interact on each other. Its space landscape information", "the systemtics of land- 
ranges from the architectural environment, the Scape engineering and method of landscape res- 
urban-rural area to the landscape region with ources investigation" and "field regulation study" 
the time change from the past, the present to three research projects are supported by National 
the future. The environmental construction of Natural Science Foundation of China. The ex- 
the living world and its outward appearance are istence of this capability was demonstrated and 
mountaions, rivers, farmlands, cities, sceneries an approach to perform these projects implemented 
and gardens, etc.---the landscapes which people (Liu Bin-yi, 1989, 1990, 1991a, 1991b). This paper 
are familiar with in their daily life. Its inward, work is an extension of these researches. General- 
based on the philosophy of living world and en- ly, the subjective variables can be expressed 
vironment cognition theory, are various kinds approximately by the objective variables. We 
of information ranging from the physical to can collect those "unmeasurable" field perception- 
the perceptional ones which exist in a form of al information from the field objective informa- 
combination of the objective and the subjective tion by finding the relationships bewteen them 
(Figure 1). The modern politic approach of ar- according to the theory study of field. Therefore, 
chitecture design, urban-rural planning and land- ‘we can transform the environmental digital data 
space planning and design is called field plannig. into the perceptional digital data by modern 
According to the professional needs, the basic photogrammetry and remote sensing methods. It 
process of field landscape planning involves would be very usefull for the professions of 
(1) field landscape information collection by architectural and environmental sciences. 
photogrammetry and remote sensing; (2) field 
landscape information analysis (inventory, assess- The study began with development of the field 
ment and evaluation) obtained by computer informa- theory in terms of architectural and environ- 
tion system; (3). proposal or decision-making mental sciences and with development of a three- 
by both hand and computer-aided mapping. So far, dimensional mathematical framework for modeling 
photogrammetry and remote sensing have been succ- the characteristics of the field. Computer- 
essfully applied to the information collection based data files were then prepared by digitizing 
and analysis of field landscape planning with the X,Y,Z coordinates of aerial photographs and 
interpreting Landsat 5 TM CCT image data. The 
  
DIM established on the study area covered 53 
sq.km with grids of 10m x 10m and 30m x 30m. 
The T™ CCT image data is 1800 x 1700 pixel. The 
* This paper is supported by National Natural 
Science Foundation of China. 
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