New Initiatives in Mental Health

Although my sabbatical stay at the Black Dog Institute in Sydney, Australia, is only half over, four new research initiatives have taken form already :

1) Body Mapping on the Body : Body Mapping is an initiative led by Dr. Katherine Boydell that involves people creating full-sized body maps that incorporate their visualizations of different conditions. Body maps have been developed for anxiety, psychosis and planning. What we are doing is using augmented reality technology to project these maps back onto people's bodies. We hypothesize that these self-applied maps may intensify or change how people experience the body maps and potentially affect the interventions that incorporate them in useful ways.

2) Abuse Monitoring : Among the potential areas of application for smart garments in the area of mental health, one application jumps out as a priority. Although the technology to make this truly workable in an unobtrusive and low maintenance manner needs to be refined, the basic technology exists today to develop a garment with pressure-sensitive pads that could record and track blows to the body. Combined with a microphone and some accelerometers to monitor sudden movements, it appears that a garment could be developed in conjunction with an app that identifies situations likely to involve abuse. Currently we are working with specialists of physical abuse to better determine the specifications for such a garment, as well as exploring the technological requirements.

3) Symptom Monitoring : In a way that parallels the Abuse Monitoring application, the incorporation of accelerometers, microphones as well as sensors for monitoring changes in mood could be used to track and assess a range of mental health conditions and disorders, including anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder. This would compliment existing smartphone apps that rely on self reporting. The issues, as for all smart garments, is to develop a way to incorporate the electronics in a manner that allows their removal and reconnection quickly and easily to support garment maintenance, as well as to find circuit architectures that keep power requirements to a minimum. Designs are being developed and appropriate technologies identified.

4) Brief Contact Support : One of the functions currently supported by certain smart phone apps is the ability to send brief "pick-me-up" messages to people with self image issues. By incorporating actuators such as vibrators or tiny heating elements, it would be possible to send more visceral, physical messages of caring to another person, perhaps accompanied by verbal messages if necessary. A design for such a garment is being prepared.

Embodied Entanglements

Haven't posted here in a while, but it isn't because activity has been slow. On the contrary.

Ongoing research projects

1) Participatory opera : We presented a first version of the opera to a conference audience on June 23rd in Basel, Switzerland. The current version of the opera runs about 25 minutes. The opera presents a full story arc, albeit in a compressed form, beginning with an introduction into the future world in which the action takes place as well as two of the three primary characters and carrying the action through to a climax which involves interactive elements. The story deals with overcoming resistance to expressions of difference, including transgender difference. A second version involving interaction enhancements is being prepared for the fall of 2017. We are working on a book to describe the project in its globality, and an online version of the opera is also under preparation.
Public Performances
- Pinnacle - An Interactive Opera. Empathies2017, Gala performance, 11th European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts Conference, Basel, Switzerland (2017).

2) Orienteering belt : We have been working on a belt to provide information concerning spatial orientation for a range of different populations (those with attention deficit issues, visual impairments, and cognitive impairments). The challenge is to determine an interaction interface which is readily understandable but still powerful enough to support a range of possible actions. We are drawing on cognitive load theory to limit the complexity of the interface.

3) Masturbation aids for people with upper arm impairments : Our work on masturbations aids is in its final stages. We have developed a series of handles to assist people with a range of upper arm impairments in manipulating erotic toys, as well as redesigning certain devices for stimulating genitalia. Three articles based on this work have been published, and a fourth is in preparation.
Publications
- E. Morales, V. Gauthier, G. Edwards and A. Guerette. (2017). Co-designing Sex Toys for Adults with Motor Disabilities. Sexuality and Disability Journal. 35(3): 1-10.
- Ernesto Morales, Véronique Gauthier, Geoffrey Edwards, Frédérique Courtois. (2016). Masturbation practices of men and women with upper limb motor disabilities. Sexuality and Disability. 34: 1-15.
- Ernesto Morales, Véronique Gauthier, Geoffrey Edwards, Frédérique Courtois. (2016). Women with Disabilities' Perceptions of Sexuality, Sexual Abuse and Masturbation. Sexuality and Disability. 34: 1-12.

4) Ecological framework for disability and mental health : Work with the author (P. Fougeyrollas) and collaborators of the Disability Creation Process model has led to several efforts to extend the model to integrate sustainable development issues as well as, most recently, ongoing efforts to accommodate the issue of mental health promotion and treatments. The ecological framework draws on a dual understanding of resiliency drawn from two distinct domains, the psycho-social domain and the biological domain. One article has been published in this area and a second one is under development.
Publications
- Geoffrey Edwards. (2016). Augmented Corporality - Key Technologies for Last Mile Interventions for People with Disabilities. First IEEE International Symposium on Last-Mile Smart Mobility, Paris, France (1-10)

5) Sensor net ecologies : In addition to providing a broader understanding of disability and mental health, ecological perspectives also offer ways to integrate the development of smart cities and the internet of things with more human-oriented goals, that of enhancing resiliency in human communities. The idea of resiliency applies not only to the development goals of sensor networks, however, but also to the process dynamics of their implementation. An article has been submitted in this area and a second article is in development.
Publications
- Geoffrey Edwards. (2016). Sensor Ecologies - Designing the Internet of Things, International Journal of Internet of Things, submitted.

6) Lithospheres : A collaborative project with a partner in private industry, seeking to develop an online exchange environment in which the body is more present, using smart garments and appropriate interfaces and apps. Under the leadership of Dr Jocelyne Kiss.

7) ProBE : Development of near body distance measurements, a collaborative project involving private industry, under the leadership of Dr. Brad McFadyen. My team is responsible for developing the user interface using cognitive load principles.

8) Pro(x)thèse : A first smart garment has been developed that provides an opportunity for people with spinal cord lesions and other conditions where sense of self and self image have been strongly impacted, to help them recover a sense of a sensual self.
Publications
- Geoffrey Edwards, Frédérique Courtois, Nancy Dubé, Ernesto Morales, Luis Velasco. (2015). Pro(x)thèse An Interactive Installation That Enables The Exploration Of Sexuality, Disability And Self Image. 4th ISCoS and ASIA Joint Scientific Meeting, Montreal, Canada

Ongoing pedagogical activities

1) Embodied Entanglements Seminar : Since January 2017, we have been holding a weekly seminar exploring issues of embodiment especially through contemporary philosophers such as Deleuze, Whitehead, Sloterdijk, Derrida, etc. The seminar is currently on a summer break but we expect to pick up where we left off in the autumn.

A Day in the Life...

This has been an amazing autumn. I am doing some of the most creative work I have ever done in my career, and at the same time it has been a highly productive period, generating six full peer-reviewed papers over the past year, with three-plus more in the works. So, a typical day :

1. Designing erotic accessories for people with disabilities : This is a two-year project funded by Quebec's Fonds de recherche québécois en société et culture (FQRSC), led by my collaborator Dr Ernesto Morales and involving, in addition to myself, our sexologist collaborator Dr Frédérique Courtois. We organized a series with people with a range of disabilities, both men and women, to discuss their masturbation practices and the difficulties and challenges they face. Based on these interviews, we have elaborated some preliminary designs. Most of these are of the "handle" type, that is, extensions that connect to existing sex toys that allow people with a range of disabilities to use these more effectively. In addition, some actual sex toys are also under development where there don't appear to be any commercial ones available. The work is inspiring in the sense that we are clearly serving a need that exists and for which little work has been done in the past. Our work in this area will probably provide a kind of basis for encouraging other projects in this area over the coming years. Furthermore, the designs we are producing can be either 3d printed directly, or one can 3d print molds that are used to construct the object from non 3d-printed materials such as silicone gels.

2. Understanding how children with and without disability move together : This is a three-year project funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research under the leadership of my collaborator Dr Coralee McLaren and involving, in addition to myself, Dr Tom Chau and Dr Barbara Gibson from Holland-Blooview Kids Rehab and Dr Cheryl Missiuna from the University of Waterloo. The project involves bringing a group of children, both with and without disabilities, together within a dance exercise that encompasses both structured and unstructured movement exercises. We will be monitoring the children's neurological responses via their own movements, but especially as they observe and respond to the movements of other children. Although we have not yet begin the full data analysis phase, we have used the EEG cap to study one child's responses to the movements of others, and the results, even for this one individual, are fascinating. Certain observed movements trigger "motor imagery" related to those movements, but not all movements have this effect. It seems that children "feel" certain movements of their peers more than others, and these "felt movements" trigger them to move in similar ways (a kind of mimicking). These observations are changing how we understand the way children play together. There will be much more to come, but even these preliminary results are intriguing.

3. Designing interactive and immersive installations for people with disabilities : Artists across the world are designing and implementing immersive and interactive installations that provide unusual experiences to participants. These installations are often not accessible to people with disabilities. In addition, the experience of disability can itself generate new possibilities for unusual experiences for those without disability, and unusual experiences of the body can lead to new insights for people with disabilities about their own interactions with the environment. A Ph.D. student, Ms. Afnen Arfaoui, has taken on the challenge of developing a design methodology for creating interactive and immersive installations that address issues of disability. She is drawing on Alfred North Whitehead's "process philosophy" in order to structure this design process. This is leading to a novel approach to design of these unusual installations, an approach which integrates both scientific preoccupations and artistic sensitivities.

4. Designing a participative, interactive opera : Given today's technology and the possibilities offered by social networking, it seems obvious that the traditional presentation formats of performance art - theatre, music, opera, dance - should evolve. Modifying the formats of public presentations of these art forms is not easy, however - these have settled into "ways of doing" that are normative and generally accepted by the public. We propose to open up the opera form to new forms of interaction with the audience. To do this, we are working with an unpublished manuscript (see the discussion of the opera project below), a science fiction story still under development. The manuscript is part of a "vast narrative" type project, that is to say, the story is told across 15 books in over 2500 pages, and parts of the story are finding their way into a variety of formats, including game environments and visual art (paintings). Furthermore, the story draws inspiration from the Greek myths and legends of gods and heroes, in particular the stories of Agamemnon Atreus and his family (the Oresteia), of Jason and Medea, of Odysseus and his compatriots and family, and of Orpheus and his family. The Greeks "invented" dramatic presentations, but in their day the public played an active role in the presentation of theatre. We propose to restore this participation. Right now, the issue we are struggling with is how to "segment" the story (in essence, the libretto) into short pieces which can be recombined in different ways through audience choices. The segments have to work not just as text, but also musically and choreographically. You can't just take an arbitrary piece of music and move it around, the result will be incoherent. Choreography also imposes constraints on the process. So as a team we are working on finding a kind of "basic unit" that incorporates the constraints on music, dance and text recombination.

5. Ongoing projects in other areas : Beyond these main challenges, which tend to be present every day in one form or another, several other projects are also ongoing. As part of the effort of developing smart garments and intelligent environments, I am drawing on ecoscience theory to develop a new understanding of complex sensor systems to assist the design process, and to recognize the need to address issues of personal vulnerability as these systems encroach on the highly personal spaces of the body. Another project under development focusses on designing techniques to test and enhance the combined effect of viewing and feeling the body, as a means to improve movement retraining following stroke, for example. In a third area we are looking at how to recruit adolescents with disabilities for a study of virtual reality as a tool for skill development for eventual employment. And this work excludes my ongoing writing initiatives and my work on fashion design...

Pinnacle - A One Act, Massively Participatory Opera

The participatory opera project is such an interesting effort it deserves a blog entry of its own. The convergence of several completely separate initiatives, three under my direct purview and one from another team, the project integrates these into one unifying initiative. Hence, over the past five years, in addition to my ongoing research at the intersection of the geomatics and rehabilitation sciences, on the one hand, and performance and media arts on the other, I have undertaken an ambitious writing effort as well as developed and brought to market two fashion collections based on my own designs.

The writing project consists of developing a "vast narrative" of some 2500 pages, involving hundreds of characters, planets, and habitats and more than 250 years of "future history) - about 65% of this project has been completed. The story is inspired by several of the Greek myths - the stories of Orestes and Elektra (immortalized in Euripedes' Orestia), of Orpheus and Eurydice, of Ulysses and Penelope, and of Jason, Medea and the Argonauts are the main narratives involved. The opera focusses on the first 100 pages of this story, essentially the youth of its central character, Oreph Sodenheim (based on both Orestes and Orpheus).

In addition to the scenario (from which the opera's libretto is derived), we propose to provide opportunities for large sectors of the public to participate both in the development of the opera and in its final delivery on stage, via an online web access we will create for the project. Opportunities to influence the scenario, the music, the choreography and parts of the staging will be provided. In addition, we are developing a smart garment that will incorporate movement sensors and which will serve as a specialized interface for the opera development - the garment will be provided to targeted audience members. The project involves several researcher-artists from Université Laval's Department of Music (Jocelyne Kiss, Serge Lacasse, Sophie Stévance) as well as collaborators from outside the university. An innovate project which will act as a showcase for innovation for related research at Laval University.

Research Nirvana?

Have I died and gone to researcher heaven? The set of projects on which I and my collaborators are currently working feels very much like that could be the case. Here is a brief overview :

1. The Winter Project : This project is the brain child of my colleague, Dr. Ernesto Morales. Essentially, we are working in collaboration with the city council for Quebec City and a range of organisations for people with disability, to redesign city policies, including snow removal practices, to make the city more "disability friendly" during winter conditions. Early results from the project include a redesign of pavement ramps to include a drainage system allowing snow to be melted and removed - pavement ramps are of key importance for people in wheelchairs and are often the site of an accumulation of snow and ice ; the development of a wheelchair-adapted snow-mobile device ; and discussions concerning changes to snow removal practices.

2. Pro(x)thèse : This project, under my oversight, seeks to create an interactive smart garment that is embedded within an active, immersive environment, to facilitate the exploration of self image in relation to sensuality and sexuality and disability. A prototype poncho has been developed which incorporates 12 pressure sensors, interface software has been completed, and photography of people with disability has been acquired. The project includes collaborators Dr. Frédérique Courtois, Dr. Ernesto Morales and Ms. Nancy Dubé.

3. Sex toys : Another collaborative project with Dr. Ernesto Morales, in this project we are designing aids that can be combined with existing sex toys, as well as developing new ones, that provide masturbation ability to people with disability who are often unable to use existing sex aids. The designs can be printed on a 3d printer, ensuring privacy and customizability.

4. ProBE : ProBE (Proximal Body Environments) seeks to develop a diagnostic tool for clinics to assess the presence of brain trauma, both mild and more severe, in patients. The project is predicated on the observation, tested across decades of research on obstacle avoidance strategies, that people who have even mild brain trauma move differently in space and in proximity to other objects (or people) than do healthy individuals. ProBE involves researchers from Quebec City (Drs Brad McFadyen, the leader of the project and Denis Laurendeau) and Toronto (Dr Karl Zabjek) as well as clinicians from both cities.

5. Participatory Opera : The crown of my ongoing research program, developing a massively participative one-act opera based on my own science fiction opus. The concept is to develop the opera itself in parallel with a range of tools that allow active participation by diverse publics in all stages of development as well as the final real-time performance of the opera - input concerning the music, the choreography and the story line itself. These tools include virtual and social environments and specially designed smart garments. The opera project, led by myself, involves musicians Jocelyn Kiss, Serge Lacasse and Sophie Stévance from the Department of Music at Laval University, Marie Louise Bourbeau, a lyrical singer in private practice, Dr Adel Elmaghraby, a computer scientist and dancer-researchers Erin Manning and Cora McLaren. Both myself and Dr. Manning are also fashion designers - we will also be developing the costumes for the opera.

On Designing Immersive Spaces for Rehabilitation Research

Over the course of the past ten years, my team and I have successfully designed and implemented (produced) more than a dozen immersive installations within a research focus. It is with the emergence of technologies for creating and working with immersive, interactive environments (virtual reality, augmented reality, sensor networks, wearable computing, smart environments, etc.), that the design of immersive spaces has become a viable process. Hence working with such spaces and installations is still very new. Artists have been creating interactive experiences using these technologies for a little more than a decade, while the use of these environments in research has been mostly confined to virtual reality and related technologies. The convergence of immersive technologies from disparate fields into a coherent and powerful set of tools for immersive design is no older than a few years, and, of course, just as the technologies are still evolving rapidly, research based on their use is only beginning to develop.

Research that embraces immersive design requires new methodologies and these, too, are still very experimental. Immersive spaces are different from conventional experimental designs. Immersive environments are increasingly multimodal - that is, visual and auditory and tactile or haptic. They are "ecological" in the sense of being global, holistic and systemic - they engage all of a person, not just targeted aspects. Furthermore, they often generate surprises - this is a consequence of their ecological nature.

Our experience has demonstrated that the creation of these environments demands a three phase process :

CONCEPTION/DESIGN

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DEVELOPMENT/PRODUCTION

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EXPERIMENTATION/EVALUATION

This might look like the classic life cycle of any project, but each of these phases is substantial - these are complex projects to organize. Let us examine just one of our projects to get a better sense of what is involved. I like to call this project "Virtuoso" - all of our installation projects have a distinct title. This project draws upon another key principle we have identified over the course of our development work - immersive installations that have a research (scientific) focus should serve a specific and well-identified need. This is distinct from artistic installations which may or may not serve such a need. "Virtuoso" is being developed to provide an engaging experience to adolescents with motor impairments, who experience both growing isolation and a tendency towards depression as they leave behind their childhood friends. By providing these adolescents with a virtual, online, and shared experience of architectural design within a virtual world environment, we hope not only to break the cycle of isolation and depression but potentially offer also an opportunity to develop an interest that might lead to employment.

The Design Phase of this project lasted over four years. Although this was longer than many, it is by no means atypical of the collection of installations we developed. The Design work actually consisted of two more intensive periods, each lasting from 4 to 6 months, separated by an interval during which the project was shelved. The reasons for the break were multiple, but experience shows that such breaks may be a useful part of the project development cycle (although they need not be as long as in this particular case!). Lack of resources, funding and difficulties developing a mature concept were among the reasons, and possibly also our lack of experience developing and financing complex projects. During the first intensive planning period, we organized a series of meetings with both scientists and clinicians, and agreed to develop a kind of video game experience that would include a social networking dimension as well as some form of cooperative manipulation. However, the exact nature of the video game itself never became clear.

Over the fallow period, the team pursued other projects, including several projects that harnessed the virtual world environment called "Second Life". During this work, the existence of several simulators inspired by the "Second Life" environment were identified and explored. One of these, a simulator called "OpenSim", seemed particularly interesting because it shares with "Second Life" the same simplicity of operation. The arrival of a new researcher led to renewed interest in the "Virtuoso" project, and this time the possibility of using OpenSim as a framing environment for the project gave a clear direction for development. The second period of intensive work on design was therefore able to finalize a design concept - we would lead the adolescents through the process of designing and constructing architectural projects using the virtual world environment. Furthermore, the design concept included not just the design of the immersive environment itself, but also details about the experimental protocols that would need to be followed in the third phase of the project. Indeed, we would evaluate the effect on users of the environment of the design process, compared to a control group that would play a video game.

The Production Phase involved the hiring of a summer student to do the development work. The OpenSim simulation was acquired and the necessary procedures for creating, storing and running a variety of virtual landscapes were studied and adopted. A thematic context for the project was created, pedagogical tools for guiding the young people through the process of virtual construction, and different ways for encouraging collaboration and sharing results were discussed and adopted. The summer student hired to develop the environment is an architectural student with an interest in virtual environments. The development phase is expected to last 3 to 4 months.

The Evaluation Phase is expected to take place over the course of another 4 to 5 months. This phase is, of course, completely different than the development phase - it requires very different kinds of expertise. Indeed, each of the three phases requires different mixes of expertise - this is one of the challenges posed by projects of this kind. In Phase Three, what is required are experts on experimental protocols and data analysis. Technical support for the environment itself must also be in place, and it may be necessary to make adjustments to the design of the immersive environment as a result of challenges in addressing the evaluation phase.

A brief analysis of the dozen or so projects that have been developed using this approach shows that the average duration of the Design Phase was 24 months, of the Production Phase was 10 months, and of the Testing Phase was 9 months. At least 5 of the projects were characterized by a two-step design phase with a fallow period between the two more intense design periods. From initial steps to completion took, on average, 4 years. Some of this duration is almost certainly due to working with limited monetary and human resources, but other factors included the fact that we had to invent research methodology as we progressed, that the projects require different mixes of expertise at different phases, and that creation, implementation and testing of these environments is necessarily complex and demanding work. Perhaps with the benefit of experience, it will be possible to limit the time span to less than 3 years. This is important, since most grants are awarded for three year periods - projects which extend significantly beyond three years are therefore extremely difficult to bring to term in an academic environment. Indeed the early projects in our slate of initiatives were actually taken through only to the end of Phase Two, a result of the need to provide some constraints before procedures and research methodologies became clearer. (Nine of the dozen projects completed or underway are shown in the table below. The projects which are excluded from this list are those which have not yet progressed beyond the Design Phase.)

#	Project	Phase	Duration (mo.)	Expertise
1	Ariadne Emerging	Design	24	Performance designer, choreographer, researcher
		Production	08	Singer, dancer/choreographer, video production team
		Documentation	04	Video production team, researcher, designer
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2	Incarnatus	Design	08	Performance designer, singer, theatre technician, programmer, researcher
		Production	08	Singer, theatre technician, programmer, researcher
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3	Virtualities in Dusseldorf	Design	24	Designer, researcher
		Production	06	Researcher, designers, programmer/technician, virtual content creators, museum staff, translator
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4	Augmented Reality for Bloorview Kids Rehab	Design	08	Researchers, designers, programmer/technician, clinicians
		Production	04	Researcher, designer, programmer/technician, hospital patients
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5	Ulysses : A Sound Geography	Design	24	Researchers, designer, composer
		Production	04	Researcher, designer, composer, programmer/technician
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6	EcoOracle	Design	24	Researchers, designer, programmer
		Production	06	Researcher, designer, programmer/technician
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7	EMIR Demos	Design	06	Researcher, designers/programmers
		Production	24	Researcher, programmers/technicians
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8	Pro(x)thèse	Design	36	Researchers, designer, composer
		Production	24	Researchers, sexologist, composer, programmer/technician, fashion engineer, photographers, artists, clinicians
		Experimentation	tbd	Researchers, programmer/technician, clinicians, sexologist
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9	Virtuoso	Design	48	Researchers, designers
		Production	04	Researchers, designers, architect, programmer/technician
		Experimentation	06	Researchers, designers, programmer/technician, data analyst
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It is worth noting that work of this nature may have been possible only within the context of extended funding such as within a Research Chair. The availability of significant funding levels every year over a seven year grant, obviating the need to reapply for funding every two to three years, made this effort viable. Now that procedures and methods are more well defined, such projects can be managed within shorter term funding arrangements, but the initial development work would have been very difficult to undertake within a standard academic grant environment.

EMIR Laboratory Now Functional

It has taken longer to get the lab completed and operational than expected, but this has finally been achieved. In conjunction with the efforts to complete the installation of the laboratory, we have developed five demos that showcase the potential of the laboratory to support diverse projects in rehabilitation and disability studies. These are as follows :

1. Fragment de vie (Fragmented Life) : Demo that provides different viewpoints of disability by offering different soundtracks for the same film delivered to wireless headphones (collaboration with CinéScène Inc.)
2. Vertiges (Vertigo) : Demo that provides an experience of vertigo by simulating walking across a narrow pathway suspended above Quebec City (collaboration with CinéScène Inc.)
3. Deuxième peau (Second Skin) : Demo that provides an observer a vicarious experience of disability. The movements of a person in a motion capture suit are transfered in real time to an avatar in a virtual kitchen, but attempts to interact with the kitchen and manipulate objects are restricted because the avatar experiences various types of motor impairment (collaboration with CinéScène Inc.)
4. Viscères (Visceres) : Demonstration of a body-based interface for virtual navigation of spaces (Google Street Map)
5. Meta-laboratoire (Meta-laboratory) : Demonstration of the use of the lab to support immersive experiments, in this case, a study of the effects of heminegligence on spatial orientation and judgement in the far field (collaboration with CinéScène Inc. and Dr. Julien Voisin)

In addition to the demos, a growing number of research projects are taking place that harness the possibilities that the lab offers. I have subdivided these projects into six categories : Bimodal Environments, Trimodal Environments, Movement-based Environments, Visceral Environments, Virtual Environments and Geographic Environments.

1. Bimodal Environments : Immersive environments that engage two major sense modalities

   Hemispheres (Hémisphères)

   Experimental study in planning stages of far-field effects of heminegligence (collaboration with Dr. Julien Voisin)

   Co-breather (Co-respirateur)

   Design and validation study underway to build and test four co-breathers for possible clinical applications. Co-breathers provide auditory-tactile immersion (collaboration with Ms. M.L. Bourbeau and C. Légaré)

2. Trimodal Environments : Immersive environments that engage three major sense modalities

   Living Wall (Mur vivant)

   Project in preparation, aimed at developing a playful immersive installation for waiting areas in clinics for children and adolescents that offers an engaging and absorbing environment that provides motor training opportunities (dexterity exercises) for individuals with fine motor impairments (collaboration with Dr. Ernesto Morales; projected Ph.D. thesis of Walid Baccari)

   Pro(x)thèse (Pro(x)thesis)

   Project underway in design phase, aimed at developing a clinical tool for allowing people with disability to explore sexual/sensual imagery and providing the means to track image choices over time. The tool involves the use of a touch-sensitive smart garment and an immersive visual environment, and we are commissioning photos by a professional photographer (collaboration with Dr. Ernesto Morales and Dr Frédérique Courtois).

   Auric Space (Espace aurique)

   Current in the planning stage, this project seeks to provide a training environment for people who have difficulties locating sounds in their immediate environment. We will use a bimodal environment (visual and auditory and haptic) to provide cues to and test for sound location (projected Ph.D. thesis of Afnen Arfaoui)

3. Movement-based Environments : Immersive environments that explore movement modalities

   Third Skin (Troisième peau)

   Project in planning stages that seeks to extend the work initiated in the project "Second Skin" to provide a variety of vicarious experiences of disability and ability

   Choreographic maps (Cartes chorégraphiques)

   Planned project that seeks to study how dance may contribute to emerging ideas about how children play (collaboration with Dr. Cora McLaren)

4. Visceral Environments : Immersive environments that explore actions rooted in the engagement of the body's visceral organs

   Visceres II (Viscères)

   Project in planning stages that aims to test the hypothesis that viscerally learned spaces are more fully understood and remembered than spaces learned by more traditional means

   OrienT (OrienT)

   Planned project that seeks to use a smart garment to help people who get easily disoriented to resituate themselves in their environments (collaboration with Dr. Claude Vincent)

5. Virtual Environments : Immersive virtual environments

   Virtuarch (Virtuarch)

   Project in design development stage that seeks to provide adolescents with disabilities who feel isolated and have a tendency towards depression, access to an environment and situation that engages them in the creative design of architectural spaces (collaboration with Dr. Ernesto Morales)

6. Geographic Environments : Immersive environments that encourage an appropriation of geographic space

   Multimodal Online Mapping Interface (Interface multimodal pour la cartographie en ligne)

   Project in planning stage that seeks to design and implement an on-line multimodal interface for a mapping application that draws on cognitive design principles (collaboration with Dr. Mir Mostafavi; projected Ph.D. thesis of Bilel Saadani)

These different projects seek to serve a variety of populations of people with impairments, including the deaf, the deafblind, the blind, those with low vision, people with either gross or fine motor impairments, people with attention deficits and people with intellectual impairments. Furthermore, different projects have different scientific goals and involve distinct methodologies. These include projects that are experimental or involve evaluation and assessment (Hemispheres, Visceres, etc.), projects that have more educational or pedagogical objectives (Second/Third Skin, etc.), projects that seek the development of assistive technologies or that are focused on design issues (OrienT, etc.), projects aimed at developing training environments (Auric Space, etc.), projects aimed at enhancing personal development among those struggling with issues of disability and impairment (Virtuarch, Pro(x)thesis, etc.), and projects that are far more exploratory in nature (Choreographic Maps, etc.).

The EMIR Laboratory Nears Completion

The Exploration of Media Immersion for Rehabilitation (EMIR) Laboratory is in its final stages of implementation before going "live" over the coming fall. The project received a significant new impetus in 2012 with the engagement of the company Cine-Scène, which has helped us line up a series of "showcase demos" that explore the use of the lab for physical rehabilitation in a variety of areas and ways.

The lab is now organized into seven distinct "stations", each providing different immersive ensembles for the user :

1. Interactive Floor
2. Stereo Panorama with Motion Capture
3. Tactile Interface
4. Co-breathers
5. Forward Spatialized Sound System
6. Rear Spatialized Sound System
7. Physiological Interface

In addition to these, 15 wireless headsets and 3 HD video cameras are available for additional initiatives. We expect to extend these supplementary systems over the come year to include other elements.

Typically, stations might be operated jointly in pairs - for example, the Stereo Panorama will be operated with the Forward Sound System, or with the 15 wireless headsets.

A coordinated controller is being incorporated into the Tactile Interface to allow a user to select the stations to use for any particular application.

With Cine-Scène, we have been constructing six "showcase demos" that will be used to promote the lab to other researchers and to clinical staff at the hospital. These include the development of a floor that perturbs balance, the development of a real-time avatar with reduced or enhanced mobility compared to the user, the exploration of different perceptions of the same immersive experience, the development of a laboratory experiment, the use of the co-breathers and the use of a physiological interface. I should have photos to show shortly!

Designing Sound Spaces

Much of the work over the past several years undertaken by this chair has been concentrated towards visual and haptic experiences, but not so much towards sound experiences. Since the EMIR laboratory (see previous blog) is being equipped with a modern spatialized sound system (albeit not the most sophisticated version of such a system), and since some of the clientele of the lab have either visual or auditory challenges, it seemed and seems appropriate to investigate more actively the opportunities for designing useful and interesting sound spaces.

This work was at first hampered by the fact that we had no reliable tools for understanding auditory spaces. Over the past several years we have used several theoretical concepts to structure visual and haptic spaces (including Voronoi diagrams, a mathematical concept called a "panorama", image schemata, etc.), but these could not be readily applied to understanding how sound inhabits spaces. Sound, unlike light, moves around corners and through many quite substantial barriers. However, sound is usually limited to so-called "point sources" and we do not work with "sound images" the same way we work with visual images - that is, sounds organized spatially in matrices.

This past year I (G. Edwards) have been called upon to teach undergraduates in the geomatics program some basic physics of wave propagation and satellite orbits. While thinking over the challenges of developing a tool for understanding sound spaces, an idea emerged. This idea, after some development work, was shown to successfully resolve the problem of modeling the space for its sounds.

Our model uses a variation of the principle called "Huygen's Principle". Huygen's principle states that when propagating waves encounter an aperture, their movement through the aperture can be simulated by supposing that at each point within the aperture a new (circular) wave is generated with the same phase and intensity as the incident wave. This principle allows one to model the movement of sound waves around corners (actually light also moves around corners using a similar mechanism, but the size of the deviation is small in the case of light).

To develop a model that can be used to simplify how we understand sound spaces, we look for a "partitioning schema", that is, a way to partition space (a room, a theatre, a park, etc.) into spaces that are auditorially "homogeneous" (invariant), in the sense that the sound experience within a given region of the tiled space is similar throughout that region, but different from one region to the next. This idea is commensurate with our earlier visual and haptic models of space.

Figure 1 : Spatial partition for sounds previous to their encounter with absorbing barriers

In the model, sound experiences are generated by point sources (A,B,C and D) that propagate into circular regions. Sound sources with low overall gain generate small circles (C and D) - sources with large gain generate large circles (A and B). Barriers that the sounds may cross are shown as lines 1 and 2. A path through the space is then introduced (dashed line).

This kind of model is quite different from the results of a numerical simulation of sound propagation within a space, as the latter will produce a map of continuously changing values for the sound field. Numerical simulations can be very useful, but that take large chunks of processor time and/or high end computers to "do the job", and usually they also have to make a variety of simplifying assumptions to converge on a result within a reasonable time. The use of qualitative models, such as ours, which segment space into regions, can provide a useful, even powerful alternative to numerical simulation.

Our qualitative model of sound space, however, differs from our earlier models in that we are required to dynamically update the partitioning each time the sound passes across a barrier that dampens the signal. Hence, as long as the observer is located on the path previous to the location labeled "alpha", the sound sources as shown in the above diagram hold true. Once the observer passes alpha, however, the sound sources "behind" the barrier made by lines 1 and 2 and their extensions must be modified (see Figure below).

Figure 2 : Spatial partition for sounds posterior to their encounter with absorbing barriers 1 and 2

At this point in time, the sound B must be "re-sourced" at the location B2, generating a new, much smaller circle. Furthermore, as the observer moves beyond the zone of influence B2, along a path parallel with barrier #1, and within the initial zone of influence of B, the sound source B must be "re-sourced" to a point (B3) defined by the orthogonal to the barrier #1 that passes through the location of the observer. Usually, the size of the circle for B3 will be much smaller due to the absorptive properties of the barrier #1.

Thus by representing the movement of the observer along a path as a series of partitions that change every time the observer crosses a barrier, we can construct a model that predicts the set of sound experiences an arbitrary observer will receive.

Using this model, we developed software that can compute in real time the relative intensity and the direction from which each sound is heard (that is, the sounds are "re-sourced" at a new location) for one or more arbitrary observers. Using this software, we are able to design a virtual sound space and hence generate a realistic sound experience for a fictional space.

We did exactly this as part of a conference presentation of the new theory at a recent meeting in the small town of Las Navas del Marques, in Spain. The conference was organized around the theme "Cognitive and Linguistic Aspects of Geographic Space", actually, a review of 20 years of research in this area since an earlier meeting of the same group at the same location in 1990. For this event, in collaboration with Ms. Marie Louise Bourbeau (longtime collaborator for the Chair) and also Mr. René Dupéré, the talented composer who reinvented circus music for the Cirque du Soleil in the 1980s, we developed and implemented a transposition of the Ulysses Voyages into a fictional and virtual sound space that was updated in real time using our software.

The result is a 40 minute presentation including a 20-minute "show", an interactive component that demonstrates the real time nature of the experience and an explanation of the scientific theory leading to this work.

A Toolkit for the EMIR Laboratory

The EMIR Laboratory (Exploration of Media Immersion for Rehabilitation) is now well underway to becoming a reality. We have a space, albeit still temporary as we shall eventually be moving to a completely refurbished space a few doors down the corridor, several computers and are in the process of acquiring our first major piece, a floor projection system. Combined with our efforts in collaboration with Bloorview Kids Rehab, we will be working with the full range of human sensory perception - visual and audio of course, but also tactile, movement, physiological (heart rate, skin conductance, breathing, etc.), olfactive and even taste as well as using a brain-computer interface. The goal is to generate immersive experiences - creative, game-like, artistic, etc. - that challenge rehab patients, clinicians and/or researchers to view themselves in new ways.

However, few people have any understanding of what can be achieved or how to go about doing this. In addition, even our team, which has been exploring multisensory immersive environments for some time, needs good intermediate tools to support our ongoing research, and we are not always aware of what is possible either. With a view to both helping ourselves, but also encouraging collaboration and participation in the new laboratory, we have embarked upon the process of developing a "toolkit" for delivering multisensory immersive experiences with a minimum of technical expertise.

Called an Affordance Toolkit (because each tool affords different sets of activities - we are drawing on Gibson's affordance theory for this), the framework consists of matching a set of controller interfaces to a set of viewer modules as a function of particular tasks. Controllers include cameras that are able to read and interpret gestures, tactile screens and pressure carpets able to register different forms of body contact, microphones for recording and interpreting sounds, and sensors for recording physiological or neurological signals. Viewers include 1-, 2- or 4-wall projection, ceiling and floor projection, surround spatialized sound, motor-driven devices - both large and small, scent diffusers, and so on.

Tools under development that bridge these two sets of functionalities include the following :

1) Mirror Space - using webcams and full wall prujections where the real-time video images are horizontally flipped to generate a pseudo-mirror image (occupying 1, 2 or all for walls), combined with the addition of digital enhancements, virtual objects and annotations added to the projected image, we are able to deliver an environment that supports a variety of tasks, including various physical games (tug of war, zone avoidance, tag, etc.), cognitive games or tasks (draw in the outlines of objects, paint by numbers, etc.) or controlled exercise and/or balance task (raise your feet until they hit a gong, move along a virtual line, etc.);

2) Master at Work - using data gloves or alternate controllers for those unable to use their hands, use gestures and manipulation to create and modify sounds, visual objects, odors, etc. to make a "multisensory composition" akin to a musical composition. This might be done in a darkened room and avoid the use of vision;

3) Room of Presence - Similarly to the previous tool, this will allow for the materialization of virtual characters that then interact with the user. The user will be able to draw on a bank of virtual characters with a range of pre-deteermined bheaviors, or be able to create very simple "characters" with new behaviors;

4) Multisensory Logbook - In order to record, annotate, archive and playback the expriences created in the EMIR laboratory, we are working on the development of a multisensory logbook system involving video cameras and microphones as well as a computerized logbook of programmed functions;

5) Social Atlas - Using GPS for outdoor environments and RFID tracers combined with other location technologies for interiors, we will provide the ability to both track volonteers or friends and to represent these movements within the EMIR laboratory;

6) Experiensorium - Using geographical database structures, we shall be able to provide the possibility of navigating large and complex virtual environments filled with a multitude of sensory experiences. This will be particularly effective in the presence of non-realistic visuals or no visuals at all. For example, walking through a sketched farmyard, but hearing and smelling the animals, feeling thir presence through air currents and the occasional sense of touch. Within the experiensorium, it will be possible to play out games or narrative experiences.

In addition to these macro-tools, we will also be developing and using a range of microtools such as the ability to call up a pop-up menu on the wall-screens using gestures, to partition the visual, audio or tactile spaces, to inject text into these different spaces (e.g. written, audio or braille), and so on.

Each of the proposed tools represents significant research and development challenges, but working on them is both satisfying and engaging. We look forward to reporting on progress on the development of the toolkit over the coming months.

Transformative Installations - Global perspective

Since the early development work on the Bloorview initiative (called at the time the "Hidden Magician" project), our efforts to develop a whole range of "transformative" or "resonant" installations has moved forward by leaps and bounds into several major initiatives. We are currently active in the development of a major "new generation environment" at Bloorview Kids Rehab that we are calling the "Living Walls Initiative". Within this project, we are developing a highly interactive, one might say "reactive" wall mural that responds to the presence of children with disability in many different ways. Our goal is to change the way the children understand their relationship to their surrounding space.

Children with disability struggle within environments which are highly disabling. Indeed, we call the children "disabled" but we might more usefully call the environments within which they (and we) function disabling environments. As a result, these children often feel like they are a burden on others, that they have to struggle with the environment, that they are what's "wrong". By developing new environments that are much more responsive to a variety of forms and levels of disability, we aim to challenge this understanding, to offer these children an insight into other possible relations they might have to the spaces that surround them and with which they engage.


An early conceptualization of the Living Walls Initiative
The Living Walls initiative is the first major attempt to do this. The overall concept is to develop a large wall mural (we're thinking 8 feet high by 20 feet long) that is made up of motorized elements that will respond, via appropriately designed interfaces, to children with various forms of disability. The mural will depict a scene of relevance to the hospital - a depiction of the ravine that drops away behind the hospital and which has already been incorporated in a number of ways into the design of the hospital building. This allows the children to be attuned to the presence of natural elements in the local environment of the hospital. We are designing into the mural elements which may change color and shape and hence depict the changing seasons. However, the main focus of the mural is to allow the children to interact with the scene and to make interesting changes to it. For example, we are building in animal figures that may hide or emerge at different moments, when the mural senses a child in its proximity. By making some sort of movement, whether using a wheelchair or a gesture, children will be able to change several aspects of the mural - the intensity of water flow in the built-in waterfall, the shape and color of leaves in the trees, the overflight of planes, and so on.

The project is moving from its conceptual design phase into the development of early prototypes that will be used to test the implementation before this is fully fleshed out. At the same time, funds are being sought, both from private donors and funding agencies, in support of the project. Many of the partnerships needed for its success are already in place.

A second "next generation environment" projet also aimed at helping children with disability has been named the "Ado-Matrix Project". This project focuses particularly on the plight of adolescents with disability, who face a situation where they tend to become isolated from their peers and are in a difficult position to build new friendships. To serve their needs, we are developing a tele-gaming environment that "equalizes" player access across different levels of ability, so that a severely handicapped adolescent may play on an equal footing as an able-bodied friend. Our project seeks to create remotely controlled robots that must work together in a common, physically real environment to achieve group goals. Each adolescent will control his or her own robot, an semi-independent webcam and will have access to group chat either through text or voice or a combination of these. Different robots will have different functionality, however. For this project we are still building partnerships and doing conceptual design.

A third installation project on which we are working addresses the issue of climate change and environmental responsibility. Here our aim is to develop an installation that can be taken to the urban public and which will sensitize participants not only to the issues of the environment but do so in a manner that is informed by an awareness of the inequities in urban life and how different elements of the community may learn to find common ground in addressing these issues. The project bears the title "Voices of Transition".

The Hidden Magician - A Resonant Installation for Children with Cerebral Palsy

Early in 2008, the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Geomatics, in partnership with Bloorview Kids Rehab (BKR), the Institut de réadaptation en déficience physique du Québec (IRDPQ) and Studio BourbeauVoiceDynamics, began to work on the creation of a "resonant installation" addressing the needs of children with cerebral palsy and other motor deficits. Under the title "The Hidden Magician", this broad collaborative effort seeks to develop a participative, immersive installation in which children with cerebral and motor deficits can establish a different relationship with their immediate environment and feel more empowered and recognized for who they are.

Like our other installation initiatives, the approach adopted is to develop an installation design through a broad consultative process that includes researchers, artists, engineers, hospital administration staff, clinicians, students, parents, and the children themselves. Installations must address the needs of the children in ways that are conducive to enhancing their physical and emotional states of being, and yet also generate powerful experiences that are aesthetically interesting and are challenging, even transforming. We use new media technologies including surround projections, gesture recognition interfaces, spatialized sound and tactile environments, combined with engineering skills to develop specialized interfaces that provide enhanced environmental responsiveness for these children.

The project embraces a variety of research areas, from issues about design methodologies, questions concerning the impacts of immersive and participative experiences on children struggling with issues of growth and identity, and efforts to develop measurement and evaluation tools that can better characterize the effectiveness of these installations.

The design concept is still in its early stages. The overall concept has been presented to a broad cross-section of individuals - researchers, artists, clinicians and administrators where it has elicited a great deal of interest and support - both at Bloorview Kids Rehab in Toronto and the IRDPQ in Quebec City. The work is now moving forward into a second stage, focussed on the development of a series of workshops with this diverse clientèle that will feed the design process. Workshops involve a combination of physical activities that aim to allow participants to "think with their bodies" rather than "staying in their heads", and brainstorming and sharing exercises that explore design values and principles. We use dancers, clowns and other specialists in movement to facilitate these exercises.

It is expected that the installation, when completed, will be able to "go on tour" to other interested locations (hospitals, clinics, schools, etc.), and that it will serve as much to sensitize a broader public to the unique qualities of these children as it will enable both the children themselves and their caregivers to rethink their perceptions of who they are.

Virtualities and Culturalities in Düsseldorf

Are you an insider or an outsider? Real or virtual? Do you have to be either one or the other? In collaboration with BourbeauVoiceDynamics and the Düsseldorf Stadtmuseum, and with the LAMIC and LANTISS, the Canada Research Chair is undertaking the preparation of a ten day exhibition to be held April 4 - April 13 in Düsseldorf. The exhibition, entitled "Virtualities and Culturalities in Düsseldorf" will present an interactive virtual event highlighting the multi-ethnicity of Düsseldorf.

Each community has its own understanding of the city, based on its commuting patterns and culturally-specific landmarks. The marketplaces, churches, synagogues and mosques, recreational centres and ethnic restaurants together with a person’s movement form a “heart map” of the city. These places also support events which highlight and celebrate each community’s cultural heritage. Traditional costumes, music and dancing can define one as being in or out of a community. When employed in the country of origin, they enhance the feeling of being « inside » an ethnic group. These same rituals, however, held in a host country, underline a ethnic group’s distinctiveness, and hence the feeling of being on the « outside », or periphery of society. The modern city offers an alternative to this polarity of exclusion, however, in the form of an eclectic fusion that draws from different traditions, celebrating the contribution of each and yet creating new spaces for identity. Within such fusions, it is possible to be both “inside” and “out”.

In this interactive exhibition, the public is encouraged to « mix and match » clothing from different ethnic traditions so as to create a fashion fusion rooted in folklore and tradition but with a distinct link to the present. Combined with “heart maps” for several different communities, and contact via avatars with virtual folk dances, the installation seeks to engage both the younger population via its innovative use of Second Life and virtual worlds, and the older population by its integration of ethnic traditions in fashion, dance and music. Vive la difference!

Breaking News – Canada funds an Unusual Laboratory for Rehabilitation

The Laboratory for the Exploration of Media Immersion for Rehabilitation (EMIR Laboratory), the first laboratory of its kind in the world, aims to develop and evaluate immersive experiences based on enhanced body awareness, with a view to supporting applications in rehab in particular. The laboratory will complement existing laboratories at Laval University that offer immersive experiences (the Laboratoire de muséologie et d’ingénierie culturelle or LAMIC, the Laboratoire des nouvelles technologies de l’image, du son et de la scène or LANTISS, and the Laboratoire de réalité géospatiale augmenté en réseau et déplacements or REGARD and the virtual reality cave at the Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche en réadaptation et intégration sociale or CIRRIS), but the EMIR Laboratory is destined to be integrated within a clinical hospital environment (the Institut de réadaptation en déficience physique de Québec or IRDPQ) during its third year of development.

The EMIR laboratory will consist of a variety of equipment, of a total value of about 300000$, including specialized devices to record and deliver high quality and spatialized sound, a 360 degree visual surround (including an interactive floor and video cameras), tactile interfaces for capturing touch and gesture, a brain-computer interface so that the environment can be controlled to some extent by thought patterns (of special interest for quadraplegics), and the ability to track movements outside the lab and to represent these within the laboratory environment. The immersive experiences that will be designed include, therefore, a multisensory combination of artistic, pedagogique and scientific elements structured in space, which will serve to support the development of experiences that challenge and transform the embodied identity of participants undergoing rehabilitation.

Partners in the project include the IRDPQ, LANTISS, LAMIC and CIRRIS, and MercanStream Technologies Inc.

Perception and Spatial Representation - Deliverables from the First Mandate of the Chair

While the second seven year mandate of the Canada Research Chair on Cognitive Geomatics is focussed on the relationships between identity, body and space, the first mandate was concerned with understanding our mental representations of space, as derived from perception and mental imagery, and with the development of tools and software that put this knowledge to use. Application areas for this work included rehabilitation, the performing arts, navigation, landscape design, and database design.

Nested perceptions of the world

A variety of researchers have studied how our perceptions of the world are organized as a function of scale. Several schemas that describe scaled perceptions exist. One of the most interesting is that put forward by Dan Montello in 1993 (Scale and multiple psychologies of space). Montello's is interesting in part because it synthesizes the work of several researchers, but also because it critically examines the different approaches. Within Montello's framework, roughly four spaces exist at different scales :
(a) Figural space
(b) Vista space
(c) Environmental space
(d) Geographic space
Montello describes Figural space as being the space of drawings and maps, representations of the world. Vista space is conceived of as the region that can be viewed from a single location. Environmental space is defined as the region accessible via displacement or navigation. Geographic space is the space that is too large to be visited. A fifth space,
(e) Cosmic space,
covers spaces that are not accessible on the Earth.

Other categorisations of spaces also exist, some of them very useful. Hence several researchers focus on what are called "table top spaces" to describe the spaces in which objects can be picked up and manipulated (for example, Andrew Frank). In Montello's scheme, Table top space may be viewed as intermediate between Figural and Vista space. Another approach distinguishes between "within body" space, "body space" and "near body space" (Three spaces of Spatial Cognition by B. Tversky et al.). These are also spaces that are smaller than Vista space. Tversky also points out the cognitive importance of barriers within a space.


Figure 1 : Local displacement space for a household in Sillery, Quebec City

Along with my collaborator-postdoc Dr. Isabelle Reginster, we found that to apply these theoretical ideas to a real application, it was necessary to subdivide Montello's Environmental Space into two different scale spaces, what we called the Local Displacement Space (see Figure 1) and the Extended Displacement Space (see Figure 2). Local Displacement Space dealt with the part of Environmental Space that can be accessed by foot, while the Extended Displacement Space accommodated the region accessed by car. We applied a time limit for displacement as a means to characterize the size of these spaces, and used the three scales (Vista, Local Displacement and Extended Displacement) as spatial units within which information was aggregated to infer perceptions for different households - perceptions of how many municipal services were accessible, of access to schools, and perceptions of how much green areas were to be found within the local environment. We showed how to determine the Vista, LDS and EDS spaces from satellite imagery, and we used the aggregated statistics to explore the relationships between scale, perception and house prices (see the publication Reginster and Edwards, 2001, for details). We tracked, in particular, the location of barriers in the space, both perceptual and navigational barriers.

At the time this work was undertaken, the displacements were tracked using phone interviews carried out with a variety of households in an Origin-Destination survey that had been conducted by colleagues in the Département d'Aménagament of Laval University. These days, the survey could be carried out much more cheaply using a portable GPS unit with a data logger.


Figure 2 : Extended displacement space for the household in Sillery, Quebec City. Note that the extended displacement space consists of corridors around each road used, and that frequency of travel along the road reinforces the intensity of that part of the displacement space

Hence we were able to implement these theoretical constructions of embedded spaces in a study on scaled perceptions of the local environment from the point of view of members of a household.

Rooms and gateways

A second study, undertaken with Dr. Gerard Ligozat and later with his daughter, Anne Laure Ligozat, focused on the development of formal representations of perceived space, especially outdoor, natural spaces. In this project, we were interested in developing a formal (i.e. mathematical) representation of perceived space and in implementing this representation on a computer. We were particularly interested in the fact that, within exterior environments, one may move a certain distance and yet still conclude that one was within the same place as before the move. What determines when we conclude that a change has occurred in our location?

We determined that either the neighborhood had changed, or the order of landmarks on the horizon had change (the latter is called the "panorama" in technical terms). Therefore, we set about to characterise a space in terms of its neighborhoods and panoramas. This led to the idea of "perceptually stable zones" and "zones of transition", which one may metaphorically associate with "rooms" and "gateways". We found that all outdoor spaces could be reconfigured as a set of "rooms" and "gateways", making them analagous to interior spaces. Visual barriers act, within such a viewpoint, as metaphorical "walls". The set of rooms and gateways forms a kind of dual or alternate representation to the set of neighborhoods and panoramas, and we found that one could infer the one from the other and vice versa, to some extent. This work was published in two papers (Ligozat and Edwards, 1999; Edwards and Ligozat, 2004).


Figure 3 : A fictional landscape created within the software prototype PERSEUS

A software prototype called PERSEUS was developped to showcase the model. The prototype divides space up in terms of what are often called "viewsheds", that is, areas of intervisibility, and then subdivides these areas in terms of panoramas, defined as regions in which the order of landmarks on the horizon is stable. To some extent, therefore, the maps produced depend on what objects are labelled as landmarks by the user. We have been able to generate maps of stable perceptual zones for both fictitious landscapes, but also for a study of the Plains of Abraham, the large park within Quebec City.


Figure 4 : Map of the perceptually stable zones for the three landmarks within the fictional landscape used by the PERSEUS prototype

Understanding near-body spaces as a function of disability

The work by Reginster and Edwards, and that by Edwards, Ligozat and Ligozat, constitute new material representations of space (i.e. maps) that incorporate understanding of our mental representations of space as derived from modern cognitive psychology. However, they handle vista spaces and larger regions.

In work aimed at supporting the movement of disabled users in the landscape, another postdoc, Pierre-Emmanual Michon, and a full time Research Professional, David Duguay, and I, developed a new kind of representation, this time a special kind of 3D map, aimed at representing near-body spaces.


Figure 5 : An part of the research centre in rehab in Quebec City, as portrayed within the CADMUS prototype software

For this work we drew on the concept of affordances as proposed by James J. Gibson in the 1950s. The idea is that objects permit certain kinds of functional use but not others - they are said to "afford" such uses. Hence a chair affords that one can sit on it, but not that one can eat it (unless it were a chocolate chair!). We implemented the concept of affordances in a 3D database (see Edwards, 2006, for a description of this process). Hence in our database, doors may afford opening via a "door handle" or a "push button" as in some hospitals. In addition, we matched the affordances of such objects to the physical capabilities of the user. Hence a "door handle" requires the ability to twist as well as a certain level of physical strength, whereas the push button requires a much lower level of strength. Using the combination of affordances and user profiling, we were able to generate maps that showed areas of different accessibility levels as a function of a users physical profile. In a second version of the prototype, which is called CADMUS, we also incorporated mental competencies as well as physical competencies.


Figure 6 : The same region as shown in Figure 5, but color coded in terms of accessibility for a given class of disabled user. Red means access is difficult, green that access is easy

Image schemas and performance design

The work on affordances and user profiling, although it led to the creation of a new kind of 3D map, could also be used to evaluate the effectiveness of particular environmental or building designs for different handicapped profiles. Likewise, the rooms-and-gateways representation of outdoor spaces could be used not only to understand an outdoor space, but also as a support for redesigning such a space.

Our interest in designing spaces extended into another arena, that of performance design (i.e. for the performing arts). Here, the understanding of space requires a connection to their emotional impact and not just their perceptual impact. A useful tool for capturing the relationship between space and emotion is found in image schemata.

Image schemata were unearthed by philosopher Mark Johnson in the early 1980s (see his book The Body in The Mind for a clear exposition of the concept), and their study and use matured under Johnson's collaborator with the linguist, George Lakoff (see Women, Fire and Dangerous Things : What Categories Reveal About the Mind) for this later work. They are basic images that are found to be common across most languages, and that are used to talk about abstract ideas. Common examples of image schemata include CONTAINER, PATH, CYCLE, LINK, ENABLEMENT, FORCE, BLOCKAGE, SPLIT, and COLLECTION. Later studies have found that image schemata also turn up in most forms of expression, including the visual arts, music, gesture and dance, sculpture, and cinema - as such, they constitute a powerful means of coordinating design that must serve our many different senses.

Lakoff and Johnson developed a theory that image schemata are formed during early childhood by a process of binding embodied actions to word concepts. Within this framework, therefore, image schemata are linked to emotional responses, albeit in a manner that is itself rather complex and likely to vary from one individual to another. Nevertheless, artistic design uses image schemata, often unconsciously and intuitively.

In a study callaborative study carried out in 2005, Marie Louise Bourbeau, a mezzo-soprano soloist, and I used image schemata to design a performance of Claudio Monteverdi's opera fragment, Arianna. We showed that image schemata, when used consciously and explicitly, constitute a powerful tool for performance design, for delivering an experience to an audience. In a sense, image schemata allow us to design experiences directly rather than just their progenitors, the objects or events that produce experiences. More details of this work can be found in our paper on the subject (Edwards and Bourbeau, 2005), and the results of the design can be viewed on youTube.


Ariadne Emerging Video Clip

Cognitive Design of Assistive Technologies

In addition to the work on designing maps and spaces, we have been interesting in designing tools that facilitate the navigation and movement within spaces, not just mapping tools. The first significant effort in this direction has been undertaken by a Ph.D. student, Mr. Reda Yaagoubi. The idea is to use what we know about how people represent spaces mentally to assist in the navigation of the blind.

Modern geomatics technology that is useful in this context is, of course, the GPS receiver. However, all current GPS devices rely on the visualization of a map to provide what one might call situational awareness. Instructions on where to go might be provided by a computerized voice, but the devices rely on the visual availability of a map to let people know where they are and the location of objects and landmarks in their immediate environment. Without such landmarks, directional instructions are useless. For the blind, this is a problem - situation awareness is lost many times over the course of a day, and direction that are given without situation awareness may be less than useless.

We are therefore using information about how people, in particular people without recourse to sight, store and maintain mental representations of their immediate surroundings. The tool we are developing seeks to use natural strategies to help individuals update their local mental representation in such a way that a GPS directional instructions may become meaningful. The design process is quite challenging, because it requires that one understands both the cognitive processes and representations in operation and that these inform the engineering and technical principles that must be used to develop a particular form of technology. A paper has been submitted to a journal describing this work (Yaagoubi and Edwards, 2007).

We also undertook behavioral experiments that tested the ability of blind subjects to understand and manipulate mental representations of space. A paper has been submitted describing this work as well (Eardley, A., G. Edwards, F. Malouin, P.-E. Michon and J. Kennedy, 2007). We found that a certain group of people without sight (those born with sight but who lost it a year or so after birth) actually perform better than the sighted at certain tasks involving spatial reasoning on their mental representations. Those born blind from birth with no neurological complications had similar competency as the sighted. Only those born blind with neurological complications performed significantly worse than the sighted on these manipulation tasks.

Resonant Installations - Designing the Immersive Experience for Maximum Impact

The work on image schemata in support of performance design was aimed at connecting performance spaces to their emotional impact. Although image schemata were found to be a powerful tool for design, their connection to emotional response was weaker than we would have liked. In an attempt to develop a stronger connection to emotional response, we (Marie Louise Bourbeau and myself) investigated the use of devices that enhance our awareness of our own bodies during performance.

We began this work by focusing on the act of breathing, perhaps the most important aspect of body-awareness because it is the source of ongoing life. So many studies and body-training disciplines are all based on the act of taking a breath, including all of modern athletics, but also all the performance arts. Marie Louise Bourbeau is a specialist in breath training for singers and dancers, so this choice made double sense as a first target.

We developed an installation, called Incarnatus, that sought to create a new relationship between the participating audience and classical lyrical music. Using one of Mahler's lieder (the Schildwache Nachtlied, or Soldier's Nightsong), sung in German and based on a traditional folk verse, we developed an instatallation that culminated in the use of a device we call the "co-breather". This is a cushion that breathes at the same time as the singer, while the participant is listening to the music sung by the same singer. Far from being experienced as an imposition, participants adapted their breathing to that provided by the co-breather within seconds, and many participants reported a near-ecstatic connection with the music, completely unexpected.


Incarnatus Video clip

Following the public presentation of the Incarnatus installation, we determined that the co-breather creates a rather paradoxical state that includes a heightened state of body awareness combined with a "loss of self" (as well as a stronger sense of identification with the music), a dropping of the barriers that define and protect the self.

We are now in the process of developing new installations that put such "body opening experiences" first, and follow it up with other body exploration processes as well as an integration and a closure phase. The installation that generates such a sequencing of experiences we call a "Resonant Installation", and several examples are presently under development (for more details about Resonant Installations, see the blogsite ResonantInstallations). These form the heart of the second mandate of the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Geomatics.

Virtual and Mixed Reality Environments - Embodiement and Identity

Finally, during the final year of the first mandate of the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Geomatics, we have begun a systematic investigation of the relationship between virtual worlds and embodied experience. This is another paradoxical study. At first site, virtual worlds would appear to be a perfect example of a "disembodied experience". This intuitive evaluation that many of us form at a distance is almost completely false, as it turns out. Virtual worlds generate highly embodied experiences. But our understanding of what embodiment is has changed, as a result of this work.

This work is supported by the ongoing discussions undertaken by the Embodied Research Group (ERG), an active group of researchers that meets every week online (on Second Life) to discuss our understanding of embodiment. For more information about the work of the group and the results of the discussions, see their blogsite, EmbodiedResearch. Within this context, it has become apparent that embodiment is "performative" rather than simply "physical". As a result, it is possible to develop a sense of embodiment within virtual worlds, even though our physical bodies are not directly engaged.

This results in a profound rethinking of what it means to be embodied, and even what constitutes "body awareness". In a recent discussion by the Embodied Research Group, it was noted that within Second Life we may actually develop a kind of "reflexive muscle" for an embodied functionality available within Second Life but not in our physical environments. An example is the use of a virtual camera to look at objects that would normally be "out of sight" of one's body. When the reflex develops, we find ourselves "trying" to use it in our physical bodies, and frustrated that we cannot. We have developed our virtual camera as a kind of phantom limb - the neurons still activate it, but there is no follow through to a muscular action.

Within virtual worlds, our identity is also multiplied, resulting in another rethinking of what it means to be a person. The multiplication of identity and the spatial redistribution of our sense of embodiment are two startling mutations in our sense of self that derive from an engaged presence within virtual worlds of such complexity.

This is of special interest for so-called "mixed reality" environments, that is, environments that combine parts of virtual worlds within our physical, material experience. Gaining understanding of the impacts of such mixed reality environments on our sense of self and our ability to act in the world has become a major source of study for the Canada Research Chair in Cogntive Geomatics, and this work will also form part of the second term mandate. A paper on this was recently presented (in French) at the Geocongrès International in Quebec City in October 2007.


Conclusions



Table I : Representations (R) and Tools (T) developed during the first seven year term of the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Geomatics

Table I shows a summary of the innovations of the first seven year term of the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Geomatics, in the area of Perceptions and Representations. At the scale of the body, we developed tools we call Resonant Installations. At the near body scale, we developed tools that use image schemata and representations based on the theory of affordances. At the scale of vista space, we developed a map representation that views all spaces, indoors and outdoors, in terms of conceptual rooms, barriers and gateways. At the scale of environmental spaces, we developed map representations in terms of local and extended displacement spaces that can be derived from satellite imagery (e.g. Google Earth). Together, these constitute an "end-to-end" collection of tools for representating, handling and manipulating the full range of perceptual spaces, and informing design processes focussed on the spaces themselves, their map representations, and tools and methodologies that facilitate their understanding. Applications presented include aids for the disabled, for the performing arts and museology, and aids for architecture and landscape design.

CRC Publications up to 2007

I have organized my research and artistic contributions over my career into broad categories so that it is easier to understand their range, scope and relevance.

CULTURE, ART AND MUSEUM STUDIES (1989 – 2007)
The work here spans my entire career, but with a much heavier concentration of work in the past few years. Significant work includes the study of identity (Dornic & Edwards 2007), issues concerning installation design (Coté et al. 2006; Edwards & Bourbeau 2005), and efforts to develop a shared arts and science process (Bourassa & Edwards, 2007; Edwards and Tremblay 1999, Edwards 1989). Significant audiovisual work has been produced and several artistic productions as well. This area if research is presently mushrooming through new collaborations.

REFEREED JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS (5) - CULTURE, ART AND MUSEUM STUDIES

• *Dornic, I., and G. Edwards, 2007, Le partage des émotions ou quand le corps part à la recherche des mémoires : des pistes de réflexion pour l’élaboration de nouvelles orientations dans les arts de la scène , submitted.
  
• *Côté, F., P. Dubé, G. Edwards & M.L. Bourbeau, 2006, Museum, Motion and Emotion in the City, Museum International 58(3): 43-49.
  
• *Edwards, G., and M.L. Bourbeau, 2005, Image schemata – a guiding principle for multimodal expression in performance design, International Journal of Performing Arts and Digital Media.
  
• Edwards, G. & C. Tremblay, 1999. Pour une géométrie de l'intime: la science et la poésie se rencontrent. Nouaison, vol. 1, no 1, pp. 1-30.
  
• Edwards, G., 1989, Le champs poétique – les échoes d’un scientifique, La révue Trois, Volume 5.
  

OTHER REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (2) - CULTURE, ART AND MUSEUM STUDIES

• Edwards, G., and M. L. Bourbeau, 2007, ICOM Conference on Museums of Cities (CAMOC), Vienna, August, accepted.
  
• Bourassa, R., and G. Edwards, 2007, La réalité mixtes, les mondes virtuels et la géomatique : de nouveaux enjeux, Geocongress 2007, accepted.
  

INVITED PRESENTATIONS (2) - CULTURE, ART AND MUSEUM STUDIES

• Edwards, G., 2007, Le musée en périphérie – un changement de paradigme?, Invited presentation for the EMUL workshop on museology, Laval University, Quebec City, May 26.
  
• Edwards, G., and M. L. Bourbeau, 2007, Conversations with the Inner Body – Moving Into and Beyond Pain, Invited paper for the Annual Interdisciplinary Workshop in Health Care, Technology and Place, May 4, University of Toronto
  

NON-REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (5) - CULTURE, ART AND MUSEUM STUDIES

• Edwards, G. (under the pseudonym « Magellan Egoyan »), 2007, A sense of presence – lessons from an experiment in RL, blog, http://virtualartistalliance.blogspot.com
  
• Edwards, G. (under the pseudonym « Magellan Egoyan »), 2007, Second Life Sculpture – Beauty and Harmony, blog, http://virtualartistalliance.blogspot.com
  
• Edwards, G. (under the pseudonym « Magellan Egoyan »), 2007, Second Life Sculpture – Visual Poetry, blog, http://virtualartistalliance.blogspot.com
  
• Edwards, G., & M. L. Bourbeau, 2006, Cognitive Design Factors for Mixed Reality Environments, First International Conference on Mobile Geospatial Augmented Reality, Banff, May.
  
• Edwards, G., 2005, La micro-géomatique et les arts de la scène: un usage inusité de la géomatique, La revue Géomètre.
  

AUDIO-VISUAL CONTRIBUTIONS (6) - CULTURE, ART AND MUSEUM STUDIES

• Edwards, G., 2007 (under the pseudonym « Magellan Egoyan »), Kinetic Sculptures in Second Life, Part 1, video blog, http://www.youtube.com
  
• Edwards, G., 2007 (under the pseudonym « Magellan Egoyan »), Kinetic Sculptures in Second Life, Part 2, video blog, http://www.youtube.com
  
• Edwards, G., 2007 (under the pseudonym « Magellan Egoyan »), body or no, video blog, http://www.youtube.com
  
• Bourbeau. M. L., and G. Edwards, 2007, Incarnatus, Video clip.
  
• Edwards, G., and M.L. Bourbeau, 2005, Ariadne Emerging, Video clip.
  
• Edwards, G., and M.L. Bourbeau, 2005, Lamento d’Arianna, Video clip.
  

ARTISTIC PRODUCTIONS (5) - CULTURE, ART AND MUSEUM STUDIES

• Bourbeau, M. L., G. Edwards and F. Gasse, 2006, Incarnatus, 20 minute public installation, December
  
• Edwards, G., 2004, The Egg Garden, a residence at the LANTISS facility at Laval University.
  
• Edwards, G. (translator), 1995, Poems of Clarisse Tremblay
  
• Edwards, G., 1990, Un Pas de Plus, Imagine, No. 40 (SF short story)
  
• Tremblay, C., and G. Edwards, 1990, Le projet Icare, diffusé sur les ondes de Radio Canada (short story for radio)
  

B) VISIONING (2006 - 2007)
Since the summer of 2006, a synthesis that crosses the complete range of disciplines and collaborations I developed over my career has emerged, providing new insights into how society is evolving and changing. This led to the development of a book manuscript. In order to get more feedback and, perhaps, leverage a readership, I have been converting parts of this into a blog, for which there are currently 14 posts, with more being written in a nearly daily basis. In addition, I have also been investigating the use of video blogs to further promote this work.

BOOKS (1) - VISIONING

• Edwards, G., 2007, Living in the Twenty-first Century – From Orthodoxy to Paradoxy, 250 pp., submitted for publication.
  

NON-REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (14) - VISIONING

• Edwards, G., 2007, 21st Century Musings – From Orthodoxy to Paradoxy, blog, http://21stcenturyparadoxes.blogspot.com (12 posts from April 29, 2007 to May 22, 2007 as follows : Introduction to 21st Century Musings; Moving Away from Orthodoxy – A Portrait of Our Times; The Demographics of Change; Population Growth versus Environmental Activism; What is a Paradox?; The Importance of Paradox in a Convergent World; Timing and Dynamics – Towards the Collapse of Several Socio-economic Bubbles; Convergent End States and the Post-Sustainable Society; The Changing Nature of Identity; On Relationships; On Children; On Change, Action and Paradox)
  
• Edwards, G., 2007, Paradoxes and Consequences, blog, http://21stcenturyconsequences.blogspot.com (2 posts from May 22, 2007 to May 26, 2007 as follows : Opening Statement; Institutions that must and will change)
  
• Edwards, G., 2007, Doomsayers and Doomsaying, blog, http://doomsaying.blogspot.com (3 posts)
  

C) SPATIAL COGNITION AND COGNITIVELY-INFORMED SPATIAL DESIGN (1993-2007)
My work on cognition and cognively informed design began very early in my career, but seminal papers in 1993 and 1997 led me into collaborations with top psychologists working in spatial cognition. This led to the hiring of several postdocs with training in cognitive psychology and the development of a whole series of papers both studying spatial cognition and applying knowledge of it to the problems of designing spaces and technologies.

REFEREED JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS (2) - SPATIAL COGNITION AND COGNITIVELY-INFORMED SPATIAL DESIGN

• *Eardley, A., G. Edwards, F. Malouin, P.-E. Michon & J.M. Kennedy, 2007, Allocentric spatial frameworks derived from verbal description: Evidence from the blind & sighted, Perception, submitted.
  
• *Reginster, I. & G. Edwards, 2001. The Concept and Implementation of Perceptual Regions as Hierarchical Spatial Units for Evaluating Environmental Sensivity. Journal of URISA, 2001, vol. 13, no1, p. 5-16.
  

OTHER REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (10) - SPATIAL COGNITION AND COGNITIVELY-INFORMED SPATIAL DESIGN

• Eardley, A. F., Edwards, G., Malouin, F., & Michon, P-E., 2006, Challenging the importance of vision for the development of an extrinsic spatial framework: evidence from the blind and sighted. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Spatial Cognition, Cognitive Processing 7 (suppl. 1), S30-31
  
• Michon, P.-E., D. Duguay & G. Edwards, 2006, CADMUS : Use of Affordances in Cognitive Modeling for Wayfinding, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Spatial Cognition, Cognitive Processing 7 (suppl. 1), S65.
  
• *Fontaine, S., G. Edwards, M. Denis and B. Tversky, 2005. Expert and non-expert knowledge of loosely structured environments, Proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Information Theory COSIT’05, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 3693: 363-378.
  
• Michon, P.-E., D. Duguay and G. Edwards, 2005, Fondements et approche d’un modèle cognitive du déplacement, Proceedings of the International SAGEO Conference, Montpellier.
  
• *Edwards, G., 2001, A Virtual Test Bed for Cognitively-aware Plausibility metrics, Lecture Notes in Computer Science….
  
• *Edwards, G. & M.-J. Fortin, 2001. A Cognitive View of Spatial Uncertainty. Spatial Uncertainty in Ecology. Implantation for Remote Sensing and GIS Applications. Hunsaker Goodchild Friedl Case Editors. (Chap. 7), p. 133-157.
  
• Edwards, G., T.E. Bittner, M. Chabot, S. Epstein, J. Glasgow, G. Ligozat, B. Moulin, A. Marley, 2000. Apprehending and Designing Navigable Spaces - Issues for Park Design. National Symposium Geomatics 2000: Excellence in the New Millennium, Montreal, March, 8-10, Resumed.
  
• Edwards, G. & M. Fortin, 2000. Aesthetics for spatial design. Proceedings of the Second Annual GEOIDE Conference. From Ideas to Innovation: Geomatics for a new Millennium, http://www.geoide.ulaval.ca/conference/proceedings, Calgary, May, 25-26.
  
• *Edwards, G., 1997. Geocognostics - A New Framework For Spatial Information Theory. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT'97, Pittsburgh, October
  
• Edwards, G., 1996. Geocognostics - A new paradigm for spatial information? AAAI-96 Spring Symposium Series: Cognitive and Computational Models of Spatial Representation, Stanford, California, March 25-27, p. 6-14.
  
• *Edwards, G., 1993. The Voronoi Model and Cultural Space: Applications to the Social Sciences and Humanities. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Proceedings of the European Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT'93, vol. 716, Elba Island, Italy, p. 202-214.
  

NON-REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (3) - SPATIAL COGNITION AND COGNITIVELY-INFORMED SPATIAL DESIGN

• Dandjinou, H., & G. Edwards, 2006, La lisibilité spatiale dans les centres commerciaux, un outil de marketing, Géomatique VII, Montréal.
  
• Dandjinou, H., & G. Edwards, 2005, La lisibilité spatiale : le cas des centres commerciaux, Géomatique VI, Montréal.
  
• Edwards, G., 1997. La géomatique cognitive dimension cachée de la géomatique. InfoSIT, magazine publiÉ par l’École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, no 1, Avril, p. 2-4.
  

D) PUBLIC HEALTH AND REHABILITATION (2003-2007)

In 2002, my work on spatial cognition and design dovetailed with interests among health scientists concerning the body in movement. This led to collaboration on joint projects and eventually new areas of research in rehabilitation and public health, that are still emerging.

REFEREED JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS (2) - PUBLIC HEALTH AND REHABILITATION

• *Yaagoubi, R., & G. Edwards, 2007, Cognitive Design in Action : Designing Assistive Technology for Situational Awareness in the Blind, Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, submitted.
  
• *Michon, P.-E., D. Duguay & G. Edwards, 2007, Fondements et approche d’un modèle cognitive du déplacement, Journal international de géomatique, in press.
  

OTHER REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (1) - PUBLIC HEALTH AND REHABILITATION

• Edwards, G., A. Eardley, F. Malouin, M. Viger, R. Yaagoubi & D. Lambiel, 2006, Assistive Navigational Devices that Incorporate Principles of Spatial Cognition and Imagery, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Spatial Cognition, Cognitive Processing 7 (suppl. 1), S174
  

INVITED PRESENTATIONS (4) - PUBLIC HEALTH AND REHABILITATION

• Edwards, G., 2007, Resonant Installations, Invited presentation at the opening course of Health Settings, Technology and Place, University of Toronto, January.
  
• Edwards, G., 2007, Le design cognitif et les technologies d’aide aux personnes à déficit visuel, Présentation invitée pour la Journée scientifique du CRIR/CIRRIS, May.
  
• Edwards, G., 2007, La conscience corporel et l’espace – plaidoyer pour une ouverture de l’esprit scientifique, Présentation invitée pour la 10e symposium en santé de la vision, Institut Nazareth et Louis-Braille, February, Montréal
  
• Edwards, G., 2006, Designing for Safety, Invited keynote presentation at the Annual Conference of the Centre for Research in Aging, Geriatrics and Rehabilitation, London, Ontario, November.
  

NON-REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (5) - PUBLIC HEALTH AND REHABILITATION

• Yaagoubi, R., G. Edwards, T. Badard, 2006, Élaborer une approche d'assistance à la navigation à inspiration cognitive pour les personnes souffrantes d'une incapacité visuelle majeure, dans Actes de colloque pour la conférence Géomatique 2006, 25 et 26 Octobre 2006, Montréal.
  
• Yaagoubi, R., G. Edwards, & T. Badard, 2006, Increasing safety and its perception among people who suffer from a major visual impairment, through a systemic approach focused on the person, First International Conference on Mobile Geospatial Augmented Reality (séance d’affichage), Banff, May
  
• Lambiel, D., G. Edwards & M. Viger, 2006, Aider à la restauration du couplage entre le ”où” et le ”quoi” chez les personnes atteintes d’une incapacité visuelle partielle. First International Conference on Mobile Geospatial Augmented Reality (séance d’affichage), Banff, May
  
• Yaagoubi, R. & G. Edwards, 2006, Increasing safety and its perception among people who suffer from a major visual impairment, through a systemic approach focused on the person, Journée scientifique et pédagogique de l’Institut de réadaptation et déficiscience physique du Québec, mai.
  
• Lambiel, D., G. Edwards & M. Viger, 2006, Aider à la restauration du couplage entre le ”où” et le ”quoi” chez les personnes atteintes d’une incapacité visuelle partielle. Journée scientifique de l’Institut de réadaptation et déficiscience physique du Québec, mai.
  

E) KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION (2000-2006)

Knowledge Representation is a broad and somewhat loose label for a variety of research concerned with developing formal representations of space and semantic knowledge about space. This is a bridging area, as there is interest in knowledge representation both in geomatics and remote sensing (Bittner and Edwards 2001), but also in the health sciences, the arts and museum studies – for example, issues around3D representations of space (Edwards 2006) and the development of computer implementable models of perceived space (Edwards and Ligozat 2004; Ligozat and Edwards 2000).

REFEREED JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS (5) - KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION

• *Edwards, G., 2006, Des environnements 3D et le corps humain – une nouvelle classe de modèles qui portent sur l’interaction entre humain et espace, International Journal of Geomatics, Volume 16(2), 233-247.
  
• *Edwards, G. and G. Ligozat, 2004. A Formal Model for Structuring Local Perceptions of Environmental Space. Cognitive Processing, Volume 5, 3-9.
  
• Brodeur, J., Y. Bédard, G. Edwards, and B. Moulin, 2003. Revisiting the Concept of Geospatial Data Interoperability within the Scope of Human Communication Processes. Transactions in GIS, vol. 7 no 2, pp. 243-265.
  
• *Bittner, T.E. & G. Edwards, 2001. Towards an Ontology for Geomatics. Geomatica, Journal of the Canadian Institute of Geomatics, 2001, vol. 55, no 4, p. 475-490.
  
• *Ligozat, G. & G. Edwards, 2000. Implicit Spatial Reference Systems using Proximity and Alignment Knowledge. Journal of Spatial Cognition and Computation, Vol. 2, pp. 373-392.
  

OTHER REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (3) - KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION

• Mostafavi, M., G. Edwards & R. Jeansoulin, 2002. Ontological consistency of spatial databases in support of data fusion. Colloque géomatique 2002. Palais des Congrès de Montréal., Montréal, Québec, Canada, 30 et 31 octobre.
  
• Ligozat, G. & G. Edwards, 2000. Local and global environmental space. Proceedings of the Second Annual GEOIDE Conference. From Ideas to Innovation: Geomatics for a new Millennium, http://www.geoide.ulaval.ca/conference/proceedings, Calgary, May, 25-26, (poster).
  
• Shu, H. & G. Edwards, 2000. Quasi-metrics for psychological distances. Proceedings of the Second Annual GEOIDE Conference. From Ideas to Innovation: Geomatics for a new Millennium, http://www.geoide.ulaval.ca/conference/proceedings, Calgary, May, 25-26, (poster).
  

NON-REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (1) - KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION

• Edwards, G., & R. Jeansoulin, 2004. Data fusion – from a logic perspective with a view to implementation, Editorial for a Special Issue on Data Fusion, IJGIS, Volume 18, Number 4, 303-307.
  

F) SPATIAL LINGUISTICS AND FORMAL REASONING (1991-2003)

In an effort to understand how space could be represented and manipulated on a computer, a broad range of issues were investigated in collaboration with computer scientists who specialize in natural language (Moulin, Ligozat, Fraksak, Gryl, etc.). This work eventually shifted to cognitive psychology, as many of the problems were found to be intractable without good psychological insight.

OTHER REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (14) - SPATIAL LINGUISTICS AND FORMAL REASONING

• Khelfallah, M., R. Jeansoulin & G. Edwards, 2003, Piecewise Revision for Geographic Information, Proceedings of the 6th AGILE Conference.
  
• *Edwards, G., 2002. Reasoning about Shape using the Tangential Axis Transform of the Shape's 'Grain'. Chapter 1 in Coventry, K. R. & Olivier, P. (edts), Spatial Language: Cognitive and Computational Perspectives, Kluwer Academic Publishers, p. 1-18.
  
• Brodeur, J., Y. Bédard, B. Moulin & G. Edwards, 2001. Geosemantics proximity and data fusion. International Specialists Workshop on Geoinformation fusion and revision, organized by GEOIDE, REVIGIS and MURMUR, Québec City, April 10-11.
  
• *Edwards, G. & B. Moulin, 1998. Towards the simulation of spatial mental images using the Voronoï model. In P. Olivier, K-P. Gapp (edts.), Representation and Processing of Spatial Expressions, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, p. 163-184.
  
• Edwards, G., A. Gryl, G. Ligozat & B. Moulin, 1997. Sémantique des expressions spatiales: coment parle-t-on des données géographiques. Actes de la la Conférence RIAO'97, Computer-Assisted Information Searching on Internet, MontrÉal, June, p. 721-730.
  
• Edwards, G., 1997. Reasoning about shape using the tangential axis transform (TAT) or the shape's "grain". AAAI-97, Rhode Island, July, 27-28.
  
• Gryl, A. & G. Edwards, 1997. Descriptions in natural language and cartographic generalization: similar functionalities? 2nd Workshop on Progress in Automated Generalization, Suéde, June, 21-27.
  
• Gryl, A., G. Edwards & G. Ligozat, 1997. Pivot representations for modeling space. Workshop on Spatial and Temporal Reasoning, Japan, August.
  
• Edwards, G. & B. Moulin, 1996. Vers l’utilisation du modéle Voronoi pour la simulation d’images mentales spatiales. Colloque Informatique & langue naturelle, I.L.N., Nantes, France, 9-10 octobre, p. 233-248.
  
• Gryl, A., G. Ligozat & G. Edwards, 1996. Spatial and temporal elements of route descriptions. Spatial and Temporal Reasoning. AAAI-96 Workshop Program, Thirteenth National Conference on Aritificial Intelligence, Portland, Oregon, August, p. 33-38.
  
• *Edwards, G., G. Ligozat, A. Gryl, L. Fraczak, B. Moulin, C.M. Gold, 1996. AI-based pivot representation of spatial concepts and its application to route descriptions expressed in natural language. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference SDH'96, Spatial Data Handling, M.J. Kraak, M. Molenaar (eds), Delft, The Netherlands, August, p. 7B1-7B15.
  
• Edwards, G., G. Ligozat, A. Gryl, L. Fraczak, B. Moulin, C.M. Gold, 1995. Un modéle pivot pour la représentation de l’espace basé sur les diagrammes de Voronoi: application aux descriptions d’itinéraires en langage naturel. Compte rendu des journées CASSINI, Marseille, France, Novembre, p. 1-27.
  
• Edwards, G. & B. Moulin, 1995. Towards the simulation of spatial mental images using the Voronoi model. International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-95), Workshop on representation and processing of spatial expressions, Montreal, August 26-28, p. 63-73.
  
• *Edwards, G., 1991. Spatial Knowledge for Image Understanding. In D.M. Mark and A.U. Frank (eds.), Cognitive and Linguistic Aspects of Geographic Space. Chapitre de livre, Madrid, Spain, July 8-20, p. 295-307.
  

NON-REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (1) - SPATIAL LINGUISTICS AND FORMAL REASONING

• Brodeur, J., Y. Bédard, B. Moulin & G. Edwards, 2001. Geosemantics proximity and data fusion. International Specialists Workshop on Geoinformation fusion and revision, organized by GEOIDE, REVIGIS and MURMUR, Québec City, April 10-11.
  

G) GEOMATICS AND SPATIAL DATA HANDLING (1989 – 2007)

The first fifteen years of my career were heavily focussed on problem of spatial data handling, especially problems related to the integration of image and cartographic data, the extension of spatial data structures to handle time, and the development of an understanding of spatial error and uncertainty. Addition work used cognitive methods to improve understanding of geospatial decision-making.

REFEREED JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS (8) - GEOMATICS AND SPATIAL DATA HANDLING

• *Ciobanu, D.-L., S. Roche, F. Joerin & G. Edwards, 2006, Vers une intégration des SIG participatifs aux processus de design urbain délibératifs, Revue internationale de géomatique, Volume 16(2), 249-267.
  
  
• Marchand, P., A. Brisebois, Y. Bédard et G. Edwards, 2003. Implementation and evaluation of a hypercube-based method for spatio-temporal exploration and analysis, Journal of the International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) theme issue "Advanced techniques for analysis of geo-spatial data" dans la catégorie" multi-scale hierarchies of spatial operators".
  
  
• Fortin, M.J., R.J. Olson, S. Ferson, L. Iverson, C. Hunsaker, G. Edwards, D. Levine, K. Butera, V. Klemas, 2000. Issues related to the detection of boundaries. Landscape Ecology, vol. 15, no5, p.453-466.
  
  
• *Edwards, G. & K.E. Lowell, 1996. Modelling uncertainty in photointerpreted boundaries. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, vol. 62, no 4, p. 377-391.
  
  
• *Lowell, K.E., G. Edwards & G. Langran-Kucera, 1996. Modelling heterogeneity and change in natural forests. Geomatica, Journal de l’Association canadienne des sciences géomatiques, vol. 50, no 4, p. 425-440.
  
  
• *Gold, C.M. & G. Edwards, 1992. The Voronoi Spatial Model - Two and three Dimensional Applications in Image Analysis. ITC Journal International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Science, vol. 1, p. 11-19.
  
  
• *Ehlers, M., G. Edwards and Y. Bédard, 1989, The Integration of Remote Sensing with Geographic Information Systems: A Necessary Evolution, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, Volume 11, pp. 1619-1627.
  
  
• Bédard, Y., J. Prince, R. Robitaille and G. Edwards, 1989, "Mise en place d'un cadre conceptuel bi-dimensionel de classification des systèmes d'information à référence spatiale", Mensuration, Photogrammétrie, Génie Rural, Zurich, Suisse.
  

OTHER REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (15) - GEOMATICS AND SPATIAL DATA HANDLING

• Fortin, M.-J. & G. Edwards, 2001. Delineation and Analysis of Vegetation Boundaries. Spatial Uncertainty in Ecology. Implantation for Remote Sensing and GIS Applications. Hunsaker Goodchild Friedl Case Editors. (Chap. 8), p. 158-174.
  
  
• Edwards, G., M. Benmahbous, M. Courteau, T. De Groeve, M. Fortin, I. Reginster, G. Plouffe, T. Roméo, B. Thierry, F. Vincent, 2000. Spatial error and uncertaintly and the decision-making process. Spatial Data Handling, Beijing, August.
  
  
• Moulin, B., Y. Bédard, G. Edwards & M. Allouche, 2000. Research Progress on a Cognitive Approach of Spatial Generalization and Multiple Representation. Proceedings of the Second Annual GEOIDE Conference. From Ideas to Innovation: Geomatics for a new Millennium, http://www.geoide.ulaval.ca/conference/proceedings, Calgary, Canada, May, 25-26.
  
  
• Rouabah, S. & G. Edwards, 2000. The perception and design of forest spaces for integrated management. Proceedings of the Second Annual GEOIDE Conference. From Ideas to Innovation: Geomatics for a new Millennium, http://www.geoide.ulaval.ca/conference/proceedings, Calgary, May, 25-26.
  
  
• Edwards, G., 1998. Towards a theory of vector error characterisation and propagation. Proceedings of 3rd International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, Quebec, May 20-22.
  
  
• *Edwards, G., T. De Groeve, A. Gryl, J. Kritter & M.A. Mostafavi, 1998. Extending GIS - integrating multiple spaces into a single concept. Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling'98, Vancouver, July, 11-15, p. 123-137.
  
  
• Fortin, M., G. Edwards & K.P.B. Thomson, 1998. The role of error propagation for integrating multisource data within spatial models: the case of the DRASTIC groundwater vulnerability model. Proceedings of 3rd International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment: Land Information Uncertainty in Natural Resources / edited by Kim Lowell and Annick Jaton, ISBN 1-57504-119-7, Quebec, May 20-22, p. 437-443.
  
  
• *Allen, E., G. Edwards & Y. Bédard, 1995. Qualitative causal modeling in temporal GIS. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT’95, Austria, September, p. 397-412.
  
  
• Lowell, K.E., G. Edwards & K. Esbensen, 1995. Towards a more human (re)design of digital spatial technologies. Proceedings of the 28th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (H1CSS-28), Minitrack on GIS, vol. 4, Maui, Hawaii, Jannary 3-6, p. 123-130.
  
  
• *Edwards, G., 1994. Characterising and maintaining polygons with fuzzy boundaries in geographic information systems. Sixth International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling, vol. 1, Edingburgh, September 5-9, p. 223-239.
  
  
• Edwards, G., 1994. Modelling of fuzzy data: Aggregation and disaggregation of fuzzy polygons for spatial-temporal modeling. Proceedings of the Advanced Geographic Data Modeling Workshop (AGDM'94): Spatial Data Modelling and Query Languages for 2D and 3D Applications, Delft, Netherlands, Sept. 12-16, p. 141-154.
  
  
• Gagnon, P., Y. Bédard and G. Edwards, 1992, "Fundamentals of Space and Time and Their Integration Into Forestry Geographic Databases", Proceedings of the IUFRO Conference on Integrating Forest Information Over Space and Time, Canberra, Australia, Janvier, 24-34.
  
  
• *Edwards, G., 1992. Error Minimization in Integrated GIS/IAS System Design. 5th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling - IGU Commission on GIS, vol. 1, Charleston, August 3-7, p. 20-29.
  
  
• Gold, C. and G. Edwards, 1991, "Why do spatial models matter?", invited paper for the ISPRS Commission II/2 Workshop, Munich, Germany.
  
  
• Bédard, Y., J. Prince, R. Robitaille and G. Edwards, 1989, "Le spectre de classification des systèmes d'information à référence spatiale", Arpenteur-Géomètre, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp.36-38.
  
  
• Bédard, Y., J. Prince, R. Robitaille and G. Edwards, 1989, "Échelle d'utilisation de la référence spatiale dans les SIRS (Systèmes d'Information à Référence Spatiale)", Arpenteur-Géomètre, Vol. 15, No. 5, pp.16-18.
  

INVITED PRESENTATIONS (2) - GEOMATICS AND SPATIAL DATA HANDLING

• Edwards, G., M. Fortin, K.P.B. Thomson, E. Aubert & K.E. Lowell, 1997. Propagating boundary uncertainty from maps to models. First International CASSINI Workshop on Spatial Data Quality; from Error to Uncertainty. Invited speaker, April 21-23.
  
  
• Edwards, G., 1991, Remote Sensing Image Analysis and Geographic Information Systems: Laying the Groundwork for Total Integration, invited paper for the NCGIA Initiative 12 Special Session on Remote Sensing and GIS integration, Baltimore, March.
  

NON-REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (12) - GEOMATICS AND SPATIAL DATA HANDLING

• Fortin, M., K.P.B. Thomson & G. Edwards, 1997. Intégration de données multisources et propagation des erreurs dans un modèle de vulnérabilité de la nappe d'eau souterraine. Compte rendu du symposium international : La géomatique à l'Ère de Radarsat (GER'97), Ottawa, 25-30 mai, CD-ROM.
  
  
• Bouchard, C., K.E. Lowell & G. Edwards, 1996. Quantification de l’incertitude spatiale des cartes forestières: Automatisation d’une méthode manuelle. Actes de la 8e Conférence internationale sur la géomatique, Ottawa, 28-30 mai, CD-ROM.
  
  
• Aubert, E., G. Edwards & K.E. Lowell, 1994. Quantification des erreurs de frontière en photo-interprétation forestière pour le suivi spatio-temporel des peuplements. Actes de la Conférence canadienne sur les SIG, Ottawa, 4-10 juin, p. 195-205.
  
  
• Edwards, G., 1994. Characterising spatial uncertainty and variability in forest databases. ASPRS Conference on Spatial Data Accuracy in Natural Ressource Databases, Williamsburry, Virginia, May 16-20, p. 88-97.
  
  
• Bilodeau, J.M., S. Gosselin, G. Edwards, C.M. Gold & K.E. Lowell, 1993. Operation Integration of GPS into Forest Management Activities which use a GIS to Monitor Forest Operations. GIS'93, Eyes on the Future, Vancouver, February 15-18, p. 195-200.
  
  
• Edwards, G., P. Gagnon & Y. Bédard, 1993. Spatial-Temporal Topology and Casual Mechanisms in Time-Integrated GIS: from Conceptual Model to Implementation Strategies. The Canadian Conference on GIS, Ottawa, 23-25 mars, p. 842-857.
  
  
• Gagnon, P., Y. Bédard & G. Edwards, 1992. La gestion du temps dans les SIRS: certains concepts fondamentaux. Actes de la Conférence canadienne sur les SIG, Ottawa, 24 au 26 mars, p. 393-405.
  
  
• Lowell, K.E., C.M. Gold & G. Edwards, 1992. The Next Generation of Digital Spatial Technologies: Error Utilization, Thematic Map and Remote Sensing Integration, Spatial Operators, and Data Structures. Proceedings of the GIS'92 Symposium, Vancouver, February 10-13, 7 p. (no page number).
  
  
• Lowell, K.E., G. Edwards & C.M. Gold, 1992. Considerations for Adapting Conventional Forest Management Methodologies to a Spatial Framework Using GIS: Data, Statistical Techniques and Errors. Proceedings of the IUFRO Conference 1992, Canberra, Australia, p. 429-439.
  
  
• Lowell, K.E., G. Edwards & C.M. Gold, 1992. Localizing Forest Management Using GIS and Remote Sensing: the Research Agenda of the Industrial Research Chair in Geomatics with Applications to Forestry. Actes de la ConfÉrence canadienne sur les SIG, Ottawa, 24 au 26 mars, p. 191-201.
  
  
• Edwards, G., Y. Bédard & Y.M. Ehlers, 1990. Advanced Integration of Remote Sensing Image Analysis With Geographic Information Systems. Actes de la conférence nationale sur les SIG, Ottawa, mars, p. 1574-1584.
  
  
• Edwards, G., Y. Bédard and M. Ehlers, 1989, On the Integration of Remote Sensing with Geographic Information Systems, National Conference on GIS'89, Ottawa, Canada (abstract only).
  

H) IMAGE PROCESSING AND REMOTE SENSING (1987 – 2007)

In an effort to understand how space could be represented and manipulated on a computer, a broad range of issues were investigated in collaboration with computer scientists who specialize in natural language (Moulin, Ligozat, Fraksak, Gryl, etc.). This work eventually shifted to cognitive psychology, as many of the problems were found to be intractable without good psychological insight.

REFEREED JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS (14) - IMAGE PROCESSING AND REMOTE SENSING

• Vincent, F., D. Raucoules, T. DeGroeve, G. Edwards and M. Mostafavi, 2004. Monitoring river/sea ice break-up using satellite interferometry : limits and potential, International Journal of Remote Sensing, Volume 25(18), 3555-3571.
  
  
• Bolduc, P., K.E. Lowell & G. Edwards, 1999. Automated estimation of localized forest volume from large scale aerial photographs and ancillary cartographic information in a boreal forest. International Journal of Remote Sensing, vol. 20, no 18, p. 3611-3624.
  
  
• Beauchemin, M., K.P.B. Thomson & G. Edwards, 1998. On nonparametric edge detection in multilook SAR images. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 36, no 5, p. 1-4.
  
  
• Beauchemin, M., K.P.B. Thomson & G. Edwards, 1998. On the hausdorff distance used for the evaluation of segmentation results. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, vol. 24, no 1, p. 3-8.
  
  
• Beauchemin, M., K.P.B. Thomson & G. Edwards, 1996. Edge detection and speckle adaptive filtering for SAR images based on a second-order textural measure. International Journal of Remote Sensing, vol. 17, no 9, p. 1751-1759.
  
  
• Beauchemin, M., K.P.B. Thomson & G. Edwards, 1996. Optimization of the Gamma-Gamma MAP filter for SAR image clutters. International Journal of Remote Sensing Letters, vol. 17, no 5, p. 1063-1067.
  
  
• Beauchemin, M., K.P.B. Thomson & G. Edwards, 1996. The ratio of the arithmetic to the geometric mean: an efficient first-order statistical test for multi-look SAR image homogeneity. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 34, no 2, p. 604-606.
  
  
• Beauchemin, M., K.P.B. Thomson & G. Edwards, 1995. Modeling Forest Stands with MIMICS: Implications for Calibration. Invited paper for special issue of Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing on Radar Applications, vol. 21, no 4, p. 518-526.
  Edwards, G. & S. Rioux, 1995. A detailed assessment of relative displacement error in cutover boundaries derived from Airborne C-Band SAR. Invited paper for special issue of Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing on radar applications, vol. 21, no 2, p. 185-197.
  
  
• Fournier, R.A., G. Edwards & N.R. Eldridge, 1995. A catalogue of potential spatial discriminators for high spatial resolution digital images of individual crowns. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, vol. 21, no 3, p. 285-298.
  
  
• Touré, A., K.P.B. Thomson, G. Edwards, R.J. Brown & B. Brisco, 1994. Adaptation of the Mimics Backscattering Model to the Agricultural Context: Wheat and Canola Cases at L and C Bands. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 32, no 1, p. 47-61.
  
  
• Ait Belaid, M., J.M. Beaulieu, G. Edwards, A. Jaton & K.P.B. Thomson, 1992. Post-Segmentation Classification of Images Containing Small Agricultural Fields. GEOCARTO International, vol. 7, no 3, p. 53-60.
  
  
• Touré, A., G. Edwards, K.P.B. Thomson, R. Brown & B. Brisco, 1991. Applying the Mimics Backscattering Model in an Agricultural Context. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, vol. 17, no 4, p. 339-347.
  
  
• Thomson, K.P.B., G. Edwards, R. Landry, A. Jaton, S.-P. Cadieux, and H. Gwyn, 1990, "SAR Applications in Agriculture: Multiband Correlation and Segmentation", Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, Volume 16, 47-54.
  

OTHER REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (4) - IMAGE PROCESSING AND REMOTE SENSING

• Edwards, G., 2000. Attentional focus in biresolution visual processing of remotely sensed scenes. Proceedings of the Second Annual GEOIDE Conference. From Ideas to Innovation: Geomatics for a new Millennium, http://www.geoide.ulaval.ca/conference/proceedings, Calgary, May, 25-26, (poster).
  
  
• Vincent, F., G. Edwards, R. Santerre & K.P.B. Thomson, 1999. Intégration de l'interférométrie radar et du GPS pour l'étude des changements dynamiques du relief. 9e Congrès annuel de l'Institut Atlantique, Université Laval, Québec, 8-9 juin.
  
  
• Esbensen, K., G. Edwards & N.R. Eldridge, 1993. Multivariate Image Analysis in Forestry Applications involving High Resolution Airborne Imagery. Proceedings of the 8th Scandinavian Conference on Image Analysis, vol. 2, Tromso, Norway, May, p. 953-963.
  
  
• Edwards, G., M. Ait-Belaid, K.P.B. Thomson, G. Cauchon and J.-M. Beaulieu, 1990b, "Cartographic Information as a Structuring Principle for Image Segmentation", ISPRS Commission II/VII International Workshop on Advances in Spatial Information Extraction and Analysis for Remote Sensing, January 14 - 17, 1990, University of Maine, Orono, 41-49.
  

NON-REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (41) - IMAGE PROCESSING AND REMOTE SENSING

• Beauchemin, M., K.P.B. Thomson & G. Edwards, 1997. On the hausdorff concept of distance used for the evaluation of segmentation results in remote sensing. Proceedings of the International Symposium: Geomatics in the Era of Radarsat (GER'97), Ottawa, 25-30 mai, CD-ROM.
  
  
• Michaud, N., K.P.B. Thomson & G. Edwards, 1997. L'extraction de l'information forestière des données RAS - Projet ADRO No 83: Résultats préliminaires. Compte rendu du symposium international : La géomatique à l'Ère de Radarsat (GER'97), Ottawa, 25-30 mai, CD-ROM.
  
  
• Beauchemin, M., K.P.B. Thomson & G. Edwards, 1996. La détection d’arêtes dans les images radar: une approche basée sur les statistiques de rang. Actes du 9e CongrËs de l’Association Québécoise de Télédétection, Québec, 30 avril - 3 mai, CD-ROM.
  
  
• Bolduc, P., K.E. Lowell & G. Edwards, 1996. Développement d’une méthode pour estimer localement le volume de bois à l’aide de photographies aériennes numérisées. Actes de la 8e Conférence internationale sur la géomatique, Ottawa, 28-30 mai, CD-ROM.
  
  
• Edwards, G., 1996. La comparaison de résultats de segmentation et de classification d’image à l’aide des matrices PSE. Actes du 9e Congrès de l’Association Québécoise de Télédétection, Québec, 30 avril-3 mai, CD-ROM.
  
  
• Fournier, R.A., G. Edwards & R.P. Gauthier, 1996. Une analyse de la réflectance des couverts forestiers de résineux. Actes du 9e Congrès de l’Association Québécoise de Télédétection, Québec, 30 avril-3 mai, CD-ROM.
  
  
• Fournier, R.A., G. Edwards & R.P. Gauthier, 1996. Geometric-optics forest canopy modelling for high spatial resolution imagery. Proceedings of the Second International Airborne Remote Sensing Conference and Exhibition. Technology, Measurement & Analysis, vol. III, San Francisco, California, June 24-27, p. 436-445.
  
  
• Michaud, N., M. Beauchemin, K.P.B. Thomson & G. Edwards, 1996. Synthèse de l’information forestiere contenue dans les images radar de la Forêt Montmorency. Actes du 9e Congrès de l’Association Québécoise de Télédétection, Québec, 30 avril-3 mai, CD-ROM.
  
  
• Poirier, S.P.E. & G. Edwards, 1996. Regroupement contextuel d’arbres individuels, basé sur la caractéristique des cimes dans les images aéroportées. Actes du 9e Congrès de l’Association Québécoise de Télédétection, Québec, 30 avril-3 mai, CD-ROM.
  
  
• Pouliot, J., K.P.B. Thomson, G. Edwards & M. Rheault, 1996. Exploitation des images ERS-1 pour la cartographie de la vulnérabilité de la nappe souterraine. Actes du 9e Congrès de l’Association Québécoise de Télédétection, Québec, 30 avril-3 mai, CD-ROM.
  
  
• Supronowicz, J., G. Edwards, K.P.B. Thomson & A.A. Viau, 1996. Spectral reflectance of forest understorey in various types of forests within the BOREAS North Study Area in Manitoba. Actes du 9e Congrès de l’Association Québécoise de Télédétection, Québec, 30 avril-3 mai, CD-ROM.
  
  
• Yan, Y.M. & G. Edwards, 1996. Classification des cimes d’arbres individuels à l’aide de photographies aériennes. Actes du 9e Congrès de l’Association Québécoise de Télédétection, Québec, 30 avril-3 mai, CD-ROM.
  
  
• Beauchemin, M., K.P.B. Thomson & G. Edwards, 1995. SAR adapted techniques for image analysis. Proceedings, IGARSS’95 Symposium, Firenze, Italy, July 10-14, p. 175-177.
  
  
• Edwards, G., 1995. Method for assessing local map accuracy in thematic classifications derived from remotely sensed images. Proceedings of 17th International Cartographic Conference, Barcelone, September 3-9, p. 1521-1530.
  
  
• Mancilla, B., K.P.B. Thomson, G. Edwards & M. Beauchemin, 1995. Analysis of factors influencing the visibility of forest clear cuts in radar images. Proceedings of the 17th Canadian Symposium on Remote Sensing, Saskatoon, June 13-15, p. 532-535.
  
  
• Pouliot, J., K.P.B. Thomson, G. Edwards & M. Rheault, 1995. Exploitation des images ERS-1 pour la cartographie de la vulnérabilité de la nappe souterraine. Actes de la Conférence sur l’extraction de paramètres bio-géophysiques à partir de données RSO pour les applications terrestres, Toulouse, 10-13 octobre, 11 p.
  
  
• Edwards, G., 1993. The Integration of Remote Sensing and GIS: Fundamental Questions and New Approaches. 16th Canadian Symposium of Remote Sensing - 8e congrès de l’Association Québécoise de Télédétection, Sherbrooke, June 7-10, p. 873-878.
  
  
• Edwards, G., 1993. Image Analysis for Locally Reliable Information. GIS'93, Eyes on the Future, Vancouver, February 15-18, p. 783-790.
  
  
• Eldridge, N.R. & G. Edwards, 1993. Continuous Tree Class Density Surfaces Derived from High Resolution Digital Image Analysis. GIS'93, Eyes on the Future, Vancouver, February 15-18, p. 947-954.
  
  
• Eldridge, N.R. & G. Edwards, 1993. Acquiring Localized Forest Inventory Information: Extraction from High Resolution Airborne Digital Images. 16th Canadian Symposium of Remote Sensing - 8e congrès de l’Association Québécoise de Télédétection, Sherbrooke, June 7-10, p. 443-448.
  
  
• Fournier, R.A., G. Edwards & N.R. Eldridge, 1993. Towards Spatial Species Discriminators for High Resolution Digital Imagery of Individual Trees. 16th Canadian Symposium of Remote Sensing - 8e congrËs de l'Association quÉbÉcoise de tÉlÉdÉtection, Sherbrooke, June 7-10, p. 829-834.
  
  
• Edwards, G. & K.E. Lowell, 1992. Spatial Considerations for Forest Canopy Modelling and Biomass Estimation Based on Remotely Sensed Data. Proceedings of the GIS'92 Symposium, Vancouver, February 10-13, 8 p., (no page number).
  
  
• Edwards, G., O. Chuzel & K.P.B. Thomson, 1992. An Expert System for Helping Forest Managers Choose among Data Sources of Remotely Sensed Imagery. Proceedings of the GIS'92 Symposium, Vancouver, February 10-13, 10 p. (no page number).
  
  
• Edwards, G., 1992. The Integration of Remotely Sensed Data Analysis into GIS: Time and Uncertainty Management Needs. Proceedings of the Canadian Conference on GIS, Ottawa, March 24-26, p. 432-440.
  
  
• Edwards, G., K.P.B. Thomson & N. Eldridge, 1992. Regeneration Stocking Derived from High Resolution Airborne Imagery Via Texture Measurements. Proceedings of the GIS'92 Symposium, Vancouver, February 10-13, 6 p. (no page number).
  
  
• Thomson, K.P.B., A. Jaton, G. Edwards, J. Pouliot & A. TourÉ, 1992. Analyse des donnÉes ROS multibandes et multipolarisation en milieu agricole. Comptes rendus du 15e Symposium canadien sur la télédétection, Toronto, 1-4 juin, p. 227-232.
  
  
• Touré, A., K.P.B. Thomson, G. Edwards, R.J. Brown & B. Brisco, 1992. Adaptation du modèle MIMICS au contexte agricole: cas du blé et du colza. Comptes rendus du 15e Symposium canadien sur la télédétection, Toronto, 1-4 juin, p. 192-197.
  
  
• Edwards, G., 1991. Archimage: Un outil de gestion des archives de la télédétection. Actes du 7e Congrès de l’Association Québécoise de Télédétection, Montréal, Octobre, p. 237-240.
  
  
• Edwards, G., 1991. Remote Sensing Image Analysis and Geographic Information Systems: Laying the Groundwork for Total Integration. Proceedings of a Special Session held at the Baltimore 1991 ACSM-ASPRS Annual Conventom on the Integration of Remote Sensing and GIS, p. 21-31.
  
  
• Edwards, G., A. Jaton & K.P.B. Thomson, 1991. Manipulating Hyperspectral Data. Proceedings of the 14th Symposium on Remote Sensing, Calgary, Alberta, p. 356-359.
  
  
• Edwards, G., A. Jaton & K.P.B. Thomson, 1991. La manipulation de données hyperspectrales. Actes du 7e Congrès de l’Association Québécoise de Télédétection, Montréal, Octobre, p. 295-299.
  
  
• Touré, A., K.P.B. Thomson, G. Edwards, R.J. Brown & B. Brisco, 1991. Utilisation du modèle MIMICS pour modéliser le couvert agricole. Actes du 7e Congrès de l’Association Québécoise de Télédétection, Montréal, Octobre, p. 203-208.
  
  
• Touré, A., K.P.B. Thomson, G. Edwards, R.J. Brown & B. Brisco, 1991. Backscattering Characteristics of Soil Using the Mimics Microwave Canopy Model. Proceedings of the 14th Canadian Symposium on Remote Sensing, Calgary, Alberta, p. 188-191.
  
  
• Brunelle, J., C. Cantin, K.P.B. Thomson and G. Edwards, 1990, "Évaluation spectrale et texturale des données du capteur MEIS II — Superficies forestières en régénération", Proceedings of the 13th Canadian Symposium of Remote Sensing, Fredericton, Canada, 94-97.
  
  
• Thomson, K.P.B., G. Edwards, R. Landry, S.-P. Cadieux, A. Jaton, and H. Gwyn, 1990, "Radar en agriculture: corrélation multibande et segmentation", 13th Canadian Symposium of Remote Sensing, Fredericton, Canada, 439-442.
  
  
• Edwards, G., 1990, "Image Segmentation, Cartographic Information and Knowledge-Based Reasoning: Getting the Mixture Right", International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium '90, Washington D.C.
  
  
• Edwards, G. and J.-M. Beaulieu, 1989, "Segmentation of SAR Imagery Containing Forest Clear Cuts", International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium '89, Vancouver, Canada, pp. 1195-1197.
  
  
• Thomson, K.P.B., R. Landry, G. Edwards and M. Cantin, 1989, "Radar en agriculture: resultats preliminaires sur un site agricole au Québec", International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium '89, Vancouver, Canada, pp. 415-417.
  
  
• Ait Belaid, M., K.P.B. Thomson, G. Edwards and J.-M. Beaulieu, 1989, "Segmentation d'image SPOT intégrée à l'information cartographique en vue de l'établissement de la carte d'utilisation de sol au Maroc", International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium '89, Vancouver, Canada, pp. 56-59.
  
  
• Edwards, G., R. Landry, and K.P.B. Thomson, 1988, "Texture Analysis of Forest Regeneration Sites in High Resolution SAR Imagery", International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium '88, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1355-1360.
  
  
• Landry, R., G. Edwards, and K.P.B. Thomson, 1988, "Analyse des zones de régénération forestière par la texture dans les images radar à ouverture synthétique (ROS)", Sixième Congrès de L'Association Québécoise de Télédétection, University of Sherbrooke (abstract only).
  
  
• Landry, R., G. Edwards, K.P.B. Thomson and P. Gilbert, 1988, "Analyse texturale en milieu forestier: Données radar à ouverture synthétique de haute résolution spatiale", Quatrième Colloque International sur les Signatures Spectrales d'Objets en Télédétection, Paris, 341-345.
  

I) MISCELLANEOUS

NON-REFEREED CONTRIBUTIONS (4) - MISCELLANEOUS

• Fertas, S., & G. Edwards, 2005, Gestion urbistique du désastre dans les agglomerations: une approche systémique, Second International Conference on Urbistics, Montreal, May, 2005.