Developing the eXtended Tangible User Interface as an Experimental Platform for Geo CPS

Geotechnology, including GIS, remote sensing, and GNSS, is finding many applications in disaster risk reduction. Information flows in conventional systems tend to be one-way, however, from the physical world to cyber world, and their effectiveness often depends on professional training while support for participation is weak. This chapter overviews the history of the concept of the tangible user interface (TUI), which intuitively bridges GIS content in the cyber world onto a “tangible table,” a mock-up of the physical world for intuitive communication. After examining the common features of TUIs, we extend the concepts to recent applications in cyber-physical systems (CPSs) in the geographic dimension. We show how a Geo CPS platform (a CPS spatialized in the geographic world) with eXtended TUI (XTUI) can enhance the integration of information within cyber, physical and social spaces as well as the interactions among them in the application context. The system architecture and functions of Geo CPS with XTUI are constructed to reflect intuitive interactions of sensing, process and actuation (iSPA). Finally, we present a community trial at the Urban Living Lab in Yokohama City and discuss the potential for the Geo CPS platform with XTUI for disaster risk reduction.