Comprehensible and Interactive Visualizations of GIS Data in Augmented Reality

Most civil engineering tasks require accessing, surveying and modifying geospatial data in the field and referencing this virtual, geospatial information to the real world situation. Augmented Reality (AR) can be a useful tool to create, edit and update geospatial data representing real world artifacts by interacting with the 3D graphical representation of the geospatial data augmented in the user’s view. One of the main challenges of interactive AR visualizations of data from professional geographic information systems (GIS) is the establishment of a close linkage of comprehensible AR visualization and the geographic database that allows interactive modifications. In this paper, we address this challenge by introducing a flexible data management between GIS databases and AR visualizations that maintain data consistency between both data levels and consequently enables an interactive data roundtrip. The integration of our approach into a mobile AR platform enables us to perform first evaluations with expert end-users from utility companies.