With Digital Geology,
we've brought the geological field trip
into the office environment.
Let me share with you the next steps
of this innovative journey.
I'm standing here
in the iScope Virtual Reality Centre
in the Netherlands.
And behind me you can see the Escudeiros
outcrop in the southern Pyrenees,
one of the stops of our present day
geological field trips.
The picture is a 360 x 180-degree,
high-resolution panoramic photograph
that we recently took
during one of our reconnaissance trips.
Standing here in Rijswijk,
I can now navigate you
through the geology
and zoom in and explain
relevant geological details to you,
as I would do
when I would be physically in the field.
I can do this
in a collaborative environment
where people at different locations
can connect with me at the same time.
The 360 x 180-degree panoramic picture
is geo-referenced
and can be combined with, for example,
satellite imagery, Google Earth maps,
geoscience, topographical, multimedia,
and other sources of data.
It will be presented as a low-cost
and intuitive, web-based solution
accessible to everyone,
at any place, at any time,
and linked to
our knowledge management setup.
In 2017, we intend to collect these
high-resolution panoramic pictures
for all the stops of
the geological field trips
that we run in the Subsurface Faculty.
We will translate these
into virtual outcrop stops
that we will integrate
into our Digital Geology project.
Ultimately, we want
to make our virtual outcrop stops
a fully immersive experience.
The best has yet to come.
Enjoy the future.
