## 4 An Integrated Suite of Geo-Visualisation Tools
### Case Study Application in South West Victoria
After, retrieving information from the database, the Active 3D Visualisation program not only calculates the density (calculations) for each polygon which is assigned with an ecological vegetation class name or plantation type, but also starts downloading the respective objects from the Landscape Object Library (rule-based database) onto the SIEVE installed machine (network or local, Figure 7). Additionally, Active 3D Visualisation program establishes a link between ArcMap and SIEVE for communicating avatar location through bidirectional information exchange, known as Live Link [15]. Figure 11: Landscape planning using a touch table: (**a**) A biolink design (**b**) A whole farm plan. This illustrates the versatility of the geo-visualisation tools for support a range landscape planning activities. Avatar is a virtual representation of a farmer, scientist, policy maker and so forth, and embedded in the SIEVE. The positioning of objects in SIEVE occurs two ways: (i) random and (ii) row or column. The ecological vegetation class objects are randomly distributed, whereas agricultural plantation type objects follow row or column pattern. The number of the objects, based on a predefined density, is calculated using the polygon area, which is calculated by the software program during export. For each ecological vegetation class and plantation type, the average density is taken into consideration to calculate the density of objects in each individual polygon [21], which is found in Victoria. Once this conversion is done, the simulated 3D virtual environment can be viewed in SIEVE. Figure 12 depicts the 3D virtual environment in SIEVE, and shows all the polygons with the respective digital objects placed in them as imported from the Landscape Object Library. Creating a 3D virtual environment using this approach helps the user to make changes in their 2D plan that is developed in the GIS environment and view them interactively in the 3D virtual environment immediately. Figure 12 shows the whole farm and biolink with existing flora in the 3D virtual environment. The extended connecting vegetation corridor can now be observed between the water body and the existing vegetation patches. The implementation of this landscape planning scenario could potentially support endangered animal species to establish their habitats and move around, and also help the establishment of new ecosystem services in the form of woody vegetation, which could contribute to a drop in the watertable and decrease in salinity. Moreover, using the suite of integrated geo-visualisation tools and the Landscape Object Library, wind farm planning (for the production of electricity) is a further potential application of this  
Figure 12: 3D virtual environment comprising both a biolink design and whole farm plan as represented in SIEVE. participatory system. There are currently wind turbines captured as digital objects and the DEM data layer is available for the study area. To plan a wind farm effectively, requires scrutiny of some additional data i.e. wind speed, altitude and consideration of environmental and aesthetic impacts, which are currently unavailable in the existing prototype system. Once all of these parameters are finalised, the Landscape Constructor tool could be used to demarcate the location of each wind turbine on a 2D map using a touch table and view the resulting landscape in the 3D virtual environment by importing the objects from the Landscape Object Library. Renewable energy planning can potentially provide positive stimulus to the economy of the region and long term sustainability benefits [22]. In Figure 13, we used this approach to simulate the siting of wind turbines as part of a whole farm plan. In this paper, we have illustrated some possible applications in landscape planning, which demonstrate the functionality of the Landscape Constructor workflow interface and supporting Landscape Object Library.