## 2 Theoretical Framework for Assessing Virtual Globes
### Virtual Globes as Participatory Landscape Visualization Platforms: Benefits and Limitations  
The following discussion summarizes various criteria and evaluative approaches to virtual globes. The authors draw on prior work on mostly theorized (and sometimes realized) benefits and risks from the fields of Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) and landscape visualization. In terms of public engagement, the considerable overlap between virtual globes and the field of PPGIS can provide valuable insight into how best to make use of virtual globes. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [11] raise questions related to \"tensions between confidentiality and freedom of information; the changing status of visual technologies; the relations between power, space and representation; everyday and elite practice; and forms of resistance\". In this context, [PERSON] [12] classifies two different types of PPGIS initiatives: top down and bottom up. Top down approaches include any government activities, such as mapping community assets and deficits, to support top-down defined goals. In contrast, grassroots initiatives use PPGIS, and increasingly virtual globes, to map and visualize citizen-defined issues. This paper does not evaluate pure top-down approaches, which tend to lack substantive participation; instead, the KCAP case study will present a collaborative approach to decision-making, which includes government and external experts, but is led by local stakeholders and citizens. There have been high expectations about the deliberative power of virtual globes as an accessible type of geobrowser, arguably providing grassroots groups with equal means to corporations or developers or governments [13]. [PERSON] [14] challenges the potential of virtual globes to facilitate grassroots action and initiate policy shifts. While agreeing that the tool can raise awareness about activities with high landscape impacts, such as mining activities, [PERSON] is concerned that virtual globes add only limited value to the representation of future landscapes because virtual globes don't cover the complex symbolic meanings of landscapes. [PERSON]'s argument is only theoretically, rather than empirically, supported and [PERSON] notes that more research is required on public response and the possible \"strategic costs\", e.g., the lack of public trust in employing virtual globes as a tool in grassroots campaigns. Focusing on participatory potentials of virtual globes, the following chapter will look at two-bottom up grassroots examples in more detail. The main part, the KCAP case study, will present a collaborative approach to decision-making, which includes government and external expert but is led by local stakeholders; attempting to combine the power of bottom up participation with the resources of public planning. Virtual globes provide a high apparent pictorial realism in the elevated oblique views due to their use of high resolution satellite and aerial images--a perspective that has often been used in landscape related disciplines. For example, [PERSON] and [PERSON] [11] argue that virtual globes can be related to landscape painting because they provide a similar \"framing\" of extensive geographic spaces [15]. Thus, the field of landscape visualization can provide guidance on the requirements of stakeholders regarding feasibility, flexibility, and engagement [16], and how to produce and assess interactive representations of the landscape [17] in virtual globes. [PERSON] [18] sees easier access to geospatial information (Benefit 1 in Table 1) as one of the major benefits of virtual globes. [PERSON] [19] also found that approximately 75% of test participants assessed virtual landscapes as highly realistic. Most of those landscapes were similar to the background scenes that virtual globes are most known for: a detailed orthophoto combined with 3D objects. In contrast, middleground and foreground scenes received lower, albeit still medium to high, realism level ratings.