Role Model-based Geo-Collaboration of Virtual Geographic Environments

Geo-collaboration is a typical feature of virtual geographic environments (VGEs), but there is not a systemic method to bridge the gap between participants and VGEs platform for design, management and implement group collaboration with VGEs. This paper presents a novel method based on a new constructed role model. The role model has six components which are role playing, role authority, role awareness, role thinking, role behaviors, and role representation. Based on the role model, geo-collaboration methodology is presented form multi-aspects including a three-tier architecture designed, geo-collaboration plan, conflict detection and solving. Based on above achievements, a prototype is build which is a case to simulate interaction between human behaviors and global change by integrating the role model and collaborative virtual geographic environment. The result shows that the role model based geo-collaboration for VGEs is reasonable, which is valuable for further research on collaboratively dealing with complex geo-phenomena and geo-processes with VGEs.