While writing concepts, technical documentations and tweets, we’ve realized that the XR4DRAMA consortium uses a lot of abbreviations and acronyms, many of which aren’t necessarily known to a non-expert audience. And even within the team, nobody has heard of all of them, as it’s almost impossible to be an expert in disaster management and media planning and data processing and computer linguistics and smart clothes and immersive technologies.
So in order to everybody a good overview, we’ve compiled this handy glossary – which also defines/explains some of the more exotic or difficult terms:
- AR: Augmented reality (a type of extended reality where a users see their “real” environment, but with digital overlays)
- ASR: Automatic speech recognition
- CEM: Certified emergency manager
- COWM: Citizen Observatories for natural hazards and Water Management
- DEM: Digital elevation model
- DP: Disaster Preparedness (coordinated actions taken to prepare for disaster, prevent them, or mitigate their impact)
- DRR: Disaster Risk Reduction (coordinated actions that aim to reduce the damage caused by natural hazards, via an ethic of prevention)
- DSM: Digital Surface Model
- DSS: Decision Support System
- DTM: Digital Terrain Model
- ECCA: European Climate Change Adaptation Conference
- ECG: Electrocardiogram (the process of recording the electrical activity of the heart, usually to check for cardiac abnormalities)
- EGU: European Geosciences Union
- EO data: Earth observation data
- GIS: geographic information system (a conceptualized framework that provides the ability to capture and analyze spatial and geographic data)
- GNSS: Global navigation satellite system
- H2020: Horizon 2020 (an EU program for research and technological development – and the funding source of XR4DRAMA)
- HCI: Human-computer interface (basically any device that lets human interact with a machine, e.g. a keyboard, a touchscreen, a dataglove)
- IA: Innovation action (a certain type of R&D project; XR4DRAMA is an IA)
- ISCRAM community: an international community of people working in the field of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management
- IFAFRI: The International Forum to Advance First Responder Innovation
- LIDAR: Light detection and ranging (also: laser imaging, detection, and ranging): a remote sensing method that uses light (a pulsed laser) to measure variable distances
- MR: Mixed reality (like AR, but with interactive virtual objects anchored in the real world)
- NLG: Natural language generation
- NLP/NLProc: Natural language processing (a subfield of computer science/artifical intelligence and linguistics that is focused on creating programs to handle and analyze large amounts of natural – i.e. human – languages.
- NLU: Natural language understanding (a subfield of NLP/NLProc that is focused on creating program to comprehend what has been collected and processed)
- OSM: Open street map (a collaborative project that is creating a free, editable geographic database of the entire world)
- POI: Point of interest
- PPE: Personal protective equipment
- R&D: Research & development
- RRM: Risk & recovery mapping
- SAR: Synthetic Aperture Radar (a type of radar used to create 2D or 3D reconstructions of landscapes and objects)
- SLAM: Simultaneous localization and mapping (the computational art of tracking an agent on a map and building/updating it at the same time)
- SVI mapping: Social vulnerability index mapping (efforts to visualize/map U.S. Census data that determines the social vulnerability of specific geographic regions)
- UAV: Unmanned aerial vehicle (i.e. a drone)
- VR: Virtual reality (a type of extended reality where users don’t see their “real environment”, but are rather fully immersed in a digital sphere)
- WWS: Wearable wellness system (a body worn system designed to monitor all kinds of
physiological parameters) - XR: Extended reality (AR + MR + VR + all other forms of immersive media)
Have we missed a term that’s important in the context of XR4DRAMA?
Send us an email: consortium@xr4drama.eu