project-proposal-2024

Cyber Oasis

Abstract

Cyber Oasis is an innovative platform designed to encourage and facilitate public participation in urban greening and environmental conservation activities. By utilizing augmented reality technology and a community participation mechanism, the platform allows users to “plant” trees and vegetation on a virtual map, correlating with real-world greening projects. Incorporating gamified elements and environmental education, Cyber Oasis not only aims to improve the urban ecological environment but also to enhance citizens’ awareness of environmental issues.

Author

Name: Peiyan DAI

Student number: 48237536

Functionality

Cyber Oasis is designed with the following enhanced functionalities to engage users in environmental conservation efforts effectively:

• Virtual Greening & AR Display:
  • Utilizes ARKit and ARCore frameworks to allow users to plant trees and vegetation in a virtual city map.
  • Each virtual planting action corresponds to real-world greening activities, promoting tangible environmental benefits.
  • Augmented Reality technology provides a live overlay of the planted vegetation at specific locations when viewed through a smartphone camera, creating a bridge between the virtual and real-world environment.
• Environmental Tasks and Challenges:
  • The platform collaborates with local governments and environmental organizations to release verified environmental tasks.
  • Tasks include participating in local tree planting events, community clean-ups, and other sustainability initiatives.
  • Completing these tasks rewards users with virtual incentives, encouraging ongoing engagement and promoting real-world environmental impact.
• Community Interaction & Environmental Education:
  • A dedicated forum allows users to share eco-friendly tips, discuss environmental topics, and highlight upcoming environmental events, fostering a sense of community and shared purpose.
  • The platform offers a wide range of environmental education resources, such as short videos on sustainability topics, informative articles, and interactive courses designed to increase users’ environmental awareness and knowledge.
• Progress Tracking and Rewards:
  • An integrated tracking system monitors users’ participation in environmental tasks and their virtual greening efforts.
  • Progress is rewarded not just through virtual incentives but also by highlighting the collective impact of the community’s actions on the local environment, further motivating users to participate.
• Personalized Environmental Impact Dashboard:
  • Users receive access to a personalized dashboard that tracks and displays their individual and collective environmental contributions.
  • The dashboard showcases the number of trees planted, trash collected, and overall carbon footprint reduction, offering users a tangible sense of their positive impact on the environment.

Scope

The Minimum Viable Product will implement:

• Basic virtual greening functionality and simple AR experiences.
• The mechanism for publishing and tracking environmental tasks.
• An initial framework for the community discussion board and environmental education content.

Quality Attributes

• User Experience: An intuitive and easy-to-use application interface, a smooth AR experience, and an immersive environmental participation feeling.
• Scalability: Cloud infrastructure and microservices architecture support the expansion of platform functionality and user base.
• Security: Protect user data and ensure a healthy and secure community communication environment.
• Sustainability: Close integration of virtual activities with real-world environmental actions, encouraging long-term user participation.

Supplemental Technical Details

• GIS Technology: Leveraging Google Maps API for precise geolocation, enabling accurate virtual planting.
• Servers and Load: AWS EC2 provides computational resources, with ELB automatically distributing traffic. Initially supporting hundreds of requests per second, scaling horizontally as needed.
• Database: Amazon DynamoDB stores user information and virtual vegetation data, supporting high concurrent access.
• Security Measures: HTTPS for encrypted communications, Amazon Cognito for user authentication, with regular AWS Security Audits to ensure data security.

Evaluation

To ensure that Cyber Oasis achieves its intended goals and delivers on its key quality attributes, a comprehensive evaluation strategy will be implemented, encompassing the following aspects:

User Experience Evaluation:

• Usability Testing: Conduct detailed usability tests with diverse user groups to identify intuitive aspects of the interface and areas needing improvement. This includes testing the ease of virtual planting, interaction with the AR environment, and navigation of the educational content.
• AR Experience Smoothness: Utilize specialized tools to measure the frame rate and response time of the AR view under various device conditions, ensuring a seamless and immersive experience for all users.
• Feedback Collection: Implement an in-app feedback mechanism to gather user opinions on usability, AR experiences, and overall satisfaction with the platform, encouraging ongoing dialogue between users and developers.

Scalability Evaluation:

• Load Testing: Simulate increased user loads and data requests using tools like Apache JMeter to understand how the system behaves under stress and identify bottlenecks in the infrastructure.
• Cloud Resource Utilization: Monitor cloud resources in real-time using AWS CloudWatch or Google Cloud Monitoring, analyzing usage patterns and scaling behaviors to ensure the platform can adapt to growing demands without degradation in performance.

Security Evaluation:

• Vulnerability Scans and Penetration Testing: Regularly perform comprehensive security assessments, including automated scans and expert-led penetration testing, to identify and remediate potential vulnerabilities, ensuring user data and interactions remain secure.
• Compliance Checks: Verify that data handling and privacy practices comply with relevant regulations, conducting audits to ensure ongoing adherence to these standards.

Sustainability Evaluation:

• Impact Tracking: Develop a dashboard to track the real-world impact of virtual planting activities, including the number of trees planted, areas cleaned, and overall contribution to local greening projects, providing transparent reporting to users and stakeholders.
• User Engagement and Retention Metrics: Analyze user engagement through metrics such as daily active users, task completion rates, and long-term retention, using this data to refine tasks and challenges to maximize ongoing participation.
• Community Growth and Interaction: Measure the growth and vibrancy of the community forum, assessing the volume of posts, user interactions, and the diversity of discussion topics, to gauge the platform’s effectiveness in fostering a supportive and active environmental community.