Maison des Sciences Humaines
11, Porte des Sciences
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval
Salle de conférence (1st floor)
seminars@liser.lu
Abstract
Studies that seek to analyze the impact of momentary environmental exposures on wellbeing, subjective experiences and people’s attitudes require high tempo-spatial resolution information about human mobility and behavior. Such studies commonly rely on one of two strategies: (1) using observational studies in which participants’ behavior is accurately recorded in the real-world using questionnaires, sensors and location tracking technologies. (2) employing lab experiments in which participants are exposed to an artificial virtual environment using visual techniques such as still images, movies and immersive technologies. This lecture will focus on the latter approach of virtual environments that is considered to have high internal validity but to suffer from low external validity. First, the advantages and disadvantages of using virtual environments will be discussed. Second, the potential of immersive virtual environments, including virtual reality and augmented reality technologies will be presented. These technologies make lab experiments more engaging and interactive and in general more realistic. Hence, they are expected to increase the external validity of experiments. The implementation of virtual technologies will be presented in several different contexts including for studying the effect of environments on walking, cycling, voting decisions, and for exploring people’s attitudes toward the environment.
Biography
Dr. Amit Birenboim is a senior lecturer (assistant professor) at the department of geography and the Center for Urban Innovation at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and head of the the Urban Vitality Lab. Between the years 2018-2021 he served as a senior lecturer at the Department of Geography and Human Environment at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Birenboim’s research focuses on timely topics that are related to human spatial behavior in various contexts such as health, mobility and transportation, technological impact, leisure and tourism. In his studies he develops and implements state-of-the-art tools that allow accurate measurements of human-environment interactions. These tools include portable sensors, location tracking technologies, virtual and augmented reality.
