The Scottish Highlands & Islands project is a 3 year research project by the MIT SENSEable City Lab in collaboration with the Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE). Within this framework, Lochaber Live is a short-term project in the context of a workshop which explores real time technologies, software platforms and mediated environments to investigate the flow of tourists, activities and resources in the Scottish Highlands to better understand urban dynamics in real time and to foresee possible synergy in exchanging real-time information. By revealing the pulse of the Highlands, the project aims to show how technology can help tourists, local institutions, individuals and the planning institutions to make more informed decisions about their environment with a special emphasis on the circulation of information using new integrated media in rural areas. In the long run, the project seeks to implement sustainable technologies that can act as self-sufficient networks implemented in rural areas to e.g. manage tourist resources, climate data, accommodation etc.

Team
Carlo Ratti, Assaf Biderman, Yaniv Ophir (Junno), Bo Stjerne Thomsen

Students
Mingxi Li, Rebecca Waber, Aydin Oztoprak, Andrew Trueblood, Wen Dong

Research Advisors
William Mitchell, Dennis Frenchman

Highlands & Islands Enterprise
Laura Dingwall, Stephanie Anderson, Morven Cameron, Charlotte Wright