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9.3.2 The Role of Boundary Objects in Augmented Reality
Sharing the same epistemological basis is not sufficient for successful collabora-
tion across different fields of discipline, such as information officers organized in
information-units, executive police officers organized in squads, and technicians
configuring augmented realities. To increase understanding across different fields
of discipline people deploy boundary objects (Bechky 2003; Carlile 2002; Star
and Griesemer 1989). A boundary object is an artifact that has meaning across
practices and as such has the potential to improve coordination and synthesis
across heterogeneous disciplines. Building on Star (1989), Carlile (2002) distin-
guishes three types of boundary objects, i.e. repositories; standardized forms and
methods; and objects, models, and maps. Although all three play a role in aug-
menting reality, for the purpose of this chapter we elaborate on the last category,
and more specifically, on models. This category of boundary objects is fundamen-
tal in structuring augmented realities.
We define a model as a generalized abstraction of a real world phenomenon,
such as burglary, cargo theft, or drug trafficking. A phenomenon can be described
in terms of e.g. 'business' processes and supply chains, social networks, favorite
locations, and modus operandi. Such knowledge is typically distributed across dif-
ferent fields of discipline. Building a shared model aids participants to contribute
what they know about the phenomenon through experience, observations, experi-
ments, or desk studies. The model can then be used to (jointly) devise tactics,
methods and means to approach the phenomenon and to find ways in which reality
may be augmented. One such means is the application of profiles. Following Marx
and Reichman (1984:4) we define profiling as a method 'to correlate a number of
distinct data items in order to assess how close a person or event comes to a prede-
termined characterization or model of infraction'. Thus, each model may be
translated into a number of (contextualized) profiles. If these profiles are used to
augment reality, they have the potential to selectively make police officers 'in the
field' aware of ongoing criminal activity and direct their attention accordingly.
To prevent boundary objects from becoming static and detached from practice,
both models and profiles need to be subject of constant debate, stimulating the
exchange of lessons learned, the creation of new intervention strategies and tac-
tics, and the formulation of actionable hypotheses that can be tested in policing
practice.
9.3.3 Realizing the Augmented Reality Potential
For the purpose of this chapter we define reality as the real world as one conceives
it through ones natural senses, while virtuality (or artificial reality (Kruger 1991))
represents a fully (re)constructed, or synthesized world. Following Migram et al.
(1994:283) we define augmented reality as 'augmenting natural feedback to the
operator with simulated cues'. This is achieved by techniques that overlay reality
with a stream of computer-synthesized data (virtual reality) (Fritzmaurice 1993).
Although many characterizations (or indicators) of criminal phenomena can only
be uncovered through interaction, some indicators may be detectable by means of
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