EnvirVis: Workshop on Visualisation in Environmental Sciences

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https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/975

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3D Visualization of Atmospheric Data for Analytical Approaches
(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Helbig, C.; Rink, K.; Bauer, H.-S.; Wulfmeyer, V.; Frank, M.; Kolditz, O.; O. Kolditz and K. Rink and G. Scheuermann
In the future, climate change will strongly influence our environment and living conditions. Climate simulations that evaluate these changes produce huge data sets. The combination of various variables of the model with spatial data from different sources helps to identify correlations and to study key processes. We visualized results of the WRF model for two regions. For this purpose, we selected visualization methods based on specific research questions and combined these variables in a visual way. These visualizations can be displayed on a PC or in a virtual reality environment and are the basis for scientific communication for evaluating models and discussing the data of the research results.
Animation of Clouds Based on the Interpolation of Weather Forecast Data
(The Eurographics Association, 2014) Hufnagel, Roland; Held, Martin; Olaf Kolditz and Karsten Rink and Gerik Scheuermann
We present a novel algorithm for interpolating discrete cloud data of numerical weather forecasts over time. The interpolation provides a continuous natural transition of the cloud properties over time intervals of several hours. A diffusion-free advection scheme transports cloud properties through the wind field. The algorithm is designed to be embedded in a rendering loop and provides the basis for employing cloud modeling techniques for creating temporal cloud animations of the future weather.
A Data-Driven Approach to Categorize Climatic Microenvironments
(The Eurographics Association, 2016) Häb, Kathrin; Middel, Ariane; Ruddell, Benjamin L.; Hagen, Hans; Karsten Rink and Ariane Middel and Dirk Zeckzer
In urban climatology, identifying areas of similar microclimatic conditions helps to relate fine-scale urban morphology variations to their impact on atmospheric surroundings. Mobile transect measurements yield high-resolution microclimate data that allow for the delineation of these areas at a fine scale. However, the resulting spatio-temporal multivariate data is complicated and requires careful analysis and visualization to identify the emergent climatic microenvironments. Our previous work used a glyph-based visualization to comprehensively visualize spatially aggregated multivariate data from mobile measurements over diverse routes. This aggregation was conducted over a regular grid, and the utilized glyphs encoded multivariate relationships, average wind direction during data collection, number of transects traversing a grid cell, and grid cell size. In this paper, we reduce the visual complexity of the resulting map by coloring the background of the grid cells based on a comparison of the glyphs. The result is a gridded map that visually emphasizes spatial zones of similar multivariate relationships and that takes the information encoded by the glyphs into account. A preliminary evaluation shows that the described approach yields zones that line up with the physical structure of the study site.
GPU-Assisted Visual Analysis of Flood Ensemble Interaction
(The Eurographics Association, 2021) Johnson, Donald W.; Jankun-Kelly, T. J.; Dutta, Soumya and Feige, Kathrin and Rink, Karsten and Zeckzer, Dirk
Analysis of overlapping spatial data sets is a challenging problem with tension between clearly identifying individual surfaces and exploring significant overlaps/conflicts. One area where this problem occurs is when dealing multiple flood scenes that occur in an area of interest. In order to allow easier analysis of scenes with multiple overlapping data layers, we introduce a visualization system designed to aid in the analysis of such scenes. It allows the user to both see where different data sets agree, and categorize areas of disagreement based on participating surfaces in each area. The results are stable with regard to render order and GPU acceleration via OpenCL allows interaction with large datasets with preprocessing dynamically. This interactivity is further enhanced by data streaming which allows datasets too large to be loaded directly onto the GPU to be processed. After demonstrating our approach on a diverse set of ensemble datasets, we provide feedback from expert users.
An Interactive Visualization Approach to Explore Mass Variations in the Earth System
(The Eurographics Association, 2014) Rawald, Tobias; Sips, Mike; Sasgen, Ingo; Dransch, Doris; Olaf Kolditz and Karsten Rink and Gerik Scheuermann
We present an approach that supports the visual exploration of mass variations in the Earth system in space and time. In close collaboration with geo-scientists, we identified important requirements for our exploration tool. Using a combination of three-dimensional spheres, we enable them to compare the differences between simulated mass variations and the measured gravity field. Since these variations change over time, we developed a tool that allows to navigate the temporal scale. In addition, we supply a mechanism to dynamically activate/deactivate multiple components of the simulation model applied. These features enable scientists to better understand the impact of the individual processes on the measured Earth's gravity field. In this paper, we discuss in detail the geo-scientific requirements and how our tool addresses these requirements.
An Interactive Web-Based Geovisual Analytics Tool to Explore Water Scarcity in Niger River Basin
(The Eurographics Association, 2015) Lei, Ting L.; Liang, Xing; Mascaro, Giuseppe; Luo, Wei; White, Dave; Westerhoff, Paul; Maciejewski, Ross; A. Middel and K. Rink and G. H. Weber
Assessing the needs for adaptation and mitigation strategies to climate change and variability in Niger River Basin is a key for future development in Western Africa. There are two major challenges in terms of the assessment: the first is that future projections in water availability based on the historical trends are hard to assess under uncertainty, and the second is that human activities and population growth play a decisive but very uncertain role in environmental impacts. In order to address both challenges, we have developed a geovisual analytics tool for exploring simulation results under combinations of climate models, climate policies, and future population growth. Moreover, our tool is capable of ensemble-visualization and allows users to explore agreement levels among different climate models to assess future uncertainty.
An InteractiveWeb-based Doppler Wind Lidar Visualisation System
(The Eurographics Association, 2017) Jerome, Nicholas Tan; Chilingaryan, Suren; Kopmann, Andreas; Wieser, Andreas; Karsten Rink and Ariane Middel and Dirk Zeckzer and Roxana Bujack
With Doppler wind lidar producing significant amounts of data, providing means to extract relevant information from the data that describes atmospheric phenomena such as rain and low-level clouds is of vital importance. However, a Doppler wind lidar with a 10 Hz sampling rate produces large-scale of data at approximately ten million data items per day; therefore, introducing challenges in perceptual and interactive scalability. We present an interactive web-based visualisation system that provides summary displays of the heterogeneous lidar data. Our system applies the client-server paradigm, where our server extracts information and encodes primary lidar attributes into image's colour channels. Then, we load these encoded images and show lidar data in multiple forms at the client-side. In contrast to script-based tools such as Matlab and Ferret, our system allows researchers to begin analysing the extensive data using a more top-down methodological approach. In particular, we implemented features like zooming, multivariate filtering, and hourly variance heat map, in which GPU shaders filter data according to specific attributes. With the encoded images readily stored at the server, researchers can browse through the vast amounts of data interactively.
Multivariate Visualization of Oceanography Data Using Decals
(The Eurographics Association, 2017) Rocha, Allan; Silva, Julio Daniel; Alim, Usman; Sousa, Mario Costa; Karsten Rink and Ariane Middel and Dirk Zeckzer and Roxana Bujack
In this paper, we present our results on the 2016 Compute Canada Visualization Contest, which centers around the visualization of multiple oceanographic data attributes. Our goal is to help researchers better understand the correlation between these attributes by providing an integrated data visualization. To accomplish this goal, we combine decals and colormaps in a layered fashion over temperature isosurfaces extracted from an oceanography model. We describe how decals can be deformed and animated over isosurfaces to convey the sense of flow given by the ocean currents. Our visualization design focuses on addressing requirements from experts, tailored for such datasets. The results highlight the potential of our approach towards accessing the tridimensional multivariate nature of such complex data.
Simulating Urban Environments for Energy Analysis
(The Eurographics Association, 2014) Weber, Gunther H.; Johansen, Hans; Graves, Daniel T.; Ligocki, Terry J.; Olaf Kolditz and Karsten Rink and Gerik Scheuermann
We present new prototype tools for optimizing building solar energy impacts in urban regions, to enable better real-time control and policy decisions for energy supply and demand response. The concept is demonstrated with a prototype that estimates the amount of direct sunlight available to building surfaces in complex urban landscapes, taking into consideration local weather predictions (via cloud cover simulation). We also calculate partial shadows from visual obstructions, due to their effect on the availability of solar energy and building energy usage. The prototype has the potential to make better day-ahead predictions that can help balance energy supply and demand during peak load hours. This can lead to better strategies for control of heating, air conditioning and alternatives (such as local energy storage in batteries or co-generation) to offset peak energy demand. However, in addition it can be used as a statistical optimization tool for informing local policy decisions related to solar energy incentives and demand response programs. We apply the approach to a prototype calculation on models of a hypothetical city and a section of downtown San Francisco. We briefly discuss optimization opportunities in response to the variability and uncertainty in solar energy for individual buildings in an urban landscape.
Spatial Aggregation of Mobile Transect Measurements for the Identification of Climatic Microenvironments
(The Eurographics Association, 2015) Häb, Kathrin; Middel, Ariane; Ruddell, Benjamin L.; Hagen, Hans; A. Middel and K. Rink and G. H. Weber
Mobile transect measurements retrieve high-resolution observations revealing the spatial variation of atmospheric properties throughout an urban landscape. A sensor platform is moved through a study site with varying urban form, collecting a data set that can be used to investigate the multifaceted impacts of different building and landscape configurations on atmospheric properties. To generalize such findings, it is imperative to include transect runs representing different points in time and potentially different meteorological background conditions. However, the analysis of a set of mobile transect measurement runs is challenging because of the strict spatio-temporal dependence and multivariate nature of each recorded sample. In this study, we provide visual support for the identification of coherent climatic microenvironments within a study site using mobile transect measurements taken at different points in time and over diverse routes. A regular grid is used to spatially aggregate the data, and resulting summaries are classified according to similar multivariate relationships using clustering techniques. Finally, each grid cell is visualized using a radial glyph encoding cluster membership, predominant wind direction for each transect run, and the number of transect runs traversing this grid cell. The approach has been tested using a data set recorded in Gilbert, Arizona, USA, and it shows potential to identify spatially contiguous regions of similar microclimate.
Towards Visual Analytics for Multi-Sensor Analysis of Remote Sensing Archives
(The Eurographics Association, 2016) Eggert, Daniel; Sips, Mike; Köthur, Patrick; Karsten Rink and Ariane Middel and Dirk Zeckzer
To better detect and study processes on the Earth's surface, scientists want to combine various satellite data and extract potentially interesting patterns from the combined data. This analysis approach is called multi-sensor analysis. In this paper, we present an interactive visual exploration solution for the first important step of multi-sensor analysis: the assessment and selection of remote sensing scenes. This solution is the first step towards a larger Visual Analytics (VA) approach that turns multisensor analysis into a transparent and interactive analysis method. We conduct our research in the context of GeoMultiSens, which is an interdisciplinary research project between remote sensing, computer science and VA experts. To demonstrate the utility of our visual exploration solution, we use a real-world scenario: the assessment and selection of scenes in order to study the change of forest cover in Europe. The application example indicates that interactive visual exploration facilitates a structured assessment of the quantity and quality of remote sensing scenes and enables scientists to exclude low-quality scenes from subsequent multi-sensor analysis.
VafusQ: A Visual Analytics Application with Data Quality Features to Support the Urban Planning Process
(The Eurographics Association, 2015) Triana, John A.; Zeckzer, Dirk; Hernandez, Jose T.; Hagen, Hans; A. Middel and K. Rink and G. H. Weber
Fast changing urban systems pose huge challenges for planners and governments. One major challenge is to provide optimized facilities systems fulfilling all the basic citizen needs such as food, education, security, and health. To provide these, the deficit of the complete system needs to be analyzed and quantified. An additional, important problem is the quality of the underlying data influencing the analysis. Often, the data is, e.g., incomplete, not accurate, or not reliable. The goal of this paper is to support the analysis of the deficit for the facilities system of Bogotá by taking into account data quality issues. Our contributions are: the inclusion of data quality in the urban planning process, the design of a novel visualization technique to represent data quality, the implementation of an application to support the analysis of the facilities system, and a case study with experts assessing the usability and usefulness of the application. As a conclusion, the experts find the application useful for the analysis tasks and the inclusion of data quality features important and comprehensible.
Visual Analysis of Reservoir Simulation Ensembles
(The Eurographics Association, 2016) Höllt, Thomas; Ravanelli, Fabio Miguel de Matos; Hadwiger, Markus; Hoteit, Ibrahim; Karsten Rink and Ariane Middel and Dirk Zeckzer
Hydrocarbon reservoir simulation models produce large amounts of heterogeneous data, combining multiple variables of different dimensionality, such as two or three-dimensional geospatial estimates with abstract estimates simulated for the complete field or different wells. In addition these simulations are nowadays often run as so-called ensemble simulations, to capture uncertainty of the model, as well as boundary conditions as variation in the output. The (visual) analysis of such data is a challenging process, due to the size and complexity of the data. In this paper we present an integrated system for the visual analysis of ensemble reservoir simulation data. We provide tools to inspect forecasts for multiple variables of complete fields, as well as different wells. Finally, we present a case study highlighting the effectiveness of the presented system.
Visual Characterisation of Temporal Occupancy for Movement Ecology
(The Eurographics Association, 2017) Slingsby, Aidan; Loon, Emiel van; Karsten Rink and Ariane Middel and Dirk Zeckzer and Roxana Bujack
Movement ecologists study aspects of animals' movement, behaviour, and the factors that might drive these. Temporal patterns of local occupancy often reveal the type of usage at a location. We present and apply temporal tile-maps that embed temporal visual encodings into cartographic representations, and do so in an interactive visual analysis context. This reveals spatial variation in temporal occupancy that allows places to be identified and distinguished according to their use by animals. We apply these to GPS data from tracking gulls and illustrate the application to movement ecology. The tool that implements this and data are available to download and use.
Visualizing Malaria Spread Under Climate Variability
(The Eurographics Association, 2016) Liang, Xing; Aggarwal, Rajat; Cherif, Alhaji; Gumel, Abba; Mascaro, Giuseppe; Maciejewski, Ross; Karsten Rink and Ariane Middel and Dirk Zeckzer
In order to better control and prevent the infectious diseases, measures of vulnerability and risk to increased infectious disease outbreaks have been explored. Research investigating possible links between variations in climate and transmission of infectious diseases has led to a variety of predictive models for estimating the future impact of infectious disease under projected climate change. Underlying all of these approaches is the connection of multiple data sources and the need for computational models that can capture the spatio-temporal dynamics of emerging infectious diseases and climate variability, especially as the impact of climate variability on the land surface is becoming increasingly critical in predicting the geo-temporal evolution of infectious disease outbreaks. This paper presents an initial visualization prototype that combines data from population and climate simulations as inputs to a patch-based mosquito spread model for analyzing potential disease spread vectors and their relationship to climate variability.
Web-Based Visualization of the Global Change Assessment Model
(The Eurographics Association, 2015) Luo, Wei; Chang, Zheng; Kong, Lilian; Link, Robert; Hejazi, Mohamad; Clarke, Leon; Maciejewski, Ross; A. Middel and K. Rink and G. H. Weber
The Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) is an integrated assessment tool for exploring consequences and responses to global change. However, the current iteration of GCAM relies on NetCDF file outputs which need to be output from the model and then exported for visualization and analysis purposes. Such a requirement limits the uptake of this modeling platform for analysts that may wish to explore future scenarios. In this work, we present a web-based geovisual analytics interface for GCAM. Challenges of this work include enabling both domain expert and model experts to be able to functionally explore the model. We explore the use of various aggregation layers, coordinated views and how choices of icons can enhance the understanding of the underlying data. Our primary focus is on understanding the simulated impact of climate change on sectors of the global economy. To demonstrate our work, we present a case study which explores the potential impact that the China south-north water transportation project in the Yangtze River basin will have on projected water demands.

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