Web-Scale Multidimensional Visualization of Big Spatial Data to Support Earth Sciences—A Case Study with Visualizing Climate Simulation Data

Abstract

Abstract:The world is undergoing rapid changes in its climate, environment, and ecosystems due to increasing population growth, urbanization, and industrialization. Numerical simulation is becoming an important vehicle to enhance the understanding of these changes and their impacts, with regional and global simulation models producing vast amounts of data. Comprehending these multidimensional data and fostering collaborative scientific discovery requires the development of new visualization techniques. In this paper, we present a cyberinfrastructure solution-PolarGlobe-that enables comprehensive analysis and collaboration. PolarGlobe is implemented upon an emerging web graphics library, WebGL, and an open source virtual globe system Cesium, which has the ability to map spatial data onto a virtual Earth. We have also integrated volume rendering techniques, value and spatial filters, and vertical profile visualization to improve rendered images and support a comprehensive exploration of multi-dimensional spatial data. In this study, the climate simulation dataset produced by the extended polar version of the well-known Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) is used to test the proposed techniques. PolarGlobe is also easily extendable to enable data visualization for other Earth Science domains, such as oceanography, weather, or geology.

Dynamic Online 3D Visualization Framework for Real-Time Energy Simulation Based on 3D Tiles

“…. , 25,24]" to present the electricity consumption during a period such as one week or month. Then we can access the ith value by "${electricity_requirement [i]}", and update the style accordingly.…”

“…To further facility the web 3D visualization, frameworks such as Threejs, X3DOM, and Cesium are developed to provide a javascript based APIs for user to create and modify 3D scenes without knowing the underside rendering details. Threejs, X3DOM and Cesium have been applied for visualizing energy modeling results [22,23] or climate changes [24]. Compared with Threejs and X3DOM, Cesium supports the geospatial naturally.…”

Three-dimensional Visualization of Particulate Matter Data Focused on Metropolitan and Gangnam Station Areas in South Korea

“…In other countries, Zhang et al (2019) (9) proposed a method of effectively forecasting convective rainstorms as a function of the altitude using a continuous 3D grid network and deep-learning technology. Wang et al (2017) (10) proposed an effective Web-based analysis method for information visualization using a 3D spatial grid in the Earth science field. They distinguished grids from the highest level to the lowest level according to the level of detail using an octree-based partitioning method.…”