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Visualizing Terrestrial and Aquatic Systems in 3D - in IEEE VisWeek 2014
Citation:
Cushing, J., N. Molnar, V. Ratanasangpunth, M. Bailey, J. Bolte, A. Brookes, D. Lach, J. Mangue, Bob Mckane, G. Orr, E. Platt, K. Schmal, S. Stafford, C. Thomas, P. Wingo, K. Winters, AND D. Witherspoon. Visualizing Terrestrial and Aquatic Systems in 3D - in IEEE VisWeek 2014. IEEE Intelligent Systems. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, , 2, (2014).
Impact/Purpose:
The EPA Western Ecology Division (EPA-WED) has been collaborating with computer scientists and social scientists to develop, test and improve VISTAS (Visualization of Terrestrial and Aquatic Systems) software that aims to both help scientists produce effective environmental science visualizations and to determine which visualizations are most helpful to their stakeholders. This is an invited paper for IEEE Intelligent Systems, a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the IEEE Computer Society and sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. The paper will be part of a special issue devoted to scientific visualization tools, techniques and technologies. Because the journal serves professionals in a broad range of scientific and technical fields, this special issue is an opportunity to widely demonstrate how EPA is using VISTAS visualization tools to analyze and communicate complex data in support of environmental decision making
Description:
The need for better visualization tools for environmental science is well documented, and the Visualization for Terrestrial and Aquatic Systems project (VISTAS) aims to both help scientists produce effective environmental science visualizations and to determine which visualizations are most helpful to scientists and their stakeholders. VISTAS is an interdisciplinary project involving computer, environmental, and social scientists. In this invited paper for IEEE Intelligent Systems Magazine, we present an overview of several VISTAS applications that are also being presented in a poster presentation for the IEEE VIS 2014 meeting in Paris, France, November 9-14, 2014 (http://ieeevis.org/). Specifically, scientists at the EPA Western Ecology Division and Oregon State University (OSU) are using VISTAS software to create spatiotemporal animations of multi-gigabyte geospatial datasets that previously have been difficult to understand scientifically and, equally important, to communicate to stakeholders and policy makers. In an iterative procedure, social scientists and computer scientists on the VISTAS team work together to interview the EPA and OSU scientists and, based on feedback about what does or does not work, they then make further improvements to the software. The process is intended to maximize VISTAS’ applicability to trans-disciplinary problems involving a variety of land managers, stakeholders and community decision-makers faced with balancing environmental, economic and social needs.