Layered earth inversion visual toolkit: a scientific visualisation case study

  • Authors:
  • Andrew Donohoo;Debbie Richards

  • Affiliations:
  • Maritime Operations Division, Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO), P.O. Box 44 Pyrmont, NSW 2009, Australia;Department of Computing, Division of ICS, Macquarie University, North Ryde, Australia

  • Venue:
  • VIP '01 Proceedings of the Pan-Sydney area workshop on Visual information processing - Volume 11
  • Year:
  • 2001

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Visualisation Systems are in general designed to maximise the cognitive ability of system users particularly when exposed to large sets of otherwise difficult to comprehend data, by appealing to various strengths of the human perceptual system in processing visual information. Scientific Visualisation in particular aims to present physical data in ways that facilitate the discovery and/or understanding of deterministic mechanisms or underlying cause and effect of the physical system described by the data.This report examines the development of a Scientific Visualisation tool, which has been developed for use in conjunction with existing specialist numerical modelling software. The modelling software is typically used in an iterative fashion, with successive user specified inputs dependent on analysis of prior output. The newly developed visual tool, developed for use with Windows operating system using Borland Delphi and an object- oriented paradigm, overcomes the lack of input/output visualisation capability of the modelling software. By using the visual tool, input states can be controlled quickly and interactively through direct graphical means. The program runs the model software as a separate background process, and automatically displays model output in an interactive display. Model output consists of many thousands of data values that can be viewed simultaneously by the visual tool as a two-dimensional coloured contour. The system has been specifically designed to handle layered earth inversion data but interactive visualisation would be beneficial to other scientific applications.