Scientific Visualization for Earthquake Science and Simulation

Louise Kellogg, Tony Bernardin, Eric Cowgill, Oliver Kreylos, Mike Oskin, John Rundle, Donald L. Turcotte,

M. Burak YikilmazUC Davis: Geology, Computer Science, & KeckCAVES

Earthscope data Seismic Tomography model (Obrebski, et al 2010)

Scientific visualization research for natural hazards at the KeckCAVES

Virtual Reality User Interface (VRUI)

A platform-independent foundation for development of virtual reality

applications

Lidar Viewer

EarthViewer Crusta 3D

Visualizer

CAVES3D TV

Desktop Laptop

Haiti: January 12, 2010Mw 7.0

• 200,000 – 300,000 fatalities.

• Massive damage from building collapse including houses, govt. buildings, UN headquarters, airport.

Analysis of high-resolution airborne and terrestrial LIDAR after recent events

• Goal:– support rescue and recovery

first – and then to support science

• ~2.7 billion individual point measurements in (3D) space; 66.8 GB on disk

• January 21 – 27, 2010, an area of 850 km2 surveyed using airborne LiDAR at an average density of ~3.2 points/m2

• Funded by World Bank, coordinated by USGS, collected by Rochester Institute of Technology

Working with LIDAR point cloud data

Mapping the fault system

Remote mapping

• Guided field work• Gave consistent

results as found in the field

• Can improve quality and quantity of rapid scientific response

We concluded that the 2010 earthquake was a relatively small event between the 1751

and 1770 ruptures.

El Mayor-Cucapah M 7.2 April 2010

El Mayor-Cucapah M 7.2 April 2010

Credit: Mike Oskin, Ramon Arrowsmith, Alejandro Hinojosa, and Javier Gonzalez

Removing vegetation from LIDAR data

Interactive scientific visualization for rapid response

• Interactive visualization in a VR environment has the potential to completely change rapid scientific response to events

• Visualization of these very large datasets is challenging, but feasible, using octree data representation.

• Human-in-the-loop is essential to interpretation (combined with automated methods)

• Underway: change detection (time series)• Future developments: Coupling data interpretations

with simulations