VizWorld.com

Power outages are a standard part of natural disasters, be it earthquakes, hurricanes, or just accidental outages.  New technology called “VERDE”, which stands for Visualizing Energy Resources Dynamically on Earth, merges information from dozens of electrical utility companies into a Google Earth mashup.  The result is a realtime dashboard of the US power grid status.

The visualization program was built after the major Northeast blackout in August 2003, when emergency operations centers got their information secondhand from a panel of eight television screens—one for each major network. “Nobody even knew what was going on the next utility over,” says Budhendra Bhaduri, leader of the Geographic Information Science and Technology group at Oak Ridge, which develops data-mining-based information systems.

via Grid Visualization Efforts Helped Heal After Hurricane – IEEE Spectrum.

Graphics google earth, ornl, power

Another year, another Icelandic Volcano eruption.  This one, the Grimsvotn Volcano, can now be explored interactively via a neat new Google Earth visualization from Adam Burt.

Not only is it a great visualization, but it has a few extra dimensions that you wouldn’t expect; elevation and time. You can fly through the visualization to see how the ash spreads differently at different elevations, and you can also animate the entire cloud to see it in motion.

Hit their site to download the KMZ and check it out for yourself.

via Excellent visualization of Grimsvotn’s ash cloud | Google Earth Blog.

Science google earth, volcano

A group called ‘OpenEarth’ is pitching the idea of using Google Earth as a visualization platform for climate and watershed models by creating open-source tools and models to convert your simulation results into Google Earth’s KML format.

OpenEarth is the open source initiative to archive, host and disseminate Data, Models and Tools for marine & coastal scientist and engineers. It aims to remedy the above-described inefficiencies by providing a project-superseding approach.

I’ve personally seen this trend growing as several researchers I know have begun integrating KML as a native simulation output, and creating web-portals and the like to allow live in-situ visualization of running simulations via Google Earth.  The possibilities are huge, if only they can overcome the problems with the high poly counts and large simulation sizes.

via OpenEarth – OpenEarth – Deltares Wiki.

Science google earth, visualization

Google has just rolled out a new feature for Google Maps users that appeals specifically to fans (And users) of Google Earth.  Now in the upper right next to the usual “Maps” and “Satellite” views, there is an “Earth” view button that loads in the 3D terrain data and any available buildings to render it all in 3D glory.  It does require installation of the Google Earth Plugin (an external download that requires administrative priveledges, doh) but the results support all the features you’ve come to love of Maps and Earth.

So if you’re one of the hundreds of millions of people who use Maps worldwide, you can now explore the world in luxuriantly-detailed, data-rich 3D imagery and terrain from Google Earth. If you’ve already downloaded the Google Earth Plugin, you should be able to see Earth view in Maps right away. Otherwise, you can just install the Plugin to enjoy a Maps experience that includes angled Earth views, 3D buildings, smooth panning and zooming and a great introductory showcase of places to visit and things to see.

via Official Google Blog: Earthly pleasures come to Maps.

Science gis, google, google earth

Sufferers of March Madness may be able to temporarily alleviate their symptoms by firing up Google Earth and checkout out the newly added Sketchup models of 14 of the arenas.

Here at the SketchUp office, we gathered 14 models of the arenas and added them to a Featured Collection. These models are located all over the country, and largely created by users like you. Especially cool is the model of the Energy Solutions Arena in Salt Lake City, where you can fly inside and see the interior of the model! Both the Edward Jones Dome and the HSBC Arena are great examples of high quality photo-texturing, and the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis was created using Google Building Maker.

via Official Google SketchUp Blog: Tour the March Madness arenas in 3D.

Graphics google, google earth, sketchup

Today is the Ides of March, and in commemoration of this famous day I thought it only fitting to report something related to visualizing Rome’s great cities.    Since 1997, researchers at the University of Virginia, UCLA, Politecnico di Milano, and several others have been reconstructing the great city of Rome from way back in A.D. 320.  They’ve modeled the city buildings, aqueducts, bridges, and more with amazing detail based on a wide variety of input sources.

The digital model reflects the sources of our knowledge about ancient Rome. These are, broadly speaking, of two kinds: (1) archaeological data about specific sites and features (“Class I”); and (2) quantitative data about the distribution of building types throughout the fourteen regions (or wards) of the city (“Class II”). Features in Class I are known from archaeological excavations and studies; coins; inscriptions; ancient literary sources; and artists’ views from the Renaissance until the nineteenth century. Buildings in Class II are known from two regionary catalogues (the Curiosum and the Notitia) dating to the fourth century A.D.

Their models are now available in Google Earth, and they are up to “Rome 2.0″ which includes work from industry sources.

Rome Reborn 2.0 was jointly created by IATH, Procedural, and mental images in 2008. It runs on a 16-core Sun server.

Version 2.0 uses the 32 hand-made Class I models created at UCLA and Bordeaux and converted by IBM and IATH to 3D Studio Max format.

It completely replaces the Class II models derived from the physical model with procedural models created with the CityEngine software of Procedural using archaeological research undertaken by the Université de Caen and by IATH.

Thus, version 2.0 is greatly improved with respect to geometric detail. In versions 1.0 and 1.1, the detailing of Class II features (windows, doors, balconies, colonnades, porticoes, etc.) was provided by textures. In version 2.0, the features have been fully modeled, unlike versions 1.0 and 1.1 (which run only on a workstation), thanks to Mental Image’s RealityServer software it can be used on the Internet.

So fire up your browsers and go check it out, without worrying about Brutus sneaking up behind you.

via Rome Reborn.

Science architecture, google earth, history

A Google Earth KML overlay is available which contains GeoEye-1 satellite imagery captured on January 13th, the day after the magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit and caused severe destruction to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti and surrounding areas.  The New York Times has created a very useful interactive map from this data, allowing the user to move a slider between before and after images of the capital city.  Jonathon Crowe of The Map Room blog says that he has “never seen such innovative uses of a slider control outside [the New York Times's] online maps.”  The Map Room is also a great place to get geospatial updates on this awful earthquake, apart from the interesting, unique maps showcased there almost daily.

This is a technology blog and we live in tough economic times, but I encourage our readers to donate what they can to Haiti.  To maximize your money’s benefit to people on the ground, please check your chosen charity’s  financial health using Charity Navigator before you give.  Vive Haiti.

Science geospatial, google earth, haiti, maps

Researchers at Georgia Tech have modified Google Earth to integrate information obtained through automatic analysis of video camera footage, creating a somewhat real-time Google Earth showing the locations of cars and people.

They use motion capture data to help their animated humans move realistically, and were able to extrapolate cars’ motion throughout an entire stretch of road from just a few spotty camera angles.

From their video of an augmented virtual Earth, you can see if the pickup soccer game in the park is short a player, how traffic is on the highway, and how fast the wind is blowing the clouds across the sky.

Their work will be presented as a paper at the upcoming IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality next month, but you can read a draft PDF here.  See  a video demonstration after the break.

via Augmented Google Earth Gets Real-Time People, Cars, Clouds | Popular Science.

Read more…

Science google, google earth, imageprocessing, realtime

Photon Inc has published a preliminary look at their “Tuvalu Visualization PRoject”.  Tuvalu is in danger of sinking into the ocean as water levels rise from global warming, however it has proven difficult to collect information about the people and scenery of Tuvalu.

The purpose of project is to disclose actual information about ”People” and ”Scenery” in Tuvalu to the world. It is said that Tuvalu is exposed to danger of going under water by sea level rising because of global warming. However, we suppose that it is important to understand not only the problem of global warming, but also the real situation of Tuvalu. The Internet is an effective tool for collecting information, but it was difficult to obtain information of the real situation of Tuvalu from the Internet. Therefore, we produced this project to present the real situation of Tuvalu, to improve the interest in Tuvalu, and to receive feedback from all over the world.

The full project is expected to be published next month (September).

via 株式会社フォトン｜Photon,Inc. » Tuvalu Visualization Project.

Science google earth, mashup, tuvalu

Google is pushing awareness of the World Oceans Day with a suite of visualizations of various data regarding the world’s oceans, within Google Earth.

World Oceans Day offers the opportunity to celebrate the wonders of the underwater world and look carefully at our interactions with the sea. An increasing number of people are moving to the coasts, but for many of them what goes on beneath the surface is still a mystery. As a result the ocean is often left out of sight, out of mind. To counter that, here’s a sample of different ways to visualize the wet portion of our planet.

See the list of visualizations on the website.  Google Earth Browser Plugin required.

via World Oceans Day.

Science geospatial, google, google earth