THE PROBLEM
In Corvallis, Oregon, animated movies of one of the world's greatest
natural wonders, the Pacific Ocean, are being made. However, researchers
rather than entertainers are making the movies. At Oregon State
University's College of Oceanography, the researchers are working
on a project that observes and models the ocean's dynamics.
"We are interested in producing accurate animations of several
of our data sets, such as sea-surface temperature patterns, wind
stress and currents," said Brett Barksdale, an Oregon State
researcher who works for Dr. Mark Abbott. "We want to develop
something that shows how these things interact together at certain
times and places."
From space, a satellite provides the researchers with enormous
amounts of information every time it completes an orbit. Barksdale
and his team benefits from having all of this information, but found
the "sifting through" process hindered their work, and
it was difficult to take many megabytes of data and present them
in a compact and understandable manner.
THE SOLUTION
In order to effectively analyze the large satellite data sets, Barksdale’s
team turned to Visual Numerics’ visual data analysis package,
PV-WAVE, for help.
"One of PV-WAVE's most underrated features is its I/O routines.
They are efficient, simple to learn and make it easy to handle just
about any data format," Barksdale said. "This was essential
for us as we used PV-WAVE to quickly load in and sort through large
amounts of data."
The real analysis begins once PV-WAVE loads the large amounts of
satellite-gathered data into the system. Through PV-WAVE's advanced
display capabilities, researchers receive a quick analysis of their
areas
of interest. Images, specifically those taken nearby in time, are
then animated with PV-WAVE. This allows a quick and effective look
at how the overall system evolves.
When a sizable number of useful images are found, they are set-aside
in a custom PV-WAVE save file. This allows PV-WAVE's built-in functions
and procedures to break down the time series of images into their
principal components.
These components can be used to recreate an approximation of the
system at any given state of time -- not just when the raw satellite
images were taken. This is crucial for producing an animation of
the system, in time, in which each of the movie's frames is evenly
spaced.
While this is done, other researchers are using PV-WAVE to view
different data sets that pertain to the area under observation within
the satellite images. Some of these data sets might be wind stress
measurements over the ocean or the location of surface drifters
released into the sea at the start of the observation.
PV-WAVE's display capabilities allow the easy overlaying of these
data sets onto the reconstructed satellite images. Once created,
these combined frames are saved in a PV-WAVE save file for playback
at the researcher's convenience.
Analyzing this complex data as a movie, the researcher can view
the evolution over time -- thus seeing how the surface drifters
follow certain patterns within the ocean (satellite) images or how
the ocean responds to wind stress or any number of variable relationships.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
"PV-WAVE is a major tool in our production," Barksdale
said. "Everything that ends up in our animation videos has
been loaded, viewed, poked, prodded and tweaked in PV-WAVE until
we were satisfied with it. PV-WAVE definitely makes our work a lot
easier."
WORLD CLASS PRODUCTS, SERVICES,
AND SUPPORT
Visual Numerics has provided technical software
solutions for numerical analysis and visualization for over 30 years.
The company's software products help users understand complex data
from a variety of sources and build business-critical applications.
Visual Numerics offers two product lines: the IMSL® Numerical
Libraries for powerful mathematical and statistical analysis and
the PV-WAVE® visual data analysis development environment. Visual
Numerics also offers customized consulting services for applications
that involve mathematical, statistical, or visual data analysis
to meet today’s business analytical needs.
