NASA Web WorldWind Multidimension Visualization Tool GSoC 2016

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Introduction

The idea behind this project is to create an application using Nasa Web World Wind to show metadata about environmental variables in more than three dimensions. The model I'd like to implement to present 3D data is a Voxel model. Each voxel has three dimensions that will be possible to customize with the interested metadata, but also more information can be shown thanks to Web World Wind capabilities. Coloring each Voxel might present another metadata and additionally creating an animation in time gives the opportunity to introduce a further variable. Users will be able to interact with the visualization, customizing the metadata on the Voxel and filtering data according to specific settings. As input data, I am considering telecommunication data from "Telecom Italia Big Data Challenge 2015". My idea is to create first the visualization environment and further import the data in a database to allow users to query the database for particular data. Moreover, depending on the time also would be interesting to allow users to import their data set in a specific format to share the view on a specific globe with other people.

Schedule

Timeline TODO Status
23 - 31 May 2016
  • Voxel model implementation in Nasa WebWorldWind.
Done
1 – 10 June 2016
  • Sample grid and data importing
Done
11 - 17 June 2016
  • Sample visualization on voxel
  • Multi dimensions on a single voxel
Done
18 – 25 June 2016
  • Matching voxels with real data.
  • Creating the first filtering functionalities
Done
26 June - 2 July 2016
  • Advanced filtering functionalities
Done
3 - 17 July 2016
  • Time slider (4th dimension) implementation.
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18 – 31 July 2016
  • Sample database implementation
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1 – 15 August 2016
  • Importing of diverse datasets.
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16 – 23 August 2016
  • User interface implementation
  • Testing and documentation
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We will try to follow the schedule and report the status of the project each week.

Weekly Reports

Week 1

  1. What did you get done this week?
    This week I started working on the voxel model in NASA Web WorldWind and tried the best way to visualize the model.
    I set up also the coding environment, as well as the testing one
    I started also working on the grid importing.

  2. What do you plan on doing next week?
    Next week I will work on importing some data and on the visualization of them using the voxel model I created.

  3. Are you blocked on anything?
    Currently, I am not blocked on anything, although I had several difficulties on setting some environments, I solved that thanks to my tutor, Jakub, who helped me to solve my problems.

Week 2

  1. What did you get done this week?
    This week I’ve been working on the implementation of the voxel model, visualizing it into a grid. I imported the grid from a dataset and associated the voxels to the grid entries.
    I managed to show many voxels in the same time and interact with them from the interface.

  2. What do you plan on doing next week?
    Next Week I will work on the filtering functionalities to filter many voxels on the globe thanks to several options.

  3. Are you blocked on anything?
    Currently I’m not blocked on anything, and my Tutor helped me to solve all my problems that I was facing. I had some issues about using the testing environment Karma, but I succeeded to implement it correctly.

Week 3

  1. What did you get done this week?
    This week I created some filter functionalities based on the latitude and longitude to show only some portion of voxels.
    I also started working on the altitude filter to reduce the layers of visible doxels when visualizing more than one.

  2. What do you plan on doing next week?
    Next Week I will continue working on the filtering for altitude and values.

  3. Are you blocked on anything?
    I'm not blocked but I had several difficulties to let the filters work together and to obtain good performances when using them. Luckily I managed to solve all my problems during the week.

Week 4

  1. What did you get done this week?
    This week I finished all the filters for the voxels.
    I worked also on a first implementation of the slider to navigate through the time

  2. What do you plan on doing next week?
    Next Week I will finish the time slider and let it work with all the filters. Maybe I will try to import other kinds of data in the application.

  3. Are you blocked on anything?
    Right now I am not blocked on anything

State of the art before this project

Currently, there are no 4D visualization tools using voxel models relying on pure javascript application like Nasa Web World Wind, although some examples are available for other platforms.

Additions that this project will bring to the software

With the application I will create, many users would be able to reuse the code adapting it to other projects for their needs. Since the application consists in many subparts, many demos can be created to be shown the usage of some tools on the Web World Wind Examples page in the website.

Public Repository & Testing

The application is available in GitHub at EST-WA JavaScript , it runs on every modern browser. To try the application is necessary to:

  1. Download all the files
  2. Open the index.html
  3. Select Load Configuration to load the basic configuration
  4. Set all the settings required and press Start


Student's Biography

My name is Gabriele Prestifilippo, and I am currently a student in the M.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. I am interested in the Information Technology field applied to the geomatic and environmental one. I am now working in the GSoC and my mentors are: from Patrick Hogan, project manager of the NASA World Wind project, and Jakub Balhar, software Engineer at Gisat. Besides the GSoC, I am helping the team of NASA Web WorldWind, along with ESA and Thales to test and develop the Web WorldWind framework.