Visualization Environment for Flooding Simulation

Focusing on 2-D (2.5D) dimensional geographical phenomena, traditional commercial GISs have limited capability of dealing with 3-D and 4-D environmental data and models. This paper explores the application of real-time,interactive visualization to flood model simulation. The tight integration approach of data, flood model algorithms, computation and visulization is employed in Geovision, a spatiotemporal visualization environment designed and developed by our group with Visual C++ and OpenGL. Users can use Geovision to visually interact and experiment with flood model computation through process steering technique, as well as to develop further flood-related decision support applications based on 3-D realistic graphical representation of flooding process. A case study of the Gaohu flood diversion area in the Puyang River, Zhejiang Province, China is presented.