Visual inspection for data integration and model veri cation : aGIS approach

This article will present the reader with questions concerning data integration, numerical modeling and visualization, in general and in particular related to a environment simulation project. It will also present the reader with a new way of using GIS, called "visual inspection". When dealing with data from diverse sources, one needs to ask: "To what extent are GIS able to integrate diierent data types without losing important information". This will of course, depend upon one's deenition of integration. Furthermore, the role of GIS connected to numerical simulation projects has not been well established. Can GIS be a contributor to an environmental simulation project? Numerical model data are dynamic; are they too dynamic for a GIS? GIS has strong "map" presentation capabilities built on traditional "map" views. The question remains , when combining diierent data types (including model results), is this a satisfactory and suucient basis for using a GIS? Does this provide adequate exibility for visual inspection. What is "visual in-spection"? At Nansen Environmental and Remote Center (NERSC), Norway a project has been started to investigate the fate of radioactive materials in the Kara Sea, Russia. This work is based on a combined ice/ocean model. As these ocean models and their input data are run on computers, new observations are made and in many cases, diier from the published climatologies. These new observations are made by satellite (AVHRR,SAR,SSM/I), moored and drifting buoys (CTD), from ships, and so on. How can these new observation and their data types be integrated together with the climatologies, or be available in such a way that they can innuence on the simulation results? A model can never predict the real world to the full extent. It has to be continuously calibrated to give a better representation of the reality. This article describes a new way to use GIS, as a visual tool for information comparison and model calibrating, called "visual inspection". What is meant by data integration? There exist a lot of diierent and contradictory views concerning this issue. Is data integration the ability to covert all the data into the same data-model before feeding them into a database? Or is it data integration combining of the diierent data structures/types in their original form (no conversion)? The scientists at NERSC are often analyzing raw images and data from the observation sources. In addition, they sometimes want to return to "older" data sources for further analysis. …