Visualizing multiple variables in a global ocean model

The inaugural Visualize This! Challenge received 125 expressions of interest from researchers across Canada and the United States. Participants had 31 days to create a visualization solution for an oceanography model contributed by an Earth Sciences researcher. The main challenge in the data was to visualize multiple 3D variables at the same time.

A University of Calgary (UofC) research team comprised of Allan Rocha, Usman Alim and Julio Daniel Silva has won first prize for their creative approach to using layering, animation, and elements of interactivity in their submission. A video of their submission can be viewed below:

^{(Or click here to watch this video directly on Vimeo.)}

“We started this project with a dream of being able to create layered visualizations on arbitrary surfaces to visualize multiple attributes, such as we can see commonly in 2D,” said Rocha, at the time a PhD Candidate and member of the Visualization and Graphics Group (VISAGG) and the Interactive Modeling, Visualization and Visual Analytics Research Group at the UofC. “These visualizations are inspired by concepts of painting and other aspects from art and information visualization. From this thinking process, the decal-maps emerged.”