Visualizing Uncertainty In Environmental Work-flows And Sensor Streams

Environmental data and models are uncertain by nature. The lack of knowledge about, for example, the magnitude of potential measurement errors may lead to unforeseen consequences. This makes it difficult to assess the data’s or model’s usefulness for critical applications. We present an approach for the visualization of uncertainty coming from in-situ environmental sensors. The visualization component is part of a Web-enabled environmental modelling platform which also supports the specification of processing workflows. The concept of uncertainty and means for its encoding as part of the environmental data are introduced. The individual components in the processing workflows propagate and update the uncertainty information. We also explain how the uncertainty in the original sensor data has been identified, and how the visualization component has been implemented.