Integrated Visualization of Realtime Environmental Data

This paper presents the visualization eeort of the REINAS (Realtime Environmental Information Network Analysis System) project. REINAS is a continuing engineering research and development system with the goal of designing, developing and testing an operational prototype system for data acquisition, data management , and visualization. It includes a growing web of networked remote and in-situ instruments, a feder-ated geographical database, and an extensible visualiza-tion interface. REINAS focuses on the needs of both oceanographers and meteorologists who monitor real-time data or analyze retrospective data. The visualization system of REINAS provides an integrated access via a distributed database to a host of diierent realtime data sources, numerical model forecasts , as well as more static data sets such as coastline and terrain information. It is designed as a modular tool-based system where users activate the appropriate visualization tools to generate diierent types of visualization products. It is also designed to be an extensible systems where tool designers can create new tools by programming and linking simpler elements together. Finally, it also supports visualization-on-demand through the WWW where visualization products using the latest available data are generated on the y based on information obtained from a web request.