Visualization for Situational Awareness

ituational awareness visualization of joint military forces requires the representation of large geographic areas and thousands of military units. High-level commanders are interested in the overall tactical deployment of their forces, enemy forces, and noncombatants. The commanders are not looking for highly detailed views of engagements between units. A Joint Forces operation simultaneously involves ground, sea, and air forces, and can include forces from a coalition of different nationalities. The visualiza-tion shows if the different forces are operating in support of each other. Military units must be displayed in the context of terrain, on the sea, under the sea, and in the air. The extent of the area of interest (play-box) is typically one million square miles. Observers want to see the highest resolution data available and to navigate through the model at interactive rates. The geospatial information displayed consists of elevation data, a variety of maps, and high-resolution imagery. The size of the playbox and the amount of data place a considerable demand on both the terrain model and the visualization software. Collateral maps and images aid in understanding the movement and placement of units. The battlefield is a large, complex arena. Researchers have developed computing environments to host situa-tional awareness applications. Durbin et al. incorporated virtual reality to enhance human understanding and interaction. 1 Hix et al. reported on a virtual environment for battlefield visualization and its evaluation. 2 Rosen-blum et al. described a situational awareness environment for directing the US Marines. 3 The term situational awareness has been applied to other aspects of the military , such as the situational awareness of an individual pilot or gathering information about specific assets. We focus on theater-wide situational awareness covering a large geographic area containing many military units. The Joint Operations Visualization Environment (JOVE), developed at Sarnoff to assist military decision makers, optimizes the display of tactical data for information presentation. JOVE uses three rear-projected displays driven from an SGI Onyx2 Infinite Reality2 computer. Stereoscopic display is available. A joystick, a graphical user interface, and speech commands provide interaction. JOVE delivers accurate navigation through the model over a range of viewer positions. A typical scene from the situational awareness application appears in Figure 1. This case study describes techniques used for effectively modeling and navigating geospatial and tactical data for situational awareness. The visualization technology explained here could be applied to commercial air traffic control, emergency management response, and …