OIP Model Visualizations

OIP is a member of the recently formed Puget Sound Marine Environmental Modeling partnership. This partnerhip is between OIP, the University of Washington, the WA State Department of Ecology, The King County Department of Natural Resources, and the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. OIP's role is to produce curriculum and associated model visualizations for numerical models of the marine environment of Puget Sound. This model shown in these animations has been developed by Mitsuhiro Kawase at the UW School of Oceanography.

Example model visualizations

New! click here to download examples of model visualizations. For java-enabled (java 1.2) web browsers, click here or choose from the menu below.

Interface Design for the PSMEM partnership

The interface for the modeling work of the PSMEM partnership will proceed according to the outline below:

1. Simple Interface
• A simple way for PSMEM partners to share data/models, which can be downloaded and run locally.
• Will enable "nowcasting" for Puget Sound modeling, and offer an interface similar to the one provided for the MM5 model for the Pacific Northwest, available at: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/mm5rt/gfsinit.html.


2. Web Model Interface
• This interface will consist of discrete model runs (e.g. for different general climate scenarios, such as winter vs. summer). The user will be able to select pre-assigned "visualization planes" of various parameters (such as temperature, salinity, and plankton density). These slices will be both vertical and horizontal, and be animated to show the dynamic nature of the Sound.


3. Interactive Interface
• The fully interactive interface will allow the user to select a given slice or profile in the model; ideally this interface would also include a virtual model which may be explored by the user, such as the visualizations available with Virtual Puget Sound (VPS), developed at the UW College of Education in collaboration with the Human Interface Technology Lab (HIT Lab) at UW.

Curriculum Design

The Education and Visualization team of the PSMEM partnership will develop appropriate curricula for use with our model visualizations. The curriculum will be designed in a multi-pronged fashion, so that is may be used at many levels, from K-12 schools to academic researchers. One of the goals of OIP's involvement with this partnership is to elucidate the difference between learning with a computer model and learning by participating in a field expedition. Stay tuned for our results!

This project is being supported by