Semantic Steering

Mission: To support time-critical decision making using visual simulation control.

Fluid simulation tools are capable of predicting natural processes and can be employed for the assistance in the human decision making process. Existing solutions lack a number of important features needed for a feasible support system. Very important is the usability of the simulation tools by people without special fluid simulation expertise. Moreover, with the capabilities of graphics hardware clusters, everybody will have access to affordable supercomputing power on their desktop. Until now, little work has been done to use this power for knowledge generation via simulation steering. In this project we develop a novel computational steering system that uses visualization in every aspect of the problem solving and provides effective feedback via an intuitive interface.

Among the application areas of the system we consider the industrial design of components where rapid prototyping is required. Using a fast and intuitive system will help to evaluate whether a certain concept is promising during the design phase. Another important application is the assistance in emergency situations that are caused by natural disasters such as floods, where safety and damage limitation depend on fast decisions. The system can be used to test actions to be taken during a flood event . Users interact with sketch-based steering monitors to quickly plan and design a breach closure, to name an example. The gained knowledge supports the creation of flood management plans. Finally, our vision is that, even under time-critical circumstances, emergency personnel on-site will be able to analyze the imminent situation quickly to choose the best response strategy.

World Lines are introduced as an intuitive representation of multiple simulation runs. This concept allows to create, manage and compare alternative scenarios with the goal to understand the complex interplay between simulation input parameters and simulation outcome. The underlying data-flow network enables a flexible integration of simulation, visualization and steering components into a single application. This way, we can adapt several existing simulation modules and integrate them. Visdom comprises a client-server architecture to prepare for the future vision of decision support on-site using mobile devices. The compute-intensive parts are written as server modules controlled over the web. Visdom exploits fast GPU technology for high-performance simulation, analysis and visualization.

Links

Visdom Screenshots

Intuitive design of a breach closure using semantic steering monitors (top views) that are linked to World Lines (bottom view). The interactive World Lines view represents alternative choices (multiple related simulation runs) as a set of causally connected tracks.

Comparative visual analysis of a loaded dam break data set.

Visdom is a modular system allowing the combination of multiple steering monitors or views for comparative analysis of alternative scenarios.