Simulations not only help to better understand real processes, but can also change these processes in the long term through the possibility of playing through alternative scenarios and plans. This is particularly important for a comprehensive understanding and for the protection of our habitats, which is why we have been concentrating on modelling and simulating environmental processes on the basis of large geodata sets for many years. In our research work to date, we have created solutions using innovative simulations of the hydrological cycle and associated extreme events, personal simulations for evacuation scenarios and logistics models for deployment planning, which have been used in reality for many years. Since fast computing times and reliable accuracy of the simulation results are of utmost importance, we are working on the development and optimization of numerical solution methods in the field of high performance computing. We also focus on the smart integration of simulation and visualization, as this makes the presentation of results more understandable and low-threshold.
In the Visdom software, we have bundled our know-how in the areas of simulation and hydrodynamic modeling into a tool that supports users in making quick decisions by combining simulation, analysis and visualization. Visdom not only simulates flood and heavy rain scenarios at a speed never before achieved, but also enables analysis - for example, to define hazard zones - and visualization of the simulation results. The most important software concept here is the simulation of alternative scenarios within seconds, which can be compared with each other. Users are thus able to play through the consequences of various decisions using a digital copy of reality. This is particularly important for disaster control - both in prevention and in acute cases.
Our Visdom software has emerged from many years of applied research with various partners, including the renowned flood specialist Günter Blöschl (Vienna University of Technology), and has already proven itself in several practical applications in real-life use cases over the past years. To name just a few examples, we have successfully carried out collaborative projects in the field of flood and heavy rain protection for the cities of Cologne and Graz, the Chinese megacity Shenzhen and entire regions such as the Marchfeld. We are currently working on flood risk zoning for Austria on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Regions and Tourism.
As a service for communities we offer in cooperation with RIOCOM - Engineering Office for Cultural Technology and Water Management tailor-made disaster control planning. We create a digital copy of a municipality and then play through various scenarios: What happens if streams overflow their banks, canals cannot cope with wastewater, etc.? Based on these simulation results, suitable protective measures for various extreme weather situations are then defined, emergency plans are drawn up and/or local personnel (e.g. fire brigade) are advised. Link to disaster control for communities
Our research activities around the Visdom system have resulted in three top scientific publications that complement each other and reflect the great strengths of this software. Our simulation paper "A fast second-order shallow water scheme on two-dimensional structured grids over abrupt topography" introduces our innovative GPU-based numerical solver for flood and heavy rain simulations, which enables the probably fastest flood simulation available today. The paper "Comparison of Fast Shallow-Water Schemes on Real-World Floods" compares our scheme, which shows excellent agreement with reality, with other modern schemes in terms of accuracy and performance in several real-world cases. Finally, the publication "Interactive Visualization of Flood and Heavy Rain Simulations", which won the Best Paper Award at EuroVis 2019, presents the scalable, robust and appealing water visualizations of our large scale simulations. Finally, our visualization paper presents scalable, robust and appealing water visualizations for our large scale simulations. Click here for the list of publications.
Our expertise is based on many years of joint research and development work with top-class scientific partners and renowned application partners.
Scientific partners: Prof. Günter Blöschl (Engineering Hydrology and Water Quantity Management, TU Vienna) and Prof. Sebastian Noelle (RWTH Aachen)
Application partners: Stadtentwässerungsbetriebe Köln (AöR), RIOCOM - Engineering Office for Cultural Technology and Water Management DI Albert Schwingshandl
The Raincloud project's goal is to optimize and extend the simulation software Visdom to tackle the increasing challenges in water planning and disaster management in the face of climate change.
Heavy rainfall events are increasing throughout Europe. In the EU project RAINMAN, VRVis has developed an interactive model to visualize the course and consequences of possible flood scenarios caused by heavy rainfall for the city of Graz.
Visdom's hydrodynamic simulations provide precise water level predictions at any point on a water surface in the "PegelAlarm" app.
To take full advantage of data from automotive simulations and measurements, we combine interactive and automatic Visual Computing methods to find intuitive, efficient and effective solutions that are applicable in the daily routine of engineers.
For many years we have been dealing with all aspects of hydrodynamic modelling. With our software Visdom we can model different scenarios and also offer this as a service.
We create a digital twin of a community and simulate weather events to identify high-risk buildings and infrastructure vulnerabilities.
The HORA 3 project focuses on flood modelling for all rivers and streams in Austria. The results are detailed flood risk maps for different annual periods.
Hands-on flood management with the Visdom decision software, which simulates and visualizes flood and heavy rain events.
Digital representations of the real world and digital twins are becoming increasingly important for planning, situation assessment and decision-making.
Decision support system for floods and inundations for the trading district of Shenzen, China.
Flood protection through simulation and visualization: Reducing the effects of floods and communicating measures to the public.
Research and development of novel interactive visualization methods for visualization and understanding of complex systems.
High-quality lighting simulation requires dynamic, interactive, realistic real-time lighting simulation for various complex architectural environments.
Visual Analytics for Modeling and Simulation: Improvement of simulation setup and design scenarios with tools and methods of Visual Analytics.
Next generation workflows for interactive knowledge generation from images and simulations.