Visual Data Analysis as an Integral Part of Environmental Management
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (DOE/EM) currently supports an effort to understand and predict contaminant fate and transport in natural and engineered systems. Geologists, hydrologists, physicists and computer scientists are working together to create models of existing contaminated sites and to simulate their behavior. Simulation results are verified based on historical data and extrapolated into the future. Visualization is used for model setup verification, visual analysis of high-performance computing simulation results, and uncertainty quantification. This article describes the challenges and solutions for visual data analysis, which impacts the decision-making process for each of the contaminated sites. Lessons learned from these simulations will also have an impact on deciding on treatment measures for other, similarly contaminated areas, including those affected by more recent events, such as Chernobyl and Fukushima.