Visualization, Analysis and Collaborative Discussion of Severe Weather Events

Abstract

Designing effective collaboration, visualization, and analysis of severe weather events (e.g., excessive rainfall accumulation, floods, severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, and droughts) for meteorologists on the web is challenging because it requires processing huge amounts of data from different sources, diverse technologies, as well as using appropriate visualization techniques. This paper presents an innovative web toolset for visualization, collaborative discussion, and analysis of severe weather events. It is composed of the tool Viewing events on Maps (VIMAPS), which allows users to visualize and analyze severe weather events using maps enriched with multivariate data glyphs to observe spatial relations from any desired angle; and the tool called Collaborative system for Meteorological Data Analysis (COMETA) that allows the collaborative analysis of severe weather events between remote users synchronously or asynchronously. These tools were tested using real data and showed that they fulfill the usability requirements of this class of application.