A 3D Immersive Fault Visualizer and Editor
Yikilmaz, M B - Department of Geology, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, United States
Van Aalsburg, J - Department of Physics, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, United States
Kreylos, O - Institute for Data Analysis and Visualization (IDAV), University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, United States
Kellogg, L H - Department of Geology, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, United States
Rundle, J B - Department of Physics, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, United States
Digital fault models are an important resource for the study of earthquake dynamics, fault-earthquake interactions and seismicity. Once digitized these fault models can be used in Finite Element Model (FEM) programs or earthquake simulations such as Virtual California (VC). However, these models are often difficult to create, requiring a substantial amount of time to generate the fault topology and compute the properties of the individual segments. To aid in the construction of such models we have developed an immersive virtual reality (VR) application to visualize and edit fault models. Our program is designed to run in a CAVE (walk-in VR environment), but also works in a wide range of other environments, including desktop systems and GeoWalls. It is being developed at the UC Davis W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES, http://www.keckcaves.org). Immersive VR environments are ideal for visualizing and manipulating three- dimensional data sets. Our program allows users to create new models or modify existing ones; for example by repositioning individual fault-segments, by changing the dip angle, or by modifying (or assigning) the value of a property associated with a particular fault segment (i.e. slip rate). With the addition of high resolution Digital Elevation Models (DEM) the user can accurately add new segments to an existing model or create a fault model entirely from scratch. Interactively created or modified models can be written to XML files at any time; from there the data may easily be converted into various formats required by the analysis software or simulation. We believe that the ease of interaction provided by VR technology is ideally suited to the problem of creating and editing digital fault models. Our software provides the user with an intuitive environment for visualizing and editing fault model data. This translates not only into less time spent creating fault models, but also enables the researcher to easily generate and maintain any number of models for use in ensemble analysis.
