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MTool: An Interactive Parallel Visualization and Computational Analysis Environment for Massive Multidimensional Earth Science Data Sets
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| Global climate change is a major concern today. NASA's Strategic Subgoal 3A is a direct response to this concern: Study planet Earth
from space to advance scientific understanding and meet societal needs. However, a key technology challenge to a deeper
understanding of our climate is the massive amounts of data from SMD's many Earth Science missions and programs. A major
impediment is the high dimensionality of the data (up to hundreds of variables) which have spatial and temporal context that must be
maintained in order to understand their relationships to the underlying physical processes. Traditional GIS and visualization tools
typically preserve high-dimensional relationships at the expense of spatio-temporal ones. We propose to build an advanced analysis
and visualization tool called MTool (Multidimensional Tool), to address these issues using a new approach based on the intrinsic
geometry of the physical processes and mathematics behind the Earth science data using dynamical systems theory, computational
topology and discrete differential geometry. It is now well recognized that topology and geometry play significant roles in data analysis.
DARPA has instituted a new "Topological Data Analysis Program" to specifically address this new field. The GIS community is using
topological data structures to enable fast, new search algorithms that cannot be done with traditional Relational Data Base
Management Systems. In 2002, UNESCO even developed an on-line tutorial to train its users on "topological data search algorithms"
because of their power and efficiency. Similarly, computational differential geometry has made great advances in computer graphics,
computer vision, image processing, modeling and simulations. E.g., in 2005, Adobe Photoshop introduced the popular "Healing Brush"
feature which can remove cracks in paintings with the push of a button. This feature used the sophisticated concept of covariant
derivatives on a fiber bundle from differential geometry. This is the type of new technology which we propose for MTool. Some of our
methods include: manifold theory, dynamical systems theory (including invariant manifolds and its time-varying version, Lagrangian
coherent structures), discrete exterior calculus (to perform differential geometric calculations on manifolds), homology theory (to
analyze and 'visualize' high dimensional data), and the powerful level set methods (to gracefully handle topological changes in high
dimensional objects). Our objective is to investigate these new technologies and implement a working proof-of-concept tool, MTool
Version 0.3, in an interactive user-extensible parallel computational environment with visualization and animation capabilities. This is
achieved with the parallel version of Matlab on JPL's 1000-node Dell supercomputer, COSMOS. Co-I Braverman is a member on both
the Atmosphere Infrared Sounder and Multi-angle Imaging Spectro Radiometer projects at JPL. She will enable us to work with
actual users for requirements and for frequent user-reviews (every 4 months) needed in our Evolutionary Fusion development process.
This was successfully used by the PI on the 3-year, $2.5M LTool software development delivered in 2001. Our technology partner is the
award winning Caltech Barr Lab and Applied Geometry Center which pioneered the use of differential geometry and topology in
computer graphics and modeling. MTool is a 3-year project at a total cost of $772,700. MTool will introduce some of the newest and
most promising technologies for high dimension massive data to SMD missions and programs. These methods are useful to both
engineering and scientific users in SMD, from the many levels of data processing to the scientific analysis and visualization of the data.
This will help SMD not only reach Subgoal 3A to study the Earth from space, but NASA's many other goals in planetary science,
astrophysics, and the exploration of space. |
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