An Open, Adaptive Geospatial Visual Information System

The military has an increasing amount and variety of data sources collected using state-of-the-art technologies. Further, there is rapid proliferation of handheld devices, meaning that every soldier may become a sensor and require access to the information stream. Such a rich information environment holds the potential to vastly increase the safety and effectiveness of missions. However, due to the complexity and size of data, and the limited bandwidth on many display devices, the ability to visualize and understand information is problematic. In the work proposed here, we will develop a system that will adapt to device, network, and user capabilities to allow for effective knowledge dissemination. The multi-tiered approach will enable virtually any device with a web browser to obtain relevant information, even devices with very low capacities. In addition, hardware with sufficient graphics resources, such as current generation mobile devices, may access more advanced visualizations and interactions. The work will be based on existing technology used in the popular Visualization Toolkit VTK and ParaView parallel visualization system. In the proposed option, we plan to expand base functionalities to include adaptive, collaborative visualization.