Commercial GIS extension for visualization of large unstructured geospatial data

The proposed innovation is new technology to enable the visualization of large unstructured geospatial datasets, such as LIDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging) data, within a commercial desktop Geographic Information System (GIS). The proposed architecture uses a high performance computing (HPC) platform to process the datasets and create visualization models, and then integrates 3D visualization into a GIS environment. For this research, cluster computing (a collection of interconnected commodity PCs implementing parallel processing techniques) will serve as the ?back-end?, with visualization and GIS integration provided through an extension to the ArcGIS system. The significance of the innovation is that it would: * Provide users new ability to visualize large datasets at their full resolution at varying scales;* Be implemented as a commercial GIS software extension, thus: - leveraging geospatial data and geoprocessing techniques supported by GIS systems - extending capability without requiring users to learn a new software interface;* Enable users to process the data faster and more efficiently, using real-time data browse within the GIS?s display window;* Incorporate the necessary computing power to process the large unstructured datasets for visualization (for now, through the use of cluster computing?future hardware improvements would provide additional high-performance computing platforms).