AVL

CAMP2Ex

Data collected by aircraft during meteorological field campaigns, such as the Cloud and Aerosol Monsoonal Processes Philippines Experiment (CAMP 2Ex; Di Girolamo et al. 2015), are extremely rich in information. There are multiple aircraft instruments making a large variety of measurements, with flights that are coordinated to overlap with Earth-observing satellites and with other collaborative data sensor nodes. However, data from different instruments are collected and archived at a variety of spatial scales, temporal scales, and data formats. This, along with the large volume of data, number of sensor nodes, and number of data variables provides significant, unresolved challenges for scientists to fuse and visualize the data from multiple sensor nodes in a seamless and efficient manner. Individual investigators are left on their own to resolve these challenges, often with very limited success. Field campaign data archives are compiled of mostly raw data, with no straight forward way to understand the data collection and sampling strategy (including coordination amongst collaborative sensor nodes), as well as no clear way to navigate through fused datasets for exploration and discovery. This greatly limits scientific advancement and returns on NASA investments in field campaigns.
 
Here, we prototype a visualization that fuses field campaign data from a wide range of sensor nodes, using collections from the CAMP 2 Ex field campaign as a driving use case. The goal is to examine ways to ease the exploration of the data by scientists, to provide insight and spawn ideas, and to highlight important features from aircraft, ground, and satellite data that the field campaign was targeting. Two main visualization prototypes were created: (1) The Data Fusion Dashboard focused on a visualization treatment that provides a navigable summary of a flight day; and (2) The Data Fusion Exposition focused on an exposition of the field campaign data as an educational product capable of reaching a broader audience, as well as a product that can be used to communicate to scientists important information about the field campaign. Our analysis focused on CAMP 2 Ex data collected as part of Research Flight 09 (September 15, 2019), specifically data measured from instruments on the NASA P-3 Orion aircraft and numerous satellites. This flight sampled smoke from one of the largest biomass-burning events in Indonesia on record, with excellent coordination with multiple satellites.   Animations are provided as .mp4 movie files in HD and 4K formats posted within the web folder, which can be downloaded or viewed within a browser: https://virdir.ncsa.illinois.edu/NCSAvis/camp2ex/public/deliverables_6-15-21/
Hyperwall image sequences are .tar packages in the subfolder: https://virdir.ncsa.illinois.edu/NCSAvis/camp2ex/public/deliverables_6-15-21/hyperwall_versions

June 21, 2022