CS 524 Project 1

The data we will use in this project comes from the US Geological Survey's Global Earthquake Search site at
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/epic/epic_global.php

If you ask for spreadsheet format data from the USGS/NEIC (PDE) from 1973 to present you will get a 30 megabyte comma separated list of quakes that starts with:

Year, Month, Day, Time(hhmmss.mm) UTC, Latitude, Longitude, Magnitude, Depth
1973,01,01,034609.80, -9.21, 150.63,5.3, 41
1973,01,01,052229.80,-15.01,-173.96,5.0, 33
1973,01,01,092857.20,-22.16, -65.79,4.8,205

There are over 620,000 earthquakes in this file but some do not have a magnitude so you should filter out all of the lines that are not complete. This should leave you with about 500,000 lines of data.

You will use vtk in connection with a user interface toolkit of your choice to implement the project. You will need to be able to show this app in the classroom so be sure you have it running on an appropriate machine.

The application you develop should help the user investigate questions about earthquakes so you shouldn't be thinking of the application as the end product but as a means to get to the end product, which is knowledge, so its important that ypour application be easy to use and produce visualizations that are easy to understand. One of the requirements to get an A is to use your tool to find some interesting things in the dataset.

You can store the data in any way you prefer that gives you sufficient performance AND is sufficiently portable that andy can easily make your application run on his hardware. Databases are fine, on line storage is fine, flat files are fine.

You may want to also look into some map conversion algorithms since you have data in latitude and longitude.

For a C you should

let the user conveniently choose from 10 'interesting' areas on the planet and a magnitude and show the 3d position of the earthquakes of that magnitude in that area
show different magnitudes of earthquakes differently (size, colour, etc) and have a legend that explains this to the user
let the user show or hide the surface (shown as wireframe, or a map, or a satellite view) to give context
clearly label the depth range
let the user quickly and easily rotate the 3d scene and zoom in and out to get a better view of the data with their mouse (trackpad, etc)
create a responsive user interface and the visualization that are not ugly
pick an appropriate well labelled depth scale to show interesting features in the data (ie you should be able to see the subduction zones)

For a B in addition you should

inlude the entire planet as an 11th interesting area (this could be a globe or a flat map)
let the user play back the earthquakes over the given area showing the current year and letting user alter the playback speed
let the user pick a set of magnitudes to view
let the user vary the depth scaling

For an A in addition you should

let the user limit the range of playback a particular range of years / dates
let the user interactively shuffle back and forth through time (as with a video playing app)
show multiple quake regions at same time (either in same window or spearate windows) which are linked for playback
document several interesting things (which will very likely be related to plate techtonics)

You might also want to investigate writing an application that runs in 3D (the easy way being to do a left and right stereo pair where you duplicate the user interface but slightly offset the cameras in the two 3D views) as this data looks very nice that way.

You should create a set of web pages that describe your work on the project. This should include:

1 page on how to install your app starting from "I have a web browser on my computer." You should provide links and clear instructions on everything needed to get your application running. You should also provide links to your well documented souce code on this page.
1 page on the data you used including where you got it, what you did to it.
1 page on how to use your application and the things you can do with it.
1 page on what interesting things you found using your application.

all of which should have plenty of screenshots with meaningful captions.

You should also create a 2-3 minute youtube video showing the use of your application including narration with decent audio quality, and that video should be linked to your main project web page.

I will be linking your web page to the course notes so please send me a 320 x 240 jpg photo of your visualization for the web. This should be named p1.<your_last_name>.jpg. Web pages like this can be very helpful later on in helping you build up a portfolio of your work when you start looking for a job.

Each student will bring his / her visualization to class to present it and describe its features to the rest of the class. This allows everyone to see a variety of solutions to the problem, and a variety of implementations.

Project 1

Shake, Rattle and Roll