Visual Analytics of the Hydrodynamic Flux for Coastal Flooding Prediction and Management

Abstract

Fifty percent of the earth's population lives within 60 kms of the shoreline. So preventing or mitigating against coastal or estuary flooding is important, especially because of the predicted sea level rise from climate change. A key calculation in simulating flooding over an estuary is hydrodynamic flux, but typically this is complex and tedious to compute and not easily undertaken with traditional visualization and analytical tools. We present a transect profiler and flux calculation algorithm which permits rapid, iterative exploration and comparison of the derived data. This profiler has been implemented and integrated in our multiple view visual analytics system VINCA.