Seismic Tomography: UC Berkeley 4° REM model Quicktime movie

The GEON Integrated Data Viewer - Contents INTRO                 Introducing the GEON IDV INSTALL               Download & Run the GEON IDV LEARN                 Tutorial ... How to Use the GEON IDV ... Bundles DATA                   Geophysical Data Types and Sample GEON IDV Displays YOUR DATA         Data Formats for the IDV EDUCATION         Ideas for using the IDV in Education CONTACT             UNAVCO

Introducing the GEON Integrated Data Viewer (IDV)

The IDV is a fully interactive, true 3D, data display system for exploration of Earth-located data.

The GEON IDV is tailored for geophysics. The GEON IDV is ideal for exploration of complex three-dimensional data with time variations. It can create single displays comparing multiple data types. It is not intended to make publication-ready figures of final results, though it does make striking 3D data images. The GEON IDV is to understand your data and discover results.

The IDV has extensive control over map projections and scales, time animation, and data display types and colors.

If you have Earth science data, the IDV is a powerful tool to investigate it.

For a quick look at how the GEON IDV can show your data, see Geophysical Data Types and Sample GEON IDV Displays

GEON IDV image of Colorado region geophysics, oblique 3D view from southwest.
click for larger image
Geophysics summary cross section (Karlstrom al. 2006, Plate 3), geology map (Colorado State GS),
seimic tomography isosurface (S. Van der Lee et al., orange), seismicity (IRIS DMC archive, blue crosses),
earthquake focal mechanism beachballs (Global CMT Project), surface faults (USGS; yellow),
and GPS surface velocity vectors (Earthscope Plate Boundary Observatory, red).
The live display in the GEON IDV is fully interactive in 3D with zooming, panning and rotation in any direction, and toggling data types.

 

If your data is grids (2D, 3D, or 4D), point observations, imagery mapped on the Earth, tracks or soundings, or most any data mapped in or on the Earth, you can interactively display it and explore it with the GEON IDV.

You can display data in a globe or map view with most any projection, area, and vertical scale. You can make your own map projection, for example, a Lambert conformal map centered on your area.

The IDV has internal computational features to process single or multiple data sets, from simple formulas to complete analysis programs. You can write your own processing code that the IDV uses internally. There are online how-to-s and tutorials, and data sources.

You can save IDV displays as images and movies for use in presentations, publications, and educational materials. You can run a GeoWall or other true 3D display systems with the IDV. You can easily save the configuration of any simple or complex IDV display, to recreate it later with one simple request.

The IDV is free, with an installer program including everything you need. You do not need to compile anything, or install other software. The IDV runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, and Solaris. The IDV uses a graphical user interface with menus.

There are no command lines in normal use, but the IDV can be run by comand line in background, offscreen, to make displays of incoming new data, or to make web page displays of data by online user request.

You can send a simple configuration file to others so they can run the IDV to see exactly what you see, and then interact with the data. This is a powerful tool for collaboration and for classroom and lab exercises.

Modern geoscience data, like the Earth which it represents, often is three-dimensional and time-varying, with complexity on all length scales. Finding and studying significant features in such data is greatly improved with new approaches that use interactive three-dimensional visualizations.

Although the IDV creates impressive 3D displays, it is designed for careful and detailed data exploration and quantitative analysis. It is not merely a tool to make illustrations.

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As part of the Geosciences Network (GEON), UNAVCO developed the i GEON Integrated Data Viewer (IDV), a research-quality application for display and analysis of geoscience data. The GEON IDV is designed to meet the challenge of investigating complex, multi-variate, time-varying geoscience data

The GEON IDV is an extension of the Unidata Integrated Data Viewer (Unidata IDV), using Java plugins and the Unidata IDV's extensible architecture. GEON IDV development and support is funded by the GEON project, an NSF program to develop cyberinfrastructure in support of an environment for integrative geoscience research with a integrative science theme of a quantitative understanding of the 4D evolution of the North American lithosphere.

The IDV has interactive, true 3D displays with full time animation where needed, and it also is a powerful tool for cyberinfrastructure, data interoperability, and "data mashups."

General Purpose The GEON IDV is designed for general purpose display and analysis of data in the Earth sciences. It can be used for numerical climate model results, or soil chemistry in Nebraska. It can show mantle tomography, or a movie of a week of aftershocks.

True 3D and time controls Data can have any location or extent in latitude, longitude, and altitude. The IDV works from the inner core to the stratosphere, and even on other planets. Any region and vertical scale may be used. Time values from seconds to millions of years are recognized.

Data Interoperability Most data located in latitude/longitude, and optionally altitude and time, can be used in the IDV. The IDV handles map projections and unit conversions. You can simultaneously display many kinds of data in one display, all uniformly mapped together.

Internet Ready - Cyberinfrastructure The IDV is designed to access data online with data portals and with HTML file transfers, FTP, OPeNDAP (DODS), THREDDS, and web services (rest and WMS). Development continues to add WSDL/SOAP connectivity.

GEON IDV for Geoscience The GEON IDV includes special symbols and plots of geoscience data, such as GPS plate velocity vectors with error ellipses, and earthquake focal mechanisms. You can display geological vertical cross sections in the same 3D display with a geology map on topographic relief. We can add other special symbols as needed.

Data Available UNAVCO is continually finding free data online, for use in the GEON IDV, and showing how to get it, in this web site.

With the GEON IDV you can

Explore complex earth science data

Display earth science data

Make computations with multiple data sources

Explore Your Data

Modern data sources are often complex and intricate, including 3D structures in depth, mutiple data sources, and time variations. The GEON IDV lets you examine any earth-mapped data with a fully interactive 3D display, including any viewpoint and zoom and full time animation control. Special symbols used in geophysics are built into the GEON IDV. Data from diverse sources and instruments in the same display show inter-relationships. Time animation in 3D of structures is very persuasive.

With true 3D displays and multiple data sources and time steps, and with interactive control of point of view, zoom, rotation, color tables, vertical scale, map projection, and time animation, you will discovery otherwise hidden details, features, and relationships in your data, and with other geophysics data.

Display Earth science data

The GEON IDV is designed for earth science data with latitude and longitude, and optionally time and depth or altitude. The IDV displays are in 2D or 3D, and support simultaneous displays of several data sets from differing sources, with complete control over colors, time animation, map projection, map area, point of view etc. The GEON IDV displays any earth-located grid or point data, images, GIS shape files, and several other types of data.

The GEON IDV has symbols and displays for GPS velocity vectors, seismic tomography, earthquake focal mechanisms, earthquake locations, earthquakes colored and sized by magnitude or depth, seismic ray paths in 3D, seismic anisotropy, convection model visualization, earth strain axes and strain field imagery, and high-resolution 3D topographic relief maps. Multiple data sources and display types may appear in one view.

Compute with multiple data sources

The IDV is also provides data computations and analysis, including a facility to do computations with formulas written in the Python language. You can easily use multiple data sets from different sources - the IDV automatically takes care of grids with different coverages and data location grid points, and units conversions; you don't need to do anything like that. Just enter "A-B" and see the difference between two 3D grids in a 3D view; even if the grids have different sizes, grid spacings, and different data units.

Origins of the GEON IDV

The GEON IDV is an extension of the Unidata IDV (Integrated Data Viewer). The GEON IDV is created and maintained by UNAVCO with GEON funding. Unidata is part of UCAR, a top national meteorological research center funded by the NSF, in Boulder Colorado. Unidata has been a creator of top science software for earth science data display, analysis, and management for more than 20 years.

The Unidata Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) is a "meteorologically oriented, platform-independent, application for visualization and analysis."

GEON II is a multi-year multi-institutional NSF grant, to create a scientist-centered cyberinfrastructure that will provide earth scientists with a growing array of tools, including data access and integration mechanisms, computational resources, and integrated software for analysis, modeling, and visualization.