HORA 3D: Personalized Flood Risk Visualization as an Interactive Web Service | TU Wien

Information

Publication Type: Journal Paper (without talk)
Workgroup(s)/Project(s): not specified
Date: 2024
Article Number: e15110
DOI: 10.1111/cgf.15110
ISSN: 1467-8659
Journal: Computer Graphics Forum
Number: 3
Pages: 12
Volume: 43
Publisher: WILEY
Keywords: CCS Concepts, Human-centered computing, Information systems, Visualization, Spatial-temporal systems

Abstract

We propose an interactive web-based application to inform the general public about personal flood risks. Flooding is the natural hazard affecting most people worldwide. Protection against flooding is not limited to mitigation measures, but also includes communicating its risks to affected individuals to raise awareness and preparedness for its adverse effects. Until now, this is mostly done with static and indiscriminate 2D maps of the water depth. These flood hazard maps can be difficult to interpret and the user has to derive a personal flood risk based on prior knowledge. In addition to the hazard, the flood risk has to consider the exposure of the own house and premises to high water depths and flow velocities as well as the vulnerability of particular parts. Our application is centered around an interactive personalized visualization to raise awareness of these risk factors for an object of interest. We carefully extract and show only the relevant information from large precomputed flood simulation and geospatial data to keep the visualization simple and comprehensible. To achieve this goal, we extend various existing approaches and combine them with new real-time visualization and interaction techniques in 3D. A new view-dependent focus+context design guides user attention and supports an intuitive interpretation of the visualization to perform predefined exploration tasks. HORA 3D enables users to individually inform themselves about their flood risks. We evaluated the user experience through a broad online survey with 87 participants of different levels of expertise, who rated the helpfulness of the application with 4.7 out of 5 on average.

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BibTeX

@article{rauer-zechmeister-2024-h3p,
  title =      "HORA 3D: Personalized Flood Risk Visualization as an
               Interactive Web Service",
  author =     "Silvana Rauer-Zechmeister and Daniel Cornel and Bernhard
               Sadransky and Zsolt Horvath and Artem Konev and Andreas
               Buttinger-Kreuzhuber and Raimund Heidrich and G\"{u}nter
               Bl\"{o}schl and Eduard Gr\"{o}ller and J\"{u}rgen Waser",
  year =       "2024",
  abstract =   "We propose an interactive web-based application to inform
               the general public about personal flood risks. Flooding is
               the natural hazard affecting most people worldwide.
               Protection against flooding is not limited to mitigation
               measures, but also includes communicating its risks to
               affected individuals to raise awareness and preparedness for
               its adverse effects. Until now, this is mostly done with
               static and indiscriminate 2D maps of the water depth. These
               flood hazard maps can be difficult to interpret and the user
               has to derive a personal flood risk based on prior
               knowledge. In addition to the hazard, the flood risk has to
               consider the exposure of the own house and premises to high
               water depths and flow velocities as well as the
               vulnerability of particular parts. Our application is
               centered around an interactive personalized visualization to
               raise awareness of these risk factors for an object of
               interest. We carefully extract and show only the relevant
               information from large precomputed flood simulation and
               geospatial data to keep the visualization simple and
               comprehensible. To achieve this goal, we extend various
               existing approaches and combine them with new real-time
               visualization and interaction techniques in 3D. A new
               view-dependent focus+context design guides user attention
               and supports an intuitive interpretation of the
               visualization to perform predefined exploration tasks. HORA
               3D enables users to individually inform themselves about
               their flood risks. We evaluated the user experience through
               a broad online survey with 87 participants of different
               levels of expertise, who rated the helpfulness of the
               application with 4.7 out of 5 on average.",
  articleno =  "e15110",
  doi =        "10.1111/cgf.15110",
  issn =       "1467-8659",
  journal =    "Computer Graphics Forum",
  number =     "3",
  pages =      "12",
  volume =     "43",
  publisher =  "WILEY",
  keywords =   "CCS Concepts, Human-centered computing, Information systems,
               Visualization, Spatial-temporal systems",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2024/rauer-zechmeister-2024-h3p/",
}