SCEC-VDO
Description
SCEC-VDO is a product of the Southern California Earthquake Center's UseIT internship program (Undergraduate Studies in Earthquake Information Technology). It is plugin-based visualization software for displaying and manipulating earthquake hypocenters, fault models, and various other earthquake related datasets in 3 dimensions. Earthquake scientists, educators, media, and the general public may find SCEC-VDO useful.
SCEC-VDO was created from scratch by approximately 20 each summer starting in 2004. I worked on it during the 2005 and 2006 summers, as well as throughout the year between summers.
Technical Details
SCEC-VDO is written entirely in Java using J2SE and Java3D. It is plugin based and open source, so it is very easy for 3rd party developers to modify and add new features.
Most of my work on SCEC-VDO has been related to obtaining data dynamically via Internet web services.
- created a set of location services to allow the user to orient himself relative to spatial coordinates, cities, street addresses, etc.
- added ability to download from the Internet and display satellite images, topographic maps, and 3D relief imagery via TerraServer Web Services.
- added ability to geocode street addresses into coordinates via the geocoder.us web service and search for cities and landmarks via the TerraServer Web Services.
- added ability to download and filter several catalogs of earthquakes from the SCEDC STP service.
- integrated that STP service with existing earthquake catalog plugin to be able to treat downloaded catalogs the same as local catalogs.
- organized,
Download
- SCEC-VDO Beta - download page
- SCEC-VDO SourceForge project page
Plugins
In addition to collaborative work done with other interns, I created several plugins from scratch to add more functionality to SCEC-VDO, including a satellite image plugin, and a plate movement plugin, as well as a GPS/location plugin.
Please visit this page for installation instructions.
Satellite Images Plugin
The Satellite Images Plugin downloads and displays aerial and satellite photos (as well as topographic and shaded relief maps) from the Terraserver web service.
This plugin requires an internet connection.
Plate Movement Plugin
The Plate Movement Plugin displays data from a network of GPS stations which measure the movement of the earth's crust.
Location Plugin
The Location Plugin, formerly known as the GPS Plugin, is now included with the SCEC-VDO distribution. It provides the user with several methods to add location points and labels, including geocoding of street addresses, searching the Terraserver cities and landmarks database, raw coordinates, etc.
