CSCI E64 Final Project

Title: Data Visualization for Public Alert System

Project Members: Eric Gieseke

5/9/2008

Project Results:

Overview

The project goal was to collect CAP feeds from multiple sources, and visualize the Alerts by overlaying the geo-coded events on a map display. The project goals were achieved. CAP events are collected from the USGS and NOAA, and rendered on a map using Google Maplets.

 

 

CAP Collection

Implemented CAP collection and persistence mechanism. A Caplib library is used to collect CAP events from USGS and NOAA. NOAA CAP feeds are split up by state, so the system processes over 50 data feeds.

 

 

Google Maplet Creation

I used Google Maplets to Visualize the CAP alerts on a map display. Google maplets leverage the Google Maps API to support displaying geo-coded information on a map. Maplets also leverage the server resources of Google to serve the map. To see the map, users enter a URL that points to a Google server with a reference to the Maplet code on your own server. In this way, if the visualization becomes popular, Google can handle the large request volumes. The Maplet is an xml document that contains Java Script code. The Java Script defines the visualization, leveraging the functionality of the Google Maps API.    

 

 

Publishing the Maplet

 

The generated maplet code is written to a file. The file is then automatically uploaded to a web server so that it can be accessed by the Google Maps server at the following URL:

 

http://www.mercarta.com/ews/maplet.xml

 

Users can then use the following GoogleMaps URL to see the visualization:

 

http://maps.google.com/ig/add?synd=mpl&pid=mpl&moduleurl=http://www.mercarta.com/ews/maplet.xml

 

A Google user name and password are required to see the map. If you receive a message that says “Information is temporarily unavailable”, click the browsers refresh button. My experience is that it will be rendered within a few tries if not the on the first try.

 

Google caches the Maplet and only updates the maplet once every few hours. This may be an issue if the maplet code is being updated every 5 mintues. I will need to figure out some way to force a refresh of the map for end users, possibly using a changing maplet URL.

 

Figure 4 Resulting Alert Event Map.

Future Enhancements:

 

One of the project goals was to provide users the ability to filter by event type. I believe that this is possible using the Google Map API GTileLayers. I will try to do this in time for the presentation on Monday.

 

 

Final Thoughts

The project was fun and interesting.  The class in general was also fun and interesting.  I have a more thorough understanding of visualization principles and available tools.

 

Original Project Proposal:

Question: Where and what are the current hazardous threats?

After 911 and Hurricane Katrina, it became clear that the various government agencies where unable to efficiently share information and coordinate activities. To improve information sharing, the US government initiated a plan to provide machine-readable geo-coded RSS feeds containing event information, called the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). Currently, there are only a handful of these feeds available, but more will become available soon.  Europe and other parts of the world are also working on similar efforts.

 

This project intends to aggregate multiple CAP feeds, and display the natural and man made hazardous events through a single visualization. This visualization will be made available to individuals through a web interface. The visualization will be updated periodically using the latest data available from each of the CAP feeds.

 

CAP Fact Sheet

Sources of Data:

The following CAP feeds are currently available.

  • The U.S. Geological Survey Feeds include worldwide data for earthquakes of 2.5 magnitude or greater, as well as volcano alerts from the Alaska Volcano Observatory (CAP 1.0).
  • The Caribbean island of Anguilla also has an Atom feed of CAP 1.1 messages.

Target Audience

This visualization will target inhabitants of the United States, including individuals, and organizations, both private and public.  While the project visualization will focus on the United States, it is extensible to support other parts of the world.

 

Proposed Visualization and Interaction Methods

 

The visualization will aggregate and display CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) alerts from at least three geo-coded sources.

 

The visualization will overlay symbols, patterns and colors onto a map of the US to show the position of current hazardous events. Hazardous events include tornados, hurricanes, flooding, high winds, tsunamis, volcanoes, terrorism, biochemical events, etc.

 

The visualization will support filtering of events, by type, severity, location, and source.

 

The visualization will support map panning and zooming. The map will include important landmarks including cities, towns, and state boundaries to aid in determining location. The map will also include visual aides such as latitudinal and longitudinal lines.

 

The visualization will also include the ability to track and display position of individuals, show the position of individuals and identify those who are at risk of a threat.

 

Partition of Work

This group consists of a single member; Eric Gieseke who will do the following:

 

·                    Aggregate CAP feeds.

 

·                    Translate CAP feeds into KML or similar markup language.

 

·                    Define symbols, colors, and other graphics for clear representation of data

 

·                    Use Google Maps, or Google Earth to generate visualizations.

 

·                    Publish the visualizations through a web interface.