Collaborative virtual environments as a visual analysis tool

Recent advances in sensors and platforms supporting remote, towed, and moored observations have resulted in environmental data sets which are rapidly increasing in size and complexity. Scientists, educators, students and program managers must have the ability to interact with these data sets in a way that is understandable, repeatable, and perhaps most importantly share-able. New paradigms of information visualization are rapidly evolving to provide an integrated approach to visual exploration, analysis, synthesis, and dissemination of georeferenced data sets. For example, concurrent advances in graphical, computational, and networking technologies have made possible the implementation of realistic, three-dimensional collaborative virtual environments (CVEs). These computer-generated 3-D representations allow multiple users to simulataneously interact with data streams from archived repositories, numerical simulations, real-time remote instrumentation, and other sources in an intuitive visual manner independent of the location of the user or data. We will describe current and future uses of CVEs as a strategic framework supporting visual analysis and knowledge discovery for Earth science systems.