Title :
Investigating Landfill Contamination by Visualizing Geophysical Data
Author :
Goncalves, Victor ; Dias, P. ; Fontoura, Maria Joao ; Moura, Ronildo ; Sousa Santos, Beatriz
Author_Institution :
Polytech. Inst. of Castelo Branco, Castelo Branco, Portugal
Abstract :
Geophysical experts aimed to establish a method to identify contamination by landfill leakage without chemically analyzing subsoil samples, which is time-consuming and expensive. To that end, researchers developed a software package that let the experts create 3D visualizations of geophysical data acquired around the landfill and apply statistical analysis to detect anomalous values. The data used, electrical resistivity, are typically sparse. So, the application employs kriging to interpolate the data and provide a volumetric representation of the subsoil resistivity. To avoid invalid conclusions, the visualization also represents uncertainty. The application enabled the experts to better understand the phenomenon and to develop and validate their method. Their evaluation of the application indicated that it helped them throughout the method´s development and significantly eased their workload.
Keywords :
contamination; data visualisation; expert systems; geophysics computing; interpolation; refuse disposal; software packages; statistical analysis; 3D visualizations; data interpolation; electrical resistivity; geophysical data visualization; geophysical experts; kriging; landfill contamination; landfill leakage; software package; statistical analysis; subsoil resistivity; volumetric representation; Data visualization; Geophysical measurements; Pollution measurement; Surface topography; Three-dimensional displays; 3D visualization; computer graphics; geophysical data; groundwater contamination; kriging; landfill contamination; statistical anomaly detection; uncertainty representation;
Journal_Title :
Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE
DOI :
10.1109/MCG.2014.11