Earthquake

Introduction

Data visualization is the graphic representation of data. It involves producing images that communicate relationships among the represented data to viewers of the images. This communication is achieved through the use of a systematic mapping between graphic marks and data values in the creation of the visualization. This mapping establishes how data values will be represented visually, determining how and to what extent the property of a graphic mark, such as size or color, will change to reflect the change in the value of a datum. (Wikipedia: Data Visualization) Visualizations incorporating geospatial data are used and analyzed in many different contexts, including navigating a city (as seen in GPS devices), commercial development, and setting governmental policy.

Purpose

This project will be:

- understanding the 2D texture and 3D texture;

- working with data from NASA and the USGS to visualize on a globe the locations where earthquakes happened between 1905 and 2007;

- animating the data and globe.

Design

Texture mapping is one of the sophisticated problems in computer graphics. The texture coordinates and object coordinates should correspond carefully; otherwise, we cannot texture the object, whether its 2D or 3D. Besides texture mapping, the earthquake data is drawn in different sizes of the sphere with the scale at its location; and the globe would spinning along with framing changing.