Interactive 3-D Visualization and Exploration of Deepwater Geohazards

摘要

With the movement of offshore exploration into deeperrnwaters, the risk of encountering geohazards has become muchrngreater. Fortunately, recent advances in sonar technology,rnpositioning capabilities, and computer processing power havernrevolutionized the way we can image and explore the deeprnseafloor and thus directly address the issue of deepwaterrngeohazards. At the core of these technologies has been therndevelopment of multibeam sonar and 3-D seismic systems thatrncan provide near 100 percent coverage of relatively large areasrnof the seafloor with high resolution. The massive amounts ofrndata produced by these systems present many challenges, butrnalso offer tremendous opportunities in terms of visualizationrnand analysis. Interactive 3-D visualization and explorationrntools specifically designed to facilitate the interpretation andrnanalysis of very large (10’s to 100’s of megabytes), complex,rnmulti-component spatial data sets collected during explorationrnand site surveys. These tools offer a powerful new approach tornaddressing the problems of geohazard risk assessment andrnmitigation. If properly georeferenced and treated, complexrndata sets can be presented in a natural and intuitive mannerrnthat allows the integration of multiple components, each atrntheir inherent level of resolution, and without compromisingrnthe quantitative nature of the data. Artificial sun-illumination,rnshading, and 3-D rendering can be used with digitalrnbathymetric data (DTM's) to form natural looking and easilyrninterpretable, yet quantitative, landscapes. Color can be usedrnto represent depth or other parameters (like backscatter orrnsediment properties) which can be draped over the DTM, orrnhigh-resolution imagery can be texture mapped on bathymetricrnor subsurface data. When combined with interactivernanalytical tools, this approach can greatly increase the speedrnand confidence with which deepwater hazards can be assessedrnand mitigated.