Workshop on Fledermaus Software for Visualizing Mapping Data in 3D

By Nadine Golden Jan. / Feb. 2012

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Above: IVS 3D trainer Erin Heffron (left) discusses details of the newest version of Fledermaus software with USGS geologist and GIS analyst Florence Wong. [larger version]

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center hosted a 2-day Fledermaus workshop December 1 and 2, 2011, in Santa Cruz, California. Fledermaus is a suite of software tools produced by Interactive Visualization Systems (IVS 3D) that aids the analysis and interpretation of massive sets of spatial data—such as seafloor-mapping data—by allowing scientists to visualize and manipulate the data in three dimensions. USGS geographers, geologists, and others, along with scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Marine Protected Areas Center and Southwest Fisheries Science Center, examined the Fledermaus suite of software in a course customized for this purpose by IVS 3D trainer Erin Heffron and USGS geographer Nadine Golden.

The first day of the course covered core information about Fledermaus Version 7 for new users and those in need of a refresher. The material included the core Fledermaus Module: working with imagery, using vertical curtains and draping (3D-visualization techniques), masking, cropping, colormaps, time data, fly-throughs, movies, and interpretation. The first day ended with an introduction to Fledermaus’ new FMGIS, a tool in which USGS geographic-information-system (GIS) users are particularly interested because it integrates Fledermaus with ArcGIS, a widely used suite of GIS software.

Above: Oblique 3D view created using Fledermaus looks from the Pacific Ocean northeast toward the Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco, California). Elevations in the scene are vertically exaggerated by 3 times. Image is part of a seamless, high-resolution coastal digital elevation model (DEM) of central California being prepared by USGS scientists Amy Foxgrover and Patrick Barnard. Image courtesy of Amy Foxgrover. [larger version]

The second day covered more specialized Fledermaus uses, including visualization of multibeam bathymetric and lidar (light detection and ranging) data, quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC), PFMs (a type of three-dimensional graph), 3D editing, processing multibeam backscatter data (which can reveal information about the texture and composition of the seafloor), processing multibeam water-column data (which can image such phenomena as hydrocarbon-rich plumes rising from seafloor seeps), and the CUBE (Combined Uncertainty and Bathymetric Estimator) technique for processing multibeam bathymetric data.

Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center USGS

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Jan. / Feb. 2012

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