UIUC Contribution

*Mississippi RiverWeb^SM Museum Consortium*
	UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN		Geographic Modeling Systems Laboratory	Funded by the National Science Foundation
		National Center for Supercomputing Applications

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Overview

Functionality

Modeling

Visualization

Integration

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Team

Overview

Introduction

The Mississippi RiverWeb Museum Consortium constitutes a major project in the RiverWeb^SM Program. Originating at NCSA in 1996 RiverWeb^{SM's
mission is to} leverage emerging computational, visualization, and web technologies to promote inquiry-based learning and public understanding about river system processes. A central objective has been to develop highly interactive Digital River Basin (DRB) learning environments that simulate the interactions between rivers, the land, and life, including human life. Supported by a major NSF since 1998, the Consortium has developed and deployed advanced prootype DRB's at each of the partner institutions.

Digital River Basin in a Nutshell

The DRB's currently deployed in the partner museums enable learners to explore river system characteristics and behaviors across several scales. It provides multiple, independent views into the digitally represented river and adjoining land. For example: channel, floodplain; over/on/under the surface.

Intuitive visitor interfaces and tools facilitate a rich variety of pathways through which learners can navigate through and interact with the underlying scientific data. Embedded in the existing DRB is a comprehensive set of data, experiences, and interactions. It serves as a prototype for a naturalistic experience of virtual environments, blending familiar concepts of mapping and gaming technologies to create an intuitive means for exploring a landscape unconstrained by physical bounds of space and time.

The University of Illinois' Role in the Consortium

As the technical lead in the Consortium, NCSA and the University of Illinois' Geographic Modeling Systems Laboratory (‡www.gis.uiuc.edu) (GMSlab) collaborated closely with its museum partners in all aspects of DRB design, prototyping, testing, and deployment throughout the project. NCSA-GMSlab contributions included:

Exhibit conceptualization, design, prototyping and evaluation
Content integration
Hardware, software, graphics, and data specifications
Interactive display, tool, and interface development and testing
Computational modeling of dynamic processes underlying visitor activities
Data visualization of river basin features and processes
System integration, deployment, and documentation
Consortium web site development.