Application Development with IRIS Explorer
Paul Morin, The University of Minnesota's Geology Department

The ease in which application development can be done in IRIS Explorer(TM) is a key feature of the product. Paul Morin, a visualization programmer in the geology and geophysics department of the University of Minnesota, counts on IRIS Explorer to create applications for research and educational use.

Morin and his colleagues have developed numerous modules, called the "Minnesota Modules," to visualize earth sciences data, including studies of earthquakes, digital elevation maps and global heat flow. These modules are distributed free of charge via the internet to other earth scientists. Because some modules are created by master's students in computational science, the ease-of-use in developing applications is a fundamental reason Morin has chosen IRIS Explorer for use in his classes.

"Most computer science students are taught algorithms, but not about data," says Morin. "My background and previous research into earthquakes and other environmental studies allows me to provide the students with complex datasets that they then can use, with IRIS Explorer, to construct real-world applications relatively quickly." In fact, in a recent scientific visualization course, several students were able to write modules and create useable applications in an average of just 40 hours, without previous knowledge of IRIS Explorer. Morin describes some of the resulting applications as "ground-breaking" and "the first step in tieing IRIS Explorer to other application software."

Some of the Minnesota Modules include Projector, which projects 2D and 3D data onto more than a dozen standard map projections; CoordCrop, which allows large georeferenced datasets to be cropped by latitude, longitude, depth and elevation; CropQuake, which crops earthquake data by longitude, latitude, depth, year and date orientation; and Beachballs, which displays focal mechanism solutions as 3D "beachballs" or as two crossed lines, and is "breaking new ground in seismology."

Morin has used IRIS Explorer since version 0.8 for Silicon Graphics workstations, and feels NAG's current work in porting the product to numerous platforms is extremely important for users in all applications. "Explorer's ability to perform at a high standard on multiple platforms is absolutely necessary, especially in our setting. I can let students know Explorer is available and they can work on whatever machine they may have access to, being confident that it is performing the same on all machines."

"As datasets grow larger and larger, interactive visualization becomes an important part of the scientific process," states Morin. "We need a fully functional, affordable visualization application environment. We need to use the visualizations in the classroom; we need software that can be on everyone's desk. This means we must have numerous licenses at the cost of single licenses of other visualization software. IRIS Explorer fits both of these needs perfectly."