Virtual Reality Used to Study Haiti, Baja Earthquakes

Geologists at the University of California, Davis, are getting a close-up look at the effects of recent catastrophic earthquakes in Haiti and Baja California — without setting foot off campus. Virtual reality equipment at the UC Davis Keck Center for Active Visualization in Earth Sciences is allowing researchers to assess damage and predict whether faults are likely to move again in the near future.

The project could also be a foretaste of future disaster response, when detailed, near real-time three-dimensional imaging may enable both emergency planners and scientists to help from afar.

"Since the Haiti disaster in January, several large earthquakes have caused significant loss of life and property around the world," said Louise Kellogg, professor of geology at UC Davis and director of the Keck Center. "While such a series of large earthquakes is not unusual, statistically speaking, it does focus attention on how vulnerable societies are to such events — and on the need for better preparation and understanding of earthquakes."

The UC Davis facility, a collaboration among computer scientists and geologists, features projection screens on three walls that create an immersive, interactive environment. Using the facility, scientists can walk — or fly — into a three-dimensional, virtual representation of a landscape.

The U.S. Geological Survey tapped the center's scientists immediately after the Jan. 12 Haiti earthquake to help analyze the very large sets of data coming in from satellites and aerial imaging of the disaster area.

A magnitude 7.2 earthquake that struck near Mexicali just south of the Mexico-U.S. border on April 4 provided another opportunity for the Keck Center to gather and analyze data.

Much of the earthquake data used by the Keck Center researchers is collected by a form of imaging known as LiDAR, for light detection and ranging. LiDAR scans the ground with pulses of laser light to create a very accurate, three-dimensional representation of the Earth's surface — including buildings, geological features and vegetation.

At UC Davis, LiDAR images are being combined with existing topographic maps and aerial photographs using software called Crusta, developed by Tony Bernardin, a graduate student in computer science at UC Davis.

The software allows researchers to "fly" over the terrain, swoop down to examine interesting features and pick out and highlight details that would otherwise be hard to see.