Virtual reality visualization of geophysical flows: A framework

This paper presents a comprehensive Virtual Reality (VR) based framework for visualizing numerical simulations of geophysical flows in a realistic and immersive manner. The framework allows integrating output data from various mesh-based Eulerian numerical models into a VR environment, enabling users to interact with and explore the terrain and geophysical flows through the VR experience. Three case studies, including a snow avalanche, quick clay landslide, and flash flood in Norway, demonstrate its versatility. The VR environment offers intuitive menus and user interactions, allowing users to read flow depth and velocity values, facilitating a direct link between numerical data and their visual representation. This framework can reshape geophysical flow hazard identification and disaster management by integrating physics-based numerical modeling results into VR Environments, thus enhancing knowledge dissemination among experts, the general public, non-expert stakeholders, and policymakers. The paper also highlights challenges and opportunities identified during the integration, guiding future developments.