Liza Kolev Project 1 Proposal Plan
Visualization of Countries' Groundwater Levels and Water Economies 2000-2019
why_water (1080p).mp4Motivation
In 2014, I learned about the water crisis in science class, and I decided I wanted to help. So, I started a fundraising campaign with Charity: Water, a non-profit organization that provides drinking water to people in developing nations by taking the money from fundraisers to rehabilitate wells or completely build new water sources.
One of the main issues of the water crisis is that countries may have the groundwater available to provide drinkable water to their population, but they do not have the resources to retrieve it. My main research question: what if we could have collaborative VR data visualization that would help mitigate the water crisis? To start, I would like it to be possible that people could look at the data for each country together at the same time so that a greater population of the world can learn about the water crisis.
Groundwater Data - 1676312445910.mp4Groundwater Dataset
The groundwater level of each country is being measured as the long-term annual average groundwater recharge, generated from precipitation within the boundaries of the country. Renewable groundwater resources of the country are computed either by estimating annual infiltration rate (in arid countries) or by computing river base flow (in humid countries). The data is a CSV file that can be found online here.
Water Economy Data.mp4Water Economy Dataset
The water economy of each country is being measured as the percentage of population using drinking water from an improved source that is accessible on premises, available when needed and free from fecal and priority chemical contamination. Improved water sources include piped water, boreholes or tubewells, protected dug wells, protected springs, and packaged or delivered water. The data is a CSV file that can be found online here.
Both datasets have data from 2000 to 2019, so the objective is to have the visualizations show the data for each year. While it would be great to have all the countries in the data visualization, I will start off with only 2 or 3 countries. If time allows and I have a good understanding of all the software being used, I will try to additional countries.
Milestones
02/14/23:
Find water economy data and decide on which groundwater data to use (add to scientific data page)
Sift through data and decide what/how will be visualizing it
Install Blender and run through the tutorials on the wiki
Pick BlenderVR or Unity for VR visualization and go through tutorials
02/16:
Determine what criteria will be evaluated and how that will be evaluated
Create survey for class activity
Get started on first Earth/water layer of 3D model and VR visualizations
02/23:
Have the layers showing the ground water underground done
Have water economy data done
Research how to make 3D model and VR collaboration friendly
02/28:
In-class activity ready
Make any changes to model and VR based on feedback from class-activity
03/02:
Finish setting up collaboration features of VR visualization (like DinoVR’s collaboration feature)
03/07:
Make video tutorials for 3D visualization and for VR visualization
03/09:
Contribute to wiki with data, tutorials, and pages; Make sure both visualizations work in collaboration settings
In-Class Activity
Like with Google Earth VR and Web, students will use the 3D model and the VR visualization to look at countries; this can be done in pairs or individually as the collaboration part of the project will not be fully implemented by the day of the in-class activity.
Afterwards, there will be a Google Forms survey asking about each visualization and how they would rate different criteria of the visualizations:
Understanding of data from labeling or colors
Ease of rotation, zoom, etc. (essentially moving around the visualization)
More criteria will be chosen once visualization creation has started. The data from this survey would become an official page on the wiki and will also be used to improve the visualizations as the collaboration aspect of the project is finalized.
Wiki Deliverables
One of the first Wiki deliverables will be updating the Blender page on how to convert CSV/Excel data into a 3D model. There will be a video tutorial of this process. Another early Wiki deliverable will be adding the data found from researching for this project onto the Scientific Data page, even if the data was not used in the end.
A deliverable that will probably occur at the end of the project will be a page with the results from the class activity and an evaluation of Blender as a 3D model software and Unity/BlenderV
Add data to scientific data page (includes data not used in project but found during research)
Page on evaluation of Blender as 3D model software and Unity/BlenderVR as VR software
Collaboration Aspect
The aim for this project in terms of collaboration is similar to what we saw with DinoVR in class. Due to my current level of knowledge, I am aiming for only two people to be able to enter the VR visualization and to see the data at the same time. However, unlike DinoVR, I would like it to be that the users have two separate pointers so that they can see each other.