The Design and Development of the Hainan Province "Digital Ocean"

Platform and Applications on Natural Disasters Prevention and

Reduction

Lei Wang

1,2,*

and Xin Zhang

Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, China;

Key Laboratory of Earth Observation of Hainan Province, Sanya Institute of Remote Sensing, Sanya, Hainan Province

572029, China.

Email: wanglei98@radi.ac.cn.

Keywords: Digital Ocean, Hainan Province, natural disasters prevention and reduction

Abstract: Since the Hainan Province is located at the south end of China, it is the key province to implement the Belt

and Road initiative. In order to support the construction of international tourism island and Digital Hainan

Province, it is required to build Hainan Province "Digital Ocean" platform to integrate ocean environment

three-dimensional (3D) monitoring data, including sea, land and air data, to support ocean information

visualization and decision-making support. Because of the complex of ocean data, such as spatio-temporal,

3D and dynamics, new technical framework of "Digital Ocean" platform and new techniques, such as

multisource spatial data organization and management and self-adaptive visualization, need to be

developed. This paper introduces the design and development of Hainan Province "Digital Ocean" platform,

with characteristics of “software, data and services all-in-one integration” and “dynamic, high-resolution,

automatic ocean information procession”, and its applications on natural disasters prevention and reduction.

The technical framework and development method of ocean 3D visualization model based on earth sphere

model are introduced. The key techniques, such as multisource, mass spatial data organization and

management, mass spatial information self-adaptive visualization, submarine, seacoast, island 3-D

visualization, and the multi-layer, multi-time information visualization, are developed. The Super Typhoon

Sarika, which happened in Sanya city on October 2016, is used as a case study to demonstrate the whole

process of forecasting, risk prediction, and disaster assessment of typhoon storm surge. This platform will

be a base to integrate ocean environment 3D monitoring data and other ocean information resources of

Hainan Province. The construction of Hainan Province "Digital Ocean" platform will boost the development

of ocean informatization and ocean economic industry, and help to build a “Strong Ocean Province”.

1 INTRODUCTION

The Hainan Province is the biggest province in

China, with around 204 square kilometres areas,

including around 200 square kilometres ocean areas.

Since it is located at the south end of China, it is the

key province to implement the Belt and Road

initiative. However, Hainan Province is also one of

the most serious provinces of ocean disaster in

China. In 2016, 16 people was dead and the

economic loss is around 0.569 billion Yuan due to

the ocean disaster. The main disasters are storm

surge, sea wave and coast erosion. The 3D

monitoring data from buoy, submerged buoy,

ground wave radar and monitoring station are

important for ocean disaster monitoring and

forecasting and have the characteristics of

networking acquire, distributed storage and spatial-

temporal dynamics. “Digital Ocean” platform is the

base for ocean information acquire and processing,

ocean disaster monitoring and forecasting, ocean

information production and services of ocean

pollution forecasting and loss evaluation, it is an

important support of ocean disasters prevention and

reduction.

There are a lot of studies on Digital Earth (Chen

and Genderen, 2008; Goodchild, 200; Guo et al.,

2009; Guo et al., 2010) and Digital Ocean (Hou,

1999; Su et al., 2006; Zhang et al., 2011; Dong et al.,

2010; Patrikalakis et al., 2000; Zhang et al., 2017),

however, few studies were focus on province or city

458

Wang, L. and Zhang, X.

The Design and Development of the Hainan Province "Digital Ocean" Platform and Applications on Natural Disasters Prevention and Reduction.

In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Environment and Geoscience (IWEG 2018), pages 458-462

ISBN: 978-989-758-342-1

level. In order to support the construction of

international tourism island and Digital Hainan

Province, it is required to build Hainan Province

"Digital Ocean" platform to integrate all ocean

environment 3D monitoring data, including sea, land

and air data to support ocean information

visualization and decision-making support. Because

of the complex of ocean data, such as spatio-

temporal, 3D and dynamics, new technical

framework of "Digital Ocean" platform and new

techniques such as multisource spatial data

organization and management and self-adaptive

visualization need to be developed.

This paper introduces the design and

development of Hainan Province "Digital Ocean"

platform, with characteristic of “software, data and

services all-in-one integration” and “dynamic, high-

resolution, automatic ocean information

procession”, and its applications on natural disasters

prevention and reduction.

2 SYSTEM DESIGN

The Hainan Province "Digital Ocean" Platform is an

integrated system that integrates ocean factor

visualization and ocean phenomenon visualization

models, databases, graphical user interfaces, and

ocean information services to help the public and

decision makers for ocean information sharing

(Figure 1). It also can be used for natural disasters

prevention and reduction for forecasting, risk

prediction, and disaster loss assessment of typhoon

storm surge.

This system has a multi-tier architecture

consisting of presentation, business logic, and data

tiers. Figure 1 provides an overview of system

architecture. The presentation tier is the interface for

users to interact with system, users can submit

requests from the presentation tier, and it also can be

used as the system client viewer for accessing 3D

ocean factor and phenomenon visualization

information. The business tier copes with the

requests from the presentation tier. The business tier

has three parts, including spatial database engine and

metadata management, ocean information 3D

visualization model and ocean information services.

The data tier includes all available data sources,

such as basic geographic database, remote sensing

image database, ocean basic geographic database

and 3D and dynamic ocean database. The database

server is used to manage those sharing databases in

this system, and it also supplies data services for the

application server and spatial analysis and model

analysis server.

3 THE CONSTRUCTION OF 3D

VISUALIZATION MODEL

BASED ON EARTH SPHERE

MODEL

As the base of Hainan Province "Digital Ocean"

platform, the construction of 3D visualization model

based on earth sphere model is very important, the

technical realizations are as following: firstly, the

reference datum of earth sphere model is defined as:

the model is based on the 3D coordinate system of

the earth centroid as the original point O, it is a

right-handed Cartesian coordinate system with Z

axis pointing north direction, Y axis is from west to

east, and the X axis is the orthogonal basis of Z and

Y axis; secondly, the Digital Orthophoto Maps

(DOM) is fused with Digital Elevation Model (DEM)

to create real 3D terrain model by project

transformation, geometric transformation (including

pan, rotation, zoom in and zoom out etc.) and

texture mapping using DirectX; then through the

overlay of vector data with DEM and integration of

building model, scene model and facility model with

terrain model to implement 3D visualization model

based on earth sphere model. Finally, navigation

operations such as rotation, pan, zoom in and zoom

out, and spatial query are implemented by using free

Active X in client side.

The construction of 3D visualization model

includes the following 5 steps.

The Design and Development of the Hainan Province "Digital Ocean" Platform and Applications on Natural Disasters Prevention and

Reduction

459

Figure 1: System design.

3.1 The Modeling of Earth Sphere

The modeling of earth sphere includes the following

steps, the establishment of earth sphere model, the

calculation of sphere parameter, and sphere surface

grid generation.

3.2 The Construction of Terrain Field

The data used in "Digital Ocean" system include

terrain data, remote sensing images, and texture data

etc. The construction of terrain field means

integration, merging, and overlay of remote sensing

images, texture and DEM data to implement 3D

visualization model based on earth sphere model and

exporting to terrain field files.

3.3 Vector Data Overlay and

Visualization.

The vector data used in "Digital Ocean" system

include basic geographic data (administrative

boundary, river, water course and road) and thematic

data (ocean resources distribution, biochemistry

factor distribution and water-depth distribution etc.)

consisting of point, line and polygon, all of these

data need to be integrated in "Digital Ocean"

system. Vector data overlay and visualization mean

the overlay of these vector data into 3D terrain field

based on earth sphere model and exporting to vector

field files.

3.4 3D Modeling and Integration

The 3D models in the "Digital Ocean" system

consist of building models, scene models and

facility models. Among them, building models

include port, dock, observation station etc. models;

scene models include trees, fish, dam, light tower

and seabed pipeline models; facility models include

airplane and ship models. 3D modeling and

integration mean building, scene and facility

modeling and overlay these models into vector data

and 3D terrain field to implement 3D visualization

model based on earth sphere model. There are two

ways of modeling: one is modeling using 3D

modeling software such as 3dMax, another is

modeling in vector and terrain fields based on earth

sphere model.

3.5 Navigation Operations Based on

Earth Sphere Model

The navigation operations based on earth sphere

model include rolling, zoom in, zoom out, pan,

attribute queries, length and area measure etc.,

which are the base of sphere operation.

3.6 Publishing of Field Data

The publishing of field data includes publishing of

terrain field, vector field and model field data. When

these field data are published, users in the client side

could select any of vector field and model field data

IWEG 2018 - International Workshop on Environment and Geoscience

460

and load them into terrain field. Among them, a tool

need to be developed to publish the terrain field data

and Internet Information Services (IIS) could be

used to publish the vector field and model field data.

4 KEY TECHNIQUES

DEVELOPMENT

Figure 2: Sea temperature visualization on 3D

visualization model.

The key techniques, such as multisource, mass

spatial data organization and management and mass

spatial information self-adaptive visualization

oriented "Digital Ocean", are developed.

Furthermore, the key techniques of submarine,

seacoast, island 3-D visualization are developed to

implement submarine roaming based on DEM and

topographical and physiognomic data. Finally, the

multi-layer, multi-time information (e.g. hydrology

and meteorology information) visualization

techniques are developed to implement visualization

and information queries of ocean disasters

information field (Figure 2).

5 SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT AND

APPLICATIONS ON NATURAL

DISASTERS PREVENTION

AND REDUCTION

The Skyline software is used to implement the

Hainan Province "Digital Ocean" platform and

applications on natural disasters prevention and

reduction. The Super Typhoon Sarika, which

happened in Sanya city on October 2016, is used as

a case study to demonstrate the whole process of

forecasting, risk prediction, and disaster assessment

of typhoon storm surge.

The Super Typhoon Sarika, which happened

October 17-18 2016, made lots of economic loss in

Sanya city. The tidal level data collected in three

tidal stations in Sanya city were used to show the

whole process of tidal up and down caused by the

Super Typhoon Sarika. The flood submerge areas

with different tidal levels were showed on the 3D

visualization model based on earth sphere model

with the help of the key techniques developed such

as 3-D visualization and multi-layer, multi-time

information visualization (Figure 3). The "Digital

Ocean" platform will be a very useful tool for the

city management decision makers, such as

department of ocean of Sanya City, to use for

forecasting, risk prediction, and disaster assessment

of typhoon storm surge. The spatial query tool will

be used to query the tidal level information of each

tidal station during the whole process of the Super

Typhoon Sarika. The spatial analysis and query

tools will be used to create and show the flood risk

and disaster assessment maps on the 3D

visualization model, which will help the decision

makers to query flood submerge areas, flood risk,

flood loss information and decision making support

for storm surges disasters prevention and reduction.

Figure 3: Flood submerge areas simulation with 3m tidal

levels on 3D visualization model.

6 CONCLUSIONS

This paper introduces the design and development of

Hainan Province "Digital Ocean" platform, with

characteristics of “software, data and services all-in-

one integration” and “dynamic, high-resolution,

automatic ocean information procession”, and its

applications on natural disasters prevention and

reduction. The technical framework and

development method of ocean 3D visualization

model based on earth sphere model are introduced.

The key techniques, such as multisource, mass

spatial data organization and management and mass

The Design and Development of the Hainan Province "Digital Ocean" Platform and Applications on Natural Disasters Prevention and

Reduction

461

spatial information self-adaptive visualization

oriented "Digital Ocean", are developed.

Furthermore, the key techniques of submarine,

seacoast, island 3-D visualization are developed to

implement submarine roaming based on DEM and

topographical and physiognomic data. Finally, the

multi-layer, multi-time information (e.g. hydrology

and meteorology information) visualization

techniques are developed to implement information

query of ocean disasters information field. The

Super Typhoon Sarika, which happened in Sanya

city on October 2016, is used as a case study to

demonstrate the whole process of forecasting, risk

prediction, and disaster assessment of typhoon storm

surge. This platform will be a base to integrate ocean

environment 3D monitoring data (e.g. sea, land and

air data) and all other ocean information resources of

Hainan Province. The construction of Hainan

Province "Digital Ocean" platform will boost the

development of ocean informatization and ocean

economic industry, and help to build a “Strong

Ocean Province”.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author expresses the appreciation of funds

received from

Hainan Provincial Natural Science

Foundation of China

(#20164178) and Hainan

Province major science and technology projects

(#ZDKJ2016015-1).

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