A distributed virtual geographic environment system for risk assessment of Dam-break

To improve working efficiency of the risk assessment of Dam-break in Barrier Lake, this paper employs theories and technologies of the distributed virtual reality and geographic information system (GIS) to construct a distributed virtual geographic environment system. The proposed web-based GIS system provides geographically distributed users with a shared virtual space and a collaborative platform in order to implement risk assessment work. A five-layer system framework was firstly designed to integrate and share geographically distributed resources as well as modeling procedures. Meantime some key technologies including distributed virtual scene modeling, mobile agent computing service and simulation analysis of dam-break flood routing, were discussed to offer a shared and interactive virtual collaborative work geographic environment. Finally, a prototype system was implemented to support risk assessment and impact analysis of dam-break in Barrier Lake.