A 3D Virtual Environment for Storm Surge Flooding Animation

In this paper, we present a storm surge flooding animation system using Three-Dimensional (3D) visualization of real life Geographic Information System (GIS) data. Putting together ground elevation with building information provided by Open Street Maps (OSM), we can recreate real life cities (e.g., South Miami Beach in this paper) in a 3D environment. The 3D terrain development and visualization are done with the aid of the game engine Unity. With this tool, learning about storm surge and hurricanes can be an interactive experience. Moreover, since the system more closely portrays a real life environment, visualizing the effects of storm surge can help users study past hurricane disasters as well as possible forecasted hurricane events. For an immersive experience, we connect the system with an Integrated Computer Augmented Virtual Environment (I-CAVE) to give users the capability of navigation through the terrain in a human-scale view.