An Efficient System for Creating Synthetic InSAR Images from Simulations

In this work we visualize tsunami and earthquake simulation results with graphics hardware acceleration. The rapid improvement in the computational power of graphics hardware and its programmability has made general computation on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) very compelling. We generate Synthetic InSAR images using GPUs. Interference phenomena have formed the underlying theory for Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) in unveiling dynamical Earth movements. In our approach light path differences are defined by the surface values to be visualized. These path differences then modulate the lighting intensity to generate the interference patterns. We can interactively visualize surface deformation patterns by leveraging the computational power of GPUs. Our visualization method is applied to simulations of rupture fault displacements during the tsunamogenic earthquake events, which are vital to understanding the subsequent wave propagation. We also integrate the visualization results into Google Earth virtual globe to provide the geological context of the visualized regions.