Spatio-temporal analysis and visualization using SPH for dam-break and flood disasters in a GIS environment

Based on the geospatial data, and supported by the water resource and civil engineering data, the dam-break and flood simulation results can be dynamically visualized in a creative 3 Dimensional(3D) spatio-temporal Geographic Information System(GIS). Moreover, the spatio-temporal analysis, the bi-temporal comparison and theme statistic analysis are able to provide details of the inundated area. The analysis results of the flood outcomes can help the decision maker on disaster governance, emergency response, and evaluations of the damage. This paper proposed an innovated integration of geoinformatic technologies and system hydrodynamics method to model the complex geographical processes and evaluate the effects of the disasters in a spatio-temporal GIS. By taking the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation output results into spatio-temporal modeling, the 3D dynamic visualization of GIS was achieved. Besides, a successful case study was also introduced in this paper. The visualization effects were dynamic and realistic, while the spatio-temporal analysis results were accurate and intuitive. More significantly, although GIS technologies has been developed for about 60 years and it has been adapted to many domains, like the water resource management research and application field, there are still limitations on the data sources used in GIS. As with these interdisciplinary research developments, advanced data sources from other research fields have been provided to GIS, which optimized and expanded the GIS features.