Wrffire

WRF-Fire Project

This page introduces the possibilities VisTrails provides in relation to the WRF-Fire Simulation project.

3D Visualizations via VisTrails

Above are screen shots from different view angles of a VisTrails visualization of wrf-fire simulation results. Specifically these visualizations illustrate the fire area, as well as the wind vectors on the surface and throughout the volume. The use of stream rakes improves the visualization of the wind's volumetric flow, highlighting the updraft and vortex features in the vector field.

The VisTrail that produces these images reads in the wrfout NetCDF file produced by the simulation. It extracts the specified variables at a single time step, and displays an interactive 3D visualization within a single cell of the VisTrails' spreadsheet. The images shown are screen shots of this cell.

Downloads and Setup

In order to run the above visualizations on your machines, download Vistrails from our website. We can make the additional userpackages and VisTrail files available upon request.

Super Computing Demo 2009

The above discussions highlight the currently available visualization results for the wrf-fire simulations. Below we further address possibilities that can be achieved via VisTrails. This section is intended to inspire conversation concerning what it is you would like to show during your demo's. In particular, discussing interesting visualizations of the data produced on your cluster, as well as the performance information of the cluster during the computation of this data.

Possibilities

"side-by-side comparisons with multiple cells"

Multiple Visualization Windows

In addition to the single cell visualization, it is possible to do multiple cell displays for side-by-side comparisons of different data sets. This may be useful if comparing visualizations from multiple data sets, i.e. two different simulation runs at similar time-steps but with different initial conditions, or the same simulation run at two different time steps (shown above).

Performance Visualization

For the SC2009 demo purposes, we envision using the multiple cell display to simultaneously display the 3D visualizations of the simulation outputs with performance graphs that track the computations performed by the nodes on the cluster. An example of the multiple cell visualizations is shown above. Furthermore, it is possible to open multiple sheets within the VisTrails spreadsheet, such that performance graphs can be hidden while viewing the simulation visualizations, and vice-versa.

Scheduling Remote Executions

We have support for the execution of the wrf-fire simulation code on a remote server, in addition to the visualization. Our wrf-fire server code would need to be slightly modified in order to correctly communicate with your scheduler. The remote execution model supports the querying of new simulation result files and handles the transfer of new files to the local machine. With this added functionality, the entire simulation code can be managed through VisTrails.

Key Questions

• Would it be useful to visualize performance data measured on your cluster during the simulation computation?
• Would you like us to handle the running of the wrf-fire simulation?
  • If so, how does one schedule a process on your cluster?