VISUALIZATION AND ANALYSIS SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGIES

NCAR’s Visualization & Analysis Systems Technologies (VAST) section helps scientists, students, policy makers, and the public better understand enormous volumes of geoscientific data. Numerical simulations of complex natural phenomena, running on some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, and a wide range of earth observing instruments all produce tremendous amounts of numerical data about the natural world. Helping explore, explain, understand, and gain insight into these complex troves of data is the mission of VAST.

VAST leads the development of open source software used by scientists, university students, and faculty to visualize and analyze their data; creates informative, data-driven visualizations to help explain complicated science, to the public, policy makers, and even other scientists; educates practicing and aspiring new scientists on the most effective use of emerging technologies; and conducts research into new ways to manage and extract meaning from geoscience data.