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PROJECT 1

Water Availability Visualization

Aarav Kumar

CSCI1951T Spring 2025

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Project Overview

    • Build visualizations to represent water availability per household per day in water-scarce countries

    • Simulate water in a life-size see-through container in AR, showing the water level rise/fall to mimic changes in availability over time.

Project Brief:

    • Ability to physically see water availability in its real volume in AR in your environment, visualizing year-by-year changes with a dynamically moving water level (i.e. shifting height of the visualization)

Passthrough

    • Learn to evaluate software to build fluid simulations based on time-series data

    • Run a tutorial on building fluid data-visualizations in selected software (Unity)

    • Study impact of immersion and “realness” when displaying volumetric data

Project Goals:

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Scientific Data

Primary Dataset: Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)

    • Evaluated roughly every 5 years since 1992
    • World Bank and FAO (UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization) Data
    • Data is reasonable to represent in life size volume (primary goal)

Supplementary datasets:

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Date

Milestones

Deliverables and Wiki Additions

2/11

Software research and testing. Project proposal

    • Complete research on potential software to use for visualizing time-series water dataInstall researched software and develop a robust assessment rubric to compare the software.
    • Begin preliminary testing of software.
    • Finalize the dataset I will work with based on the ones I have researched.
    • Complete my formal project proposal

2/13

Finalize software and assessment, begin prototyping

    • Complete software testing and write out an assessment summary (in a table or other format) of what makes an effective software for water simulations, to include in the wiki.
    • Finalize a software (or softwares) to use from the ones assessed based on my findings
    • Begin prototyping on that software(s) 

2/20

Finalize a prototype water simulation. Prepare class activity materials.

    • Complete an initial prototype visualization of water based data in selected software.
    • Based on initial prototyping, formulate an assessment criteria and usability target for my final water visualization.
    • Write the evaluation assessment form for the class activity (i.e. to qualitatively compare AR data visualization of water data with the original 2D versions, and asses what works and what doesn't)Begin working on synchronising prototyped visualization to time-series data.

2/25

Refine prototype to be closer to a working model (in terms of usability and aesthetic criteria)

    • Complete a visualization of AR water that meets all (or most) assessment criteria and usability targets (things like appropriate sizing, realness of water effect)
    • Have a working model that shows changes in water level over time (based on time-series data)
    • Refine prototype and begin generalizing to more forms of data (not just water access levels, but also how much water is used in daily activities)

SCHEDULE

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Date

Milestones

Deliverables and Wiki Additions

2/27

Prepare all class activity materials and prepare a tutorial on making  water simulation.

    • Finalize models for all water data used in class activity
    • Compiling existing prototypes and evaluations to write/video a tutorial on how to create a water visualization in my selected software -- add this to the wiki in a new page
    • Finalize materials for class activity (edits to the evaluation assessment Google Form, if any) to compare the web and AR versions of the data visualizations
    • Final edits to models and UI for class activity 

3/04

Class activity and feedback form response collation

    • Conduct the class activity
    • Gather responses from assessment form filled out in the activity
    • Complete and finish final edits to the tutorial on creating water visualizations

3/06

Evaluation and assessment of class activity results. Final project material preparation.

    • Write personal assessment of what worked and didn't for the project and visualizations
    • Compile findings from the responses to the assessment form from class activity in a wiki page
    • Compile my data, findings, and progress pictures into a final presentation/poster

3/13

Final Project

    • Final project presentation and poster

SCHEDULE PT 2.

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    • Comparison of different AR software for fluid visualizations + simulations, compiled in a new wiki page with an assessment rubric and summary

    • As an extension to the above, an assessment criteria and usability target for an effective fluid visualization (to assess my final product)

    • Tutorial on how to create a water/fluid simulation with time-series data using Unity

    • AR vs 2D data comparison page for volumetric data (based on class activity results)

    • Wiki page on AR applications for climate awareness and sustainability

Wiki Additions

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Class Activity

    • Interactive activity where students choose from a list of water-scarce areas and see a (scaled) transparent cube fill up with the total amount of water available to a household in that area per day.

    • Can then choose to compare with similar visualizations of how much water daily activities like showering may take.

    • Compare same data in 2D charts and tables on their laptops, and fill out an evaluative form comparing the two mediums

03/04

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Evaluation

    • Evaluation + comparison of AR software for fluid visualizations (comparison table)

    • Evaluation of AR simulations vs 2D data representations of water-availability data, (what works better, which was more relatable, easier to understand, allowed better retention, how/why?) — conducted via the class activity

Resources

    • Meta XR SDK for Unity – URL
    • Unity Visual Effect Graph Documentation - URL
    • Shader Graph in Unity for Water Effects - URL
    • Real-time Fluid Simulation Guide - URL