Distribution-Based Time-Varying Ensemble Scientific Data Reduction for Uncertainty Visualization and Analysis

Scientists often study physical phenomena using computer simulation models. The same simulation can generate different datasets because of different input parameter configurations or internal random variables. Therefore, each grid point is represented by multiple data values from simulation runs, and we call this type of data ensemble dataset. To gain insight into the physical phenomenon, scientists often have to visualize and analyze the ensemble datasets with uncertainty. Distribution-based data representation is a popular approach to handling the ensemble dataset and supporting uncertainty visualization. However, storing a time-varying ensemble dataset needs hundreds or even thousands of times storage size. Given the size of the time-varying ensemble dataset, it is natural to develop storage-reduced data representation to facilitate the time-varying ensemble data exploration. We propose a novel data representation to compactly represent the time-varying scientific data for uncertainty visualization and analysis. Our approach decouples data on the temporal domain into two types of distributions and stores. One distribution summarizes the data values on the temporal domain, and the other distribution describes the occurrence probability of a data value on the temporal domain. Our approach can provide time-varying ensemble scientific data analysis with uncertainty quantification and detailed temporal feature evolution with less storage requirement.