Visualising and experiencing geological flows in Virtual Reality

Resilience to natural hazards depends on a person's ability to envision an event and its consequences. While real life experience is precious, a real event experience is rare, and sometimes fatal. So, virtual reality provides a way to getting that experience more frequently and without the inconvenience of demise. Virtual reality can also enhance an event to make it more visible, as often things happen in bad weather, at night or in other inconvenient moments.

The 3DTeLC software (an output from an ERASMUS+ project, http://3dtelc.lmv.uca.fr/) can handle high-resolution 3D topographic models and the user can study natural hazard phenomena with geological tools in virtual reality. Topography acquired from drone or plane acquisitions, can be made more accessible to researchers, public and stakeholders. In the virtual environment a person can interact with the scene from the first person, drone or plane point of view and can do geological interpretation at different visualization scales. Immersive and interactive visualization is an efficient communication tool (e.g. Tibaldi et al 2019 – Bulletin of Volcanology DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00445-020-01376-6).

We have taken the 3DTeLC workflow and integrated a 2.5D flow simulation programme (VOLCFLOW-C). The dynamic outputs from VOLCFLOW-C are superimposed into a single visualization using a new tool developed from scratch, which we call VRVOLC. This coupled visualization adds dynamic and realistic understanding of events like lahars, lava flows, landslides and pyroclastic flows. We present two examples of this, one developed on the Digital Terrain Model of Chachani Volcano, Arequipa Peru, to assist with flood and lahar visualisation (in conjunction with INGEMMET, UNESCO IGCP project 692 Geoheritage for Resilience and Cap 20-25 Clermont Risk). And another with an Icelandic debris slide that occurred in late 2014 possibly related to permafrost degradation (in conjunction with the ANR PERMOLARDS project).

We thank out 3DTeCL colleagues, without which this would not be possible, and acknowledge financial support for the PERMOLARDS project from French National Research Agency (ANR-19-CE01-0010), and this is part of UNESCO IGCP 692 Geoheritage for Resilience.