THE PROBLEM
Headquartered in Cambridge, The British Antarctic Survey, (BAS) employs approximately 420 people. The Group's mission is to execute a world-class scientific program in the Antarctic and related regions, addressing key global and regional issues through research, survey and long-term monitoring, investing in its staff to sustain a skilled and adaptable workforce, developing and maintaining necessary facilities, and linking to business where appropriate. In doing so, BAS supports the mission of the Natural Environmental Research Council and positions the United Kingdom for an active and influential leadership role in Antarctic affairs.

BAS is comprised of five divisions and a small directorate. The largest division is the Administration and Logistics Division, which together with the Environment and Information Division, supports the work of the scientists. The scientists are grouped into the three remaining divisions: biological sciences, geological sciences, and physical sciences. Specific BAS activities are organized and managed from the Cambridge headquarters, which provides offices, laboratories and workshops to support all of the scientific work being done in the Antarctic.

The BAS research program is planned on a five-year timetable. The current program, entitled Antarctic Science in the Global Context: 2000-2005, is based on proposals from staff members. After an international peer review, the most highly rated proposals were integrated into BAS's infrastructure capability. The result is a suite of nine ongoing projects in the medical and environmental sciences, and independent research activities.

One of BAS's current objectives is to understand flow dynamics of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The main focus is on regions of confined fast glacier flow, which are commonly called ice streams. In Antarctica almost all ice flux towards the coastline is confined to well-defined regions of high ice flow. The ice streams are surrounded by slower moving ice. The fast flow of ice streams is due to deformation of the sediments below them. Because the basal ice is at pressure melting point there is sufficient water to lubricate the sediments and make them mechanically weak. Ice stream velocities are known to change with time, and there is at least one example of an active ice stream coming to a halt about 160 years ago.

"The particular project that I'm working on," said Hilmar Gudmundsson, a BAS scientist, "is to develop and verify formal inverse methods for retrieving information on basal conditions from surface data. The method has already been developed and is currently used to invert surface data obtained by remote sensing to calculated basal topography and basal slipperiness on ice streams." As a part of the inverse procedure, Gudmundsson explained, considerable amounts of data must be processed and the visualization of these results is a challenging problem.

THE SOLUTION
“PV-WAVE from Visual Numerics has been used effectively as a visualization tool to this vexing problem,” Gudmundsson stated. “The combination of a high-level programming language and excellent plotting capabilities are the main reason PV-WAVE was used. The visualization of data often requires some resampling, interpolations, or some other manipulation of the data, and it is really convenient to be able to do these things fast and efficiently with the same tool that is used for the actual visualization. I've been able to do all the modeling work and visualization work with just a Fortran compiler and PV-WAVE. This reduces the time needed to learn how to use various software packages, and leaves me more time for doing science."

PV-WAVE is an open environment for developing and deploying Visual Data Analysis (VDA) applications that help customers turn raw data into meaningful information. These VDA applications let users visualize and manipulate complex or extremely large data sets to detect and display patterns, trends, anomalies, and other vital information. PV-WAVE includes hundreds of mathematical and statistical analysis routines from Visual Numerics' IMSL Numerical Libraries, as well as image processing, signal processing, mapping, and general data manipulation features. Engineers, scientists, business analysts, and software developers access this robust and extensive set of functions through an array-oriented programming language. PV-WAVE also includes advanced graphical user interface development tools that facilitate the construction of intuitive front-ends, making the product's functionality easily accessible to others in an organization.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT
Gudmundsson said that he realizes a variety of benefits from his use of PV-WAVE. Among them, he cites the ability to visualize complex three-dimensional velocity and strain-rate fields. "I also find it very convenient to be able to work with date variables, which I can do with PV-WAVE's date/time function. In addition, the programming language is very powerful, giving me tremendous flexibility in the code that I construct." Gudmundsson added that he and his colleagues have developed a joint library of PV-WAVE functions and subroutines, which "saves tons of time."

As the only person at BAS who uses PV-WAVE, Gudmundsson said Visual Numerics' product support group in the United Kingdom is very important because he doesn't have access to other PV-WAVE users who can assist him in the event of technical difficulties. "I have found the level of support from the U.K. office to be excellent," he said.

Specifically, Gudmundsson remembers mentioning to product support "some problems with the contouring algorithm a few years ago." According to Gudmundsson, the issues were solved very quickly, and now "the contouring possibilities are simply outstanding."

WORLD CLASS PRODUCTS, SERVICES, AND SUPPORT
Visual Numerics has provided technical software solutions for numerical analysis and visualization for over 30 years. The company's software products help users understand complex data from a variety of sources and build business-critical applications. Visual Numerics offers two product lines: the IMSL® Numerical Libraries for powerful mathematical and statistical analysis and the PV-WAVE® visual data analysis development environment. Visual Numerics also offers customized consulting services for applications that involve mathematical, statistical, or visual data analysis to meet today’s business analytical needs.