THE PROBLEM
The primary goal of the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District
is to protect the public from the harmful effects of air pollution
and to achieve and maintain air quality standards. In order to make
decisions that protect the public and to report accurate information
to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), air pollution control
authorities need good ways of analyzing and displaying data.
Of special interest to the EPA are the prevailing
winds above San Diego County. The District uses air pollution and
wind data as historical records in order to evaluate trends and
origins of contaminated air. Often, transported air pollution is
carried on the wind from Los Angeles to San Diego. The District
is responsible for documenting air pollution that originated elsewhere,
thereby avoiding EPA-administered fines for air pollution that is
not organic to San Diego County.
To provide the EPA with accurate information
on prevailing winds, the Air Pollution Control District uses a “windrose
chart.” This chart tells authorities how frequently the wind
blows at a certain speed in a given direction. There are many applications
and programs for studying windrose charts, however, most analyze
only one specific dataset at a time.
“For the type of work that we do, it
was necessary to use a program that can read data in the ‘AIRS’
format, the universal format for the air monitoring community,”
said Jean Timmerman, an air resources specialist. “PV WAVE
from Visual Numerics, Inc., was the only commercially available
program the District found that could read data from the many different
sources that use the AIRS data format.”
THE SOLUTION
“My group was first attracted to Visual Numerics after learning
that PV-WAVE had worked successfully in other projects within the
Air Pollution 
Control
District,” Timmerman said. “Then, after seeing a successful
demonstration with EPA data from Colorado, we became even more interested.
We eventually decided to implement PV-WAVE for three primary reasons:
it’s a flexible product, giving us the ability to import many
data formats and generate multiple views of windrose data; it’s
a complete solution combining state-of-the-art visualizations with
advanced data analysis tools; and it’s a stable product, meaning
we won’t lose valuable development time dealing with system
failures or bugs.”
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
"We found that PV-WAVE's plotting capabilities were perfect
for reading in and making sense of windrose chart data,” Timmerman
said. Monitoring winds, however, is not the only work done by the
Air Pollution Control District. “We also encounter a number
of graphics-type problems during our daily routine, including the
need to visualize real-time air quality data. For these reasons,
we needed more than a pre-built application that restricted customization.
We needed a tool that offered powerful data analysis and visualization
functionality, which could be customized to our specific needs.
Because PV-WAVE is a fourth-generation programming language, it
gives us the ability to write applications that address our specific
data analysis problems,” she added.
PV-WAVE provides significant value not only
because of its powerful visualization tools, but also the strong
data analysis capabilities offered through Visual Numerics’
IMSL Numerical Libraries, which are included in PV-WAVE. Other key
strengths, according to Timmerman, are PV WAVE’s ability to
read many different data formats from many different sources, and
the ability it gives users to develop a customized solution.
Visual Numerics’ technical support
staff has been very accommodating, according to Timmerman. “When
we call for assistance, they quickly provide the knowledge and expertise
we need to move forward. That’s critical when working under
tight deadlines, as I usually am. Furthermore, the software’s
online documentation is excellent. Most questions are easily answered
without leaving my desk.”
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.
