An Interactive Web Visualization for Watershed Topology

Explore the fascinating world of watershed topology through an interactive web visualization in this conference talk from Strange Loop. Discover how rainwater flows through interconnected watersheds, from the ground to oceans, as Mark Phillips demonstrates an open-source JavaScript web app. Learn about the challenges and solutions in creating this visualization, including data reformatting, directed acyclic graph algorithms, data set optimization, and graphics performance issues. Gain insights into the architecture behind displaying nearly 100,000 polygons in a browser, and see how the app instantly reveals upstream and downstream areas from any location with a simple mouse pointer. The presentation covers the project description, conceptual explanations, directional graphs, terrain grids, inverse DAGs, watershed boundary datasets, interactive map optimization, and mobile version development, concluding with a Q&A session.