Uncertainty-Aware Jacobi Set Computation

Abstract

We present an uncertainty-aware Jacobi set computation method. In general, Jacobi sets are topological descriptors that capture the gradient alignments of two scalar fields, as, e.g., used for multi-field visualization. We adopt and reformulate an existing computational approach that relies on an edge-based identification of Jacobi set edges on a given triangulation. Our extension to uncertainty visualization builds upon a versatile, spatially coherent uncertainty model for pairs of scalar fields based on multivariate normal distributions. We propagate the uncertainty analytically, thereby lifting the original Jacobi set computation to uncertain inputs. Furthermore, we present an overlay of visual mappings specifically designed to show the Jacobi sets along with different facets of uncertainty information. Both the uncertainty model and uncertainty-aware method are validated against a Monte Carlo approach on an analytic dataset and applied to two use cases from fluid dynamics and weather ensembles.

11 pages, 6 figures