Visualizing the Seismic Spectral Response of the 1999 Chi-Chi Earthquake Using Volume Rendering Technique

Abstract

This paper presents an innovative method using volume rendering computer graphics techniques for visualizing the spectral information of a seismic response, using the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake in Taiwan as an example. In conventional visualizations of the seismic response, a response spectrum is limited to a particular location, while a spectral response map is constrained to a particular natural period. As a result, the peak pseudoacceleration may be missed. The proposed method represents spectral data in a three-dimensional volume, in which the