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Friday, June 20, 2008

As Flood Waters Rise, Geeks Aim to Save Midwest With 3D Rig

Iowa is sinking, and the ravenous waters of the Mississippi River continue to pound away at Illinois levees as the worst floods in years crash into Missouri. It’s there that a team of St. Louis environmental scientists have strung together high-end DLP projectors, strapped on their 3D glasses and set out to tell Americans where not to risk it next time.

As residents of Clarksville, Missouri, stood on makeshift sandbag walls holding back floods from the Mississippi River (top), earth scientists at St. Louis University are simulating floodplains like this one in Cookeville, Tenn., with 3D visualizations (left) developed from topographical mapping animations (right).
(Images, clockwise from top, by Joe Raedle/Getty Images, University of Alabama Geosciences Visualization Laboratory, ESRI)


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