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The QNET-CFD project showed that making trusted and validated computa-
tional and experimental datasets widely available is of great importance to the EU
scientific community; together with the integrated processing of CFD and EFD
data, which requires appropriate access and manipulation tools. The QNET-CFD
web portal has become the most effective and striking way to analyze and present
the elaborated scientific data; obviously, new SV tools will emerge in the future,
expected to provide more interactive visual access, manipulation, selection, and
processing functionality, which basic design has been work-out in the QFView
architecture defined for the ALICE project.
1.2.3 LASCOT: Visualization as Decision-Making Aid
The LASCOT project [ 51 ] was part of the EUREKA/ITEA initiative. The Infor-
mation Technology European Advancement (ITEA) program for research and
development in middleware is jointly promoted by the Public Authorities of the
EU Members States together with large European industries, see Fig. 1.22 .
The goal of LASCOT was to design, develop, and demonstrate the potential
benefits of distributed collaborative decision-support technology to the ''future
cyber-enterprise in the global economy''; the LASCOT demonstrator was to:
• Support access to traditional information systems and to Web data;
• Enable situation assessment, and provide decision-support facilities as well as
simulation and validation facilities to support business decisions;
• Include current, enhanced-as-required security tools;
• Make use of visualization technology for critical tasks such as decision making
and knowledge management;
• Produce an on line learning application to facilitate the embedding of the
platform, by the users.
The scenario that was retained to demonstrate the LASCOT system is illus-
trated in Fig. 1.23 shows the various '''actors'' who are aided by the LASCOT
system in monitoring a crisis situation and in making decisions. The project called
for 3D visualization research and for the development of 3D presentation tools
capable of treating general purpose and highly conceptual information in an
appropriate and readily understandable manner. In this project, the research was
focused on the visualization and manipulation of graphical content in a distributed
network environment. Graphical middleware and 3D desktop prototypes [ 52 ] were
specialized for situational awareness.
A state-of-the-art review during the LASCOT proposal preparation did not
identify any publicly available large-scale distributed application of this kind. The
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