Immersive Analytics as a Support Medium for Data-Driven Monitoring in Hydropower

Abstract

Hydropower turbines are large-scale equipment essential to sustainable energy supply chains, and engineers have few opportunities to examine their internal structure. Our Immersive Analytics (IA) application is part of a research project that combines and compares simulated water turbine flows and sensor-measured data, looking for data-driven predictions of the lifetime of the mechanical parts of hydroelectric power plants. Our prototype combines spatial and abstract data in an immersive environment in which the user can navigate through a full-scale model of a water turbine, view simulated water flows of three different energy supply conditions, and visualize and interact with sensor-collected data situated at the reference position of the sensors in the actual turbine. In this paper, we detail our design process, which resulted from consultations with domain experts and a literature review, give an overview of our prototype, and present its evaluation, resulting from semi-structured interviews with experts and qualitative thematic analysis. Our findings confirm the current literature that IA applications add value to the presentation and analysis of situated data, as they show that we advance in the design directions for IA applications for domain experts that combine abstract and spatial data, with conclusions on how to avoid skepticism from such professionals.