The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa is expanding its role in shaping the state’s energy and resilience future through a new $1.8-million federal investment supporting advanced visualization and planning tools developed by the UH Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA), in partnership with the Hawaiʻi State Energy Office (HSEO).
The funding supports the continued development of the Hawaiʻi Advanced Visualization Energy Nexus (HAVEN) system—an interactive 3D platform that helps policymakers, planners and communities better understand complex energy infrastructure, land-use tradeoffs and resilience planning decisions. HAVEN makes technical planning data accessible to users with varying levels of expertise, supporting transparent and informed decision making across the state.
“HAVEN represents a new generation of planning tools that combine immersive visualization, geospatial intelligence and emerging AI capabilities,” said Jason Leigh, UH Mānoa Department of Information and Computer Sciences professor and LAVA Lab director. “With this support, we can scale these technologies statewide while training the next generation of visualization, data science and AI professionals here in Hawaiʻi.”
Increase security, modernize grid
As Hawaiʻi moves to increase energy security and modernize its aging grid, communities face difficult choices around infrastructure siting, regional impacts and costs. HAVEN enables users to visualize scenarios, explore planning model inputs and outputs, and assess cascading impacts related to energy, land use and disaster preparedness.
“HAVEN visualization technologies have proven to be extremely effective in making energy plans and analysis more approachable,” said Chris Yunker, managing director of resilience, clean transportation and analytics for HSEO. “The resulting energy plans incorporate informed input from policy makers and local communities.”
Over a multi-year period, HSEO and the LAVA Lab will expand HAVEN’s capabilities, integrate complementary visualization tools, and explore how AI can help make these visualization tools easier to use and available to more communities. The HAVEN project also supports workforce development by providing UH graduate students with hands-on experience in advanced data visualization.
The Department of Information and Computer Sciences is housed in UH Mānoa’s College of Natural Sciences.