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Welcome to the Oceanographic Decision Support System (ODSS). The ODSS is a web application that provides a central location for accessing information for realtime operations as well as post field experiment access to data. This page will give you some helpful tips on using the ODSS.

Tabs

The tabs across the top of the ODSS give you the ability to switch between the Situational Awareness and Planning views and gives you access to Slack and STOQS. Clicking on the Situational Awareness or Planning tabs will open those tools, respectively, in the frame below the tabs. If you click on the Collaboration tab, it will open a new window and direct you to the MBARI Slack workspace. If you click on the STOQS tab, it will open a new window pointing you to the Spatial Temporal Oceanographic Query System (STOQS).

Situational Awareness Tab

This situational awareness tab is where you can monitor the progress of different platforms that are sending their locations to the ODSS as well as access data layers and products that are assocatied with a particular view in the ODSS.

The toolbar across the top of the situational awareness pane give you control over the view that you are displaying in the ODSS as well as controlling the widow of time displayed in the map window. It also has a couple of button to set and recall a location and zoom level on the map that you can return to.

The ODSS divides up different activities, or field experiments into logical groups that we call 'Views'. A View will have a specific set of platforms, layers and data associated with it. It is a way to organize things and to prevent being overwhelmed by all the the information contained in the ODSS. You select a view by clicking on the drop-down box on the left side of the toolbar and choosing the view you want to select.

By default, the ODSS starts in a "Live" mode which means that it uses the current date and time for the current view. If left in "Live" mode, the map will update every minute to make sure the platforms that are plotted on the map are showing their most recent locations. You can take it out of "Live" mode by clicking on the backwards and forwards arrows to step through time.

If you click on either of those arrows, the ODSS will switch out of "Live" mode into "Playback" mode as can be seen in the toolbar

As you click on the backwards and forwards arrows, it will increment the "Start" date time by the amount of hours specified in the "Step(hrs)" box. You can change the size of the step either by entering a number (including fractional numbers) into the "Step(hrs)" box or using the up and down arrows to adjust the number.

The "Start" time window defines the most recent date and time of the data shown in the ODSS. For example, it defines the latest location of all the platforms that are closest to that start date and time, but before it. The tracks displayed on the map consist of platform locations ending with the Start date and extending backwards in time that is defined by the "Plot(hrs)" input box. The plot input box basically defines how long the platform track "tail" is. If you select a "Start" time of 2020-01-01T23:00:00 and choose a Plot value of 11 hours, you will get the platform track data from 2020-01-01T00:00:00 to 2020-01-01T23:00. You can either input the "Plot(hrs)" number directly in the input box or adjust it with the up and down arrows. You can also select a "Start" time by manually entering one or clicking on the calendar icon and choosing one.

Once you are done with playback mode, you can simply click on the red circle with a line through it to the right of the "Mode: Playback" and it will return you to "Live" mode.

The map will always remember where you last were looking when you leave the ODSS. When you return, it will put you back to the most recent location and zoom level. As a help, you can define a "Home" location so that you will have a convenient way to return to a known location if you get lost or it would take a lot of panning to get back to your normal view. Once you have the view the way you want it and decide you want that to be your "Home" view, click on the "Pin" icon on the right side of the toolbar and then you can return to that location at any time simply by clicking on the "Home" icon next to it.

Data Pane

There is a slide-out pane on the left side of the ODSS. You can access the pane, by clicking on the double-arrow icon at the top of the pane and it will slide into view, moving the map to the right.

Platforms

The first pane that is shown in the Data pane is the platforms panel. It is a tree that shows all the platforms that have been linked to the view that was selected in the View drop down. When the boxes next to the platforms are checked, location data for that platform will be displayed on the map for the time window selected in the toolbar. You can individually add and remove platform tracks from the map by checking and unchecking the box next to each platform. If you want to check or uncheck all the platforms at once, you can use the check-box and box buttons at the top of the Platforms panel. The platforms that are displayed in each view are only a subset of the total list of platforms registered in the ODSS. You can add or remove platforms from the list displayed in the current view by clicking on the edit button at the top of the platforms panel. This will open a window that will allow you to select or de-select platforms that you wanted linked to a view. When you are done with your selections, simply close the window by clicking on the 'x' in the upper right corner. You can zoom directly to a platforms track on the map by clicking on the name of the platform in the tree. You can also open a new window with a table of the last 5 locations for a specific platform by small track icon to the right of the platform name

Layers

The Layers panel allows you to turn on and off overlays of data or features on the map by checking or clearing the checkbox next to the layer name. Just as with the platforms pane, the layers pane only shows a subset of the layers that ODSS has registered. You can add and remove layers to/from the current view, but clicking on the edit icon at the top of the layer panel. That will open a window that will allow you to add or remove layers from the the view. This method is a little different than the platforms window as you have to enter a name in the box to the right of the layer to both add it to the View and to define what folder the layer will be displayed in. If you clear the name of the folder from the box, it will remove it from the view. Note that if you type in name in the folder box, you have to click outside the box to get the name to persist. Once you are done, close the window by clicking on the 'x' in the upper right corner of the window. There is a feature that is under development that allows you to zoom to the extents of a particular layer by clicking on the layers name. The service that is serving the layer has to support a special request for this to happen and we are still working on way to improve things. You can always try clicking on the name of a layer to see if it will zoom somewhere. This is especially important for layers that have very small features.

Data

The data pane allows you to browse the files that are in a repository that has been linked to the current view. You can drill down through the file tree by clicking on the '+' symbols next to folder to expand them. If there is a file that you are interested in downloading or opening in a new window, simply click on the file name. If it's a file that can be displayed by the browser, it will open it in a new window, if not it will be downloaded to your computer. If you suspect the files in the repository have changed, but you are not seeing the changes, click on the button at the top of the data panel with the small circle on it, that will refresh the data panel view.

Map

The map shows all tracks and data layers that are selected in the data pane that was covered in the previous section. In order to pan the map, simply click and hold on the map anywhere and then drag your mouse to move the map. You can zoom in and out of the map by either placing your cursor over the map and using your mouse wheel, or by using the zoom control buttons on the upper left corner of the map. You can also zoom by holding the shift key down on your keyboard, then clicking and holding on the map and dragging to define a view box. Once you release the mouse, the map will zoom to best fit that box in the view. In the lower left corner is a set of controls that will show you the latitude and longitude of the mouse cursor as well as the depth of the water where the mouse cursor is located (you have to pause moving the mouse for the depth to show). In addition you will see a scale that gives you a sense of the size of features at the current zoom level of the map. It changes as you zoom in and out of the map. The map also has a control that allows you to draw lines on the map that provide you with distances and bearing of various tracks that you draw on the map. The control is located in the upper left corner of the map under the zoom controls You start the measurement mode by clicking on the top button (arrow) in the measurement control (it will turn green). The green button means your cursor is in measure mode. You can simply starting clicking on the map to drop end points for lines. The control will show you both the bearing of the incoming path to the points as well as the bearing of the outgoing line (if there is one). It will also display the distance of the line leading up to the end point. The units of the line can be changed by clicking on the bottom button in the control and will show you which measurement units is currently on (meters, miles, or nautical miles). When you are done creating lines, you can click on the top button of the measurement control which will remove the green color and put the cursor back in regular navigation mode. If you want to remove the measurements, simply click on the 'x' button in the measurement controls.