Situational Awareness 2.0
Supporting Emergency Decisions with Real-Time Data
The Situational Awareness 2.0 application was created using Esri's Experience Builder. The first step was to select from the numerous templates on Experience Builder.
We decided to go with the foldable template for our solution here. It provided a broiler plate environment for easily embedding a map and widgets.
After deploying the widget, we embedded a webmap with the aid of the map widget. The webmap was created and deployed to a web environment using ArcGIS Pro.
Once the map was deployed, we proceeded to set up and customize the widgets needed to make the situational awareness 2.0 function as a support tool during emergency
scenarios. We customized 20 widgets in total for this solution namely the near me, map, sidebar, table, and directions widgets. Just to name a few.
After setting up the widgets, we then added the logo of our client, links to the supporting products (Traffic watch dashboard and Weather application),
and polished the user interface of the web application to meet required web app standards, prioritizing
simplicity and easy navigation for the users.
Weather Application
The Clarington Weather App is powered by openweathermap's API for weather data and is a supporting product within the
situational awareness 2.0 web app. The data for viewing precipitation is sourced from Rainviewer's API and is managed by a leaflet plugin called Leaflet.Rainviewer.
The first thing we did was to create a basic HTML document with a stylesheet and JavaScript file that we linked to the HTML document.
We then added the HTML elements to the document that would be used to display the weather information. After setting up the skeletal view of the application,
we created a free user account on openweathermap.org. Upon acquiring our API Key, within the documentation, we secured the URL that would enable http requests from our JavaScript to openweathermap.org
with the help ofour API Key.
The information gotten from the API Call is then parsed into the varying HTML elements to display the appropriate information to the user.
Lastly, the rainviewer extension within the weather application was set up using Leaflet JavaScript.
A map was created upon which the precipitation RADAR data was overlain.
Traffic Watch Dashboard
The traffic watch dashboard was created using Esri's ArcGIS Dashboards service and is a suppoting product within the situational awareness 2.0 web app.
The community service layer within the dashboard was created and
symbolized using ArcGIS Pro. The live traffic data layer was sourced from ArcGIS Online data portal and is owned, maintained, managed, and updated by
ESRI.
The traffic layer was set to refresh every 5 minutes in order to orient the emergency services team with the most current traffic conditions
at any given time. Icons for incident severity were also changed to appropriately convey the gravity of a road incident, ranging from Critical to Low-importance.
5 Dashboard elements were configured for use within the dashboard. The elements were set up with data actions to allow them change in accordance with the view extent of the map.
- Pie Chart: Set up to provides a percentile overview of traffic severity within the current view of the map
- Bar Chart: Configured to displays a count of live traffic incidents on the map
- Indicator: Configured to provide a sum of community centers within the current view of the map
- List: Set up to present a list of community centers within the current view of the map
- Webmap: Hosts the map and its layers
Limitations
The live traffic layer owned and managed by ESRI has restrictions on what fields can be used for symbolization on the web map. It also shows the count of road incidents but sometimes lags and will not display these incidents on the map, thereby leading to confusions when trying to pinpoint where exactly an incident is occuring at a given time.
Esri's Experience Builder widgets cannot be customized beyond the pre set functionality range. This means they cannot be made to do more than intended by Esri. This limitation acts as a rein during development. For example, it would have been better to have the buffer tool be moveable after it's been drawn on the map. However, this feature is not available in Experience Builder, and cannot customized to make it do so.