Electrical Network

Navigating the map

Use the mouse wheel to zoom in to a point and hold the left mouse button down, while moving the mouse (dragging) to pan the map to another location at the same scale. Reverse the direction of the mouse wheel to zoom out.

Depending on the selected view, position the mouse pointer over a feature (without clicking), to see it highlighted on the map, as well as in the table below the map (if a row for the feature is available).

On touch-screen devices like cell phones, use a pinch with two fingers to zoom in or out and a swipe to pan. Panning (same scale repositioning) can be done while pinching by moving both fingers in the same direction. The change in distance between fingers determine the zoom factor.

Information table

Information pertaining to the selected map view, possibly limited to the extent of the map (i.e. only showing information for features that are within the map's current bounding box, is displayed below the map.

Position the mouse pointer over a row in the information table to see its feature highlighted on the map by a red circle.

Click on a row in order to centre its feature on the map and change the scale to (roughly) 1:5000. (The scale value can be customised for each feature class.)

Map views

Map views are used to select different themes, to display on the map as well as to change the information or user interface displayed below the map. Currently the following 4 views have been set up:

• Network: a general purpose view showing electrical network feature classes from the client's asset register, in addition to PowerCom-specific feature classes.
• Transformers: a view showing only background information (boundaries and names) and the PowerCom transformers feature class.
• DCUs: a view showing background information, PowerCom transformers and DCUs.
• Meters: a view showing background information, PowerCom transformers, DCUs, and meters.

Depending on the selected view, specific feature classes can be highlighted on the the map and information relating only to those feature classes are displayed below.

Information tabs

Another set of tabs below the map control the information that is being displayed:

Alerts

In the Network view, this displays all alerts (regardless of map extent) ordered by importance and age. Eventually this will be limited to a practical amount of rows with the option to load more rows, in addiotn to be filtered according to user-supplied criteria.

For feature-specific views, only alerts linked to features of the specified class will be shown.

In view

This tab shows information only for features within the current bounding box of the map.

All

This tab shows information for all features of the feature class specified by the map view. The All tab is currently available only for the Transformers and DCUs view. Meters are too numerous and will need to be filtered by a suburb or DCU, etc.

Automatic updates

The map is refreshed when new information causes a change in the spatial index. The dashboard interface sends a small HEAD request to the server every 10 seconds, which returns the current index version of the map. Only when features are added or modified, or when information is added or modified that causes changes in thematic queries, will a new map image be fetched from the server.

Similarly, information in the table will be refreshed once changes occur. (This is currently only implemented for alerts: any new alerts added to the system will cause an automatic reload of the alerts table.)

Sandbox

Here is an interface to generate and modify alerts through the API, and you will see the results on the dashboard above in no more than 10 seconds after submitting changes.

/MDM/Alerts/Update/Test:

Tip: activate the DCUs view and zoom into the map by clicking on one of the rows in the table below. In addition to potential changes on the map, updates (e.g., changing the start date) will quickly reflect in the table below (e.g., the age figure).

See changes on the map by alternating the Cleared attribute between a date and null.

Future development

This is only version 0.1, based mostly on the author's imagination. Further possibities are mostly limited only by the client's imagination (and budget).

A to-do list may include the following:

• Expanded information available in the information table, by clicking on a row.
• Drill-downs from tranformers to DCUs to meters.
• etc.