Web application Syntool as a tool to perform sea surface monitoring in the Arctic region

Abstract:

Syntool is a web-application for environmental monitoring in the Arctic region. Its functionality makes comprehensive analysis on volumes of satellite, in situ and model data. The result of such analysis can be used to reveal different natural and artificial phenomena on a sea surface such as polar lows or oil slicks. Continuous data source renewal allows user to trace a development of a phenomenon in time up to the near real time monitoring. The application allows to select a set of products for a given date which should be displayed on a basemap. In this way each product is presented by a separate layer and can be combined with others to get a complete picture of what is happening in the region. It is possible to change visibility and opacity for each particular layer. Along with various satellite products the application’s catalog offers such data sources as meteorological model data, in situ measurements, ship and polar station tracks. Any combination of layers including their order and opacity can be shared or saved by user for later investigation. Zoom capability is activated when user wants to explore some particular region in detail. Being a simple and intuitive action on a client-side it is supported by a huge set of server-side technologies: on-demand data subsetting, tiling and caching. For vector data, such as wind speed and direction or air pressure, we developed a web feature service (WFS) by contributing to an open-source project and adopting it to serve meteorological model data. All of the above allows to cut off unnecessary detalization on low zoom levels and to provide high resolution data on high zoom levels without losing in user interface responsivity.