BirdView

General

Google Birds is an interactive web-browser embedded application that allows user to look at the available data in the flysafe database in an easy and intuitive way. It is build using the Google Earth browser plugin, which enables it to make use of all the Google earth GIS functionality, and combine it with the ease of a webbrowser.

The current version is available on the Google Birds test server. It is only accessible for those IP's that have been granted access. In order to get your IP on the list, send an email to tijs.dekler@sara.nl. Additionally, you need to run either a windows or an macintosh machine, and have the Google earth browser plugin installed. Installing the plugin is easy, and you will be prompted to isntall the plugin when you first look at a Google Earth browser plugin built site. However, you do need to have adminstrator rights to install the plugin.

Bird Tracks

For each radar, an algorithm is used to extract the echoes that are considered birds. These birds are the

The low beam birds are shown in red, and the high beam birds are shown in green.

Confetti Birds

In lack of a better name, Confetti Birds is the same bird tracks as in the normal Bird Tracks, except that they are colorred according to flying direction.

Bird summary Plot

The bird sumarry plot shows a bird density plot mapped on the speed and direction of the birds. This can be used to see the general direction of the bird migration on that particular moment.

The plot itself is made by a seperate R process, which can run preloaded R scripts. This means that other R scripts can be written that generate different kind of plots, which can be inserted in Google Birds relative easily

MPR Images

The MPR images come in thre different levels:

- bottom is the full echo density image, and this is collored in a range from green to red, where red is the most dense echoes.
- The middle level is the Rain Mask, which is shown as a Blue layer.
- The top level is the Land Mask, which is shown as a Green layer.

Each layer can be turned on and off individually, in order to look at different deatails of the radar image.

Bounding Box

In the bounding box area you can fill in bounding values for the area that you are interested in. The visualization of the temperature, the percipitation, and the wind vectors will use these values to determine what area will be shown. The pressure level is used for those weather values that have values on different pressure levels

Temperature

The temperature is shown as slightly transparent filled contourplot, in an area bounded by the bounding box. The temperature range displayed is light blue to dark blue for the -20 to 0 degrees celsius range, and light green-yellow-red-purple for the 0 to 40 degrees celsius range. The effect is that the zero degree boundary is easily visible because the shfit from dark blue to light green. Additionally, each level of the contour represents a step of 0.33 degrees celsius and is bordered by very thin line, that aim to help seeing different temperature layers.