PARMMS VIEWER USER GUIDE



  1. Log in


From the landing page of the application anyone can register as a user, but only an administrator will grant access to registrations. The registration process is equivalent to applying for access. Please review the last sections regarding registering for further information.


A registered user can access the application after logging in with the account name and password.




  1. Index Page – Project Selection Page


Once authenticated and after authorization is granted, the user needs to select which project will be accessed. The projects to which current user has accessed are organized by client and cycle. The user needs to select an item from the list and push Connect button.


Alternatively, from this page, any administrator can access the Users page which is designed for granting access to new registered users or revoking the access from existing users – please refer to the last sections of this document for details.





  1. Main Page – Workspace overview


After the current project is selected, the user navigates to the main page, which is displaying a number of views, a menu and map, all organized under a current workspace, emulating a multiple document interface presentation.

Workspaces are defined outside of this web application, using an administrative utility application which defines the number of views, their content (title, columns, camera source, colors for series, display format, etc.) and their layout on screen.

One project can have multiple workspaces defined for all users – the so called “public workspaces”, out of which each user can start customize their own set of “private workspaces”, by moving windows around and saving the new layout. The private workspaces can drop existing views (if a view is closed while saving it will not be carried over into the private workspace), but cannot change their content.

Private workspaces can be deleted, or saved further into other private workspaces, whereas the public workspaces cannot be deleted.



Above we have a typical workspace, containing the mandatory windows (Locators, Playback and Measurements) and several other optional customized views (1 Grid, 2 Charts, 1 Dashboard and 1 Camera), while the background/desktop area is filled by the GIS map with plotted data.

All these windows/views will be detailed in the following sections.


The distinction between mandatory and optional windows is given by the fact that the mandatory ones are required for the mere navigation, so that the user can pick one road, and then “play” the images and all the other optional views, synchronized, within the currently selected road.

All windows are synchronized, and each one can trigger a current navigation position change, while responding to navigation changes coming from other windows. For example clicking on a certain value on a chart will get all the views to that position, as well as selecting a grid row or stepping to the next or previous frame from a camera view. Clicking on a map or dragging the navigator marker will take all the views to that position, while performing the “playback” from the playback control allows an automatic presentation of images and synchronized data.


  1. Menu – controlling the application from menu items actions


The menu is organized in a top level of main actions, and each action can have sub-items.

The Workspace menu item groups all the actions related to the workspace saving, changing and focusing the mandatory windows.




B
y clicking on any of the top 3 sub-menus from the Workspace menu item, the corresponding mandatory window gets focused, meaning that it is brought in the center of the screen. This feature is helping the user retrieve windows that were closed, minimized or otherwise taken out of focus – the real estate of the screen being the main challenge that is intended to be solved.


The Save As menu allows saving the current workspace as a new private workspace.


The current workspace (Test in this example) is selected in the menu list, and switching to any existing workspace from the current project or other existing projects (COMOARAB 2008 and 2013, last 2 items in the above example) can be done by clicking on the menu item.


Public workspaces and private ones have different menu icons – see the distinction in the COMOARAB [2013] project, with First workspace being the public one.


When using the Tile Windows item, all windows are arranged like a deck of cards, with their size preserved, so that the user can start re-arranging them. This can prove useful for screens with low resolution, where the intended layout of the workspace is not fitting the screen properly, and requires too much scrolling and dragging.




The next 2 menu items, placed in the top level – Show All and Hide All – are shortcuts for the user to simply close all windows so that the background map is not covered by anything, and conversely bring all windows to their current layout before being closed; it is similar to the “Show Desktop” command from Windows OS, in this case the desktop being the background map.


The rest of the menu items towards right, except for the last one (Map), allow the user to focus any of the optional windows.







The last menu item – Map – allows the user to toggle certain data points on the map:

as well as panning and zooming to the levels given by the current road and position:




  1. Windows Details


The windows from the workspace layout can be dragged for repositioning, re-sized, minimized, maximized/restored and closed, just like regular windows from a multiple document interface. The only window that is fixed in size and cannot be closed is the Playback.

At any one time, only one window is the active window, meaning that is has the focus – the focus is obtained by a window when clicked on its title bar or on its internal controls. When a window has the focus, it can be moved and re-sized not only using the mouse, but also with the keyboard:


The following control boxes are available in the windows' title-bars

Pin – when pinned, a windows position will remain fixed relative to the screen if the user scrolls the overall window – the scrolling option will be automatically presented when the layout has windows that go out of screen. This option can prove particularly useful for the Playback window, given that it controls the navigation for all other windows automatically.



Refresh – present only in the Locators window, allowing to drop any grouping, filtering and sorting currently applied on this window, and reloading the content from scratch, like a soft re-start of the workspace entry point.



Export – allows the export, as a file that can be downloaded, of the content of the current window – it can be either a CSV file for tabular content, an SVG file for charts (can be viewed in a web browser), a JPG file for images, or an HTML file for the Dashboard composite view.



Go – when pressed, the current view will be scrolled to show the current position of the navigator; for instance the user can scroll the grid or the chart ahead of the current position, to see what comes next, or have a preview of all the other values that are not currently in the viewport; by pressing this button the viewport is reset to show the current position, like a Go Back action.



Minimize, Maximize, Close – typical windows buttons, used for resizing or closing the current window


    1. Locators


This window contains the list of roads that are available for navigation. By selecting one row from this list, the content of all the other windows will show the data of this current road – only one road can be current at any given time.

The columns of this grid presentation start with the so-called locator fields, which are the unique identifiers of the road, and also have the start and end linear reference (chainage) of the road, which in turn can be increasing or decreasing.






The grid control allows grouping by dragging the column header onto the grouping band, as well as filtering by clicking the glyph on the column header and sorting by simply clicking anywhere in the column header.





    1. Playback


This window acts as a media player remote control, allowing the user to automatically navigate, forward and backward, through the current road's data: images, chart data-points, grid rows – all for the current navigator position, which is a single one at any given time.

The title displays the current road's locator fields, while the controls are as follows (top-down, left-to-right):





    1. Grid


This window shows data from current road, aggregated in rows corresponding to continuous intervals. All grids will have the two first columns showing the start and end chainages for the row's interval, while the other columns can present any numerical, text or date-time values, as defined in a separate application that selects the column sources, captions and formatting (alignment, number of digits).

The grid can be filtered and sorted by clicking the column headers, but it cannot be grouped or reloaded like the Locators.

Multiple grids can be defined within a workspace, from different sources and at different granularities (length of the underlying aggregation interval).




    1. Chart


This window is similar to the grid with respect of its data sources, except the data can only be numerical for its series, and the data points cannot be sorted or filtered – they are presented in the collection chainage order, with all their values.

A chart can present the data points in several series styles:


The X-axis shows the chainage value, while the Y-axis shows the values of the series data points.

In the same way like a grid can only show so many rows in the current viewport, and the user may have to scroll to see the rest, a chart has a page-size defined, and a scroll control at the bottom, which allows “scrolling” through the charts data and bringing a different “page” of data in the current viewport.

The window below is an area-style one series chart, showing the first part of an index called PMP data points. The current navigator position is the vertical cursor highlighting the current interval being navigated.




The next window is a line-style 2 series chart, with some gaps in the data-points and having the page size sufficiently large so that it shows all available data and no scrolling is necessary.





Hovering within the chart area will show a new vertical cursor with the tool-tip reading the current value of the closest series. By clicking on the legend items, series visibility can be toggled, and only some series can be inspected independently.



If the number of data point is deemed too large, so that the variations are hard to evaluate, the Zoom-In function can be employed to stretch a selected portion of the chart as follows:









    1. Dashboard


This composite window employs several controls to present an aggregated view on both global level (all roads) and road level (current road) of certain data sources. While grids and charts are showing rows and series populated with individual discrete cell values, in a dashboard these values are grouped in several defined ranges, and the length of road falling in each of these ranges is summed to present a comparative distribution of values within ranges, as well as an absolute length of each range.


For instance, when looking at the roughness values for roads, it can be considered that anything under a value of 2 is Low severity, corresponding to a relatively smooth road, while being between 2 and 4 is Medium severity, corresponding to a road that is still comfortable but not as smooth, and anything over the value of 4 is High severity, corresponding to a bumpy/rough road.

Having this criteria of qualifying the roads based on one particular value which is assigned to continuous intervals, the Dashboard can show the distribution of the values within the 3 established ranges/bins, both at a global level, for all the roads, as well as for the current road.

With this presentation, the user can see how much of the roads are smooth, acceptable and rough, in relative and absolute terms.



The following controls are used within the dashboard window:

A. Source dropdown – allowing the user to switch between different data sources to be analyzed – when a new item is selected, all the other controls are populated accordingly

B. Global distribution – doughnut chart showing the global distribution of values within defined ranges/bins; accounts for all roads

C. Comparative chart – bar chart showing all roads' individual distributions, with the current road being highlighted and automatically brought into view when switching the locator.

By default the values represent the actual length for each range out of the total length of the road, and the bars are not stacked; alternatively, using the 2 checkboxes on top of this chart, the data presented can be switched to a percentage, so that all roads are evaluated in a normalized manner, and also the bars can be stacked for a more compact view.

D. Current road heatmap – linear representation of the current road sections falling in the defined ranges; the current position is represented by the top arrow, in the color of the current range, and can be used for navigation by clicking on the desired spot.

E. Current road distribution – pie chart showing the ranges of the current road; similar to the global distribution, by clicking the legend items the range visibility can be toggled

Below is an example of having the comparative chart showing percentage not stacked, and length stacked, followed by the dashboard showing percentage and stacked comparative chart:







An example of toggling ranges for both the global and road levels:






An example of switching the data source which triggers a re-population of the dashboard:




    1. Camera


This window shows images captured during collection by a given camera, and can be used for measurements if the camera has been calibrated. The calibration of the camera which enables the measurements is done outside of this application, and the presence of the controls related to measurements is toggled by the calibration existence.





The bottom toolbar has 3 groups of buttons and one status label, as follows:


A. Mode Selection – this group allows picking one of the operation modes, which are mutually exclusive, so only one mode is current at a time




B. Overlays




C. Stepping – allows stepping to the previous and next frames of the current camera, as opposed to the playback stepping which can be set at a different interval



D. Status label – displays the current chainage of the still image being shown, which can be different than the current navigation position – the difference is shown in parenthesis, and the image being presented is the last one taken before the current navigation position





Below is an example of a horizontal measurement of a lane width, having the calibration confidence grid visible (measurements are allowed only on the bottom part of the image, up to the top of the confidence grid):




Once the clicking is done, a pop-up dialog is presented to record the measurement and annotate it with a comment. In case only the position is desired, and not the actual dimension, the Position only checkbox should be checked.

If a repetitive measurement is performed, such as lane widths every time when they change significantly or at a regular interval, by clicking the Keep using current notes the comment is reused on each subsequent measurement.




When performing a vertical measurement, the first action is to drag the vertical plane line (blue below) to the point on the road horizontal surface where the vertical plane is, then repeat the clicking and annotation steps similar to the horizontal measurement. Note that measurement are allowed from the vertical plane line up, and not below.




The recorded measurements are presented in the Measurements window, and the current measurement (one selected in the grid and image) is highlighted.






Performing an area measurement is similar with a horizontal one, except the 2 points clicked are determining a rectangle as opposed to a line:






    1. Measurements


This window contains all the measurements, extracted from all the camera windows (because there could be more than one) and from all roads/locators.

The columns of the grid are showing the measurement type, ID, measured dimension, notes, camera used, linear reference (chainage) and road (locator). The ID is displayed in the camera tooltips when hovering with the Selection mode on.


The toolbar has the following buttons:






  1. Map


The map is serving as the background of the main window, like a desktop of the application, and can be seen without any window getting in the way by clicking on the Hide All main menu item.

By default, the map shows the start and end points of the current road (green and yellow pushpins), the road path (purple polyline) and the current navigation position along the road. Clicking on the road path or dragging the navigator marker along the current road will change the current position.

From the map menu, several other items can be toggled, such as Locators, which will show pushpins for start/end of all roads (clicking one can switch the current road), measurements (purple pushpins, clicking one navigates to its position), and any KML/KMZ layers (clicking their markers will show any embedded information).


Also the map is powered with some GIS features, such as:


Below is an example of the map showing the default layers and markers for the current road, not showing all Locators, showing the Search places “schools”, having the Weather layer enabled but not kicking in because of the zoom level, and showing the measurements:




Following is an example showing all locators, showing the traffic layer and with the weather layer visible because of a higher zoom level

From an upper zoom level, the user can bring the map to the extent of the current road by clicking the Fit Road Bound menu item from the Map menu:



Next is an example of the map showing a KML file with available parking areas.



B
y clicking the icon below, the map can be switched to Street View mode, from which one exits by clicking the top right corner Close button:

  1. User Management


As mentioned in the first section, the access to the workspaces of any project is allowed only to authenticated users, which in turn are authorized by a special category of users – administrators.

Once a user is authenticated and authorized, the access is allowed only for the projects that the administrator has granted it to the specific users.

Registered users that are not authorized yet, are shown as pending in the list of users that is presented to an administrator when clicking the Users page from the Index page of the application (see first section).

By checking the box corresponding to each row, the administrator grants/revokes access to registered users, others than self.



When registering as a user, the UI culture is selected too, and can be later changed from the Manage Account page:

Click on the top right hyperlink reading the user name to launch the Manage Account page: