UK NOTAM Map browser extension.

[eharding]

I've been maintaining for a while a few NOTAM maps showing Warning and Restriction data for the UK for the next 48 hours, via KML embedded within Google Maps, as a custom Google Map, and as web-applications for iPhone and Android.

Some of the feedback to these centres around the problem that without being able to point to an AIS briefing ID of your own, as opposed to the briefing ID used to generate the summarised NOTAM maps above (and a lot of other third-party NOTAM plotters), you still have no evidence that you checked NOTAMs should a problem involving notified activity occur.

So the maps might be useful, but you still need to check the AIS site to ensure you're covered in the event that you find yourself in the stew, when the stew was actually NOTAM'd to be thirty miles away and three hours later, or no-one thought to tell anyone about the stew being there at all.

To try and address this, I've added a browser extension - initially for Google Chrome, but I plan to add Safari and Firefox support - which is activated by running a standard AIS website NOTAM brief, hence generating your own unique briefing ID - and which interprets the downloaded details of the briefing in your browser, and adds the option of displaying a custom Google map showing the location and extent of the NOTAMs listed in the briefing, together with a tree-view allowing the selective display of NOTAMs by category. The AIS briefing is also annotated so that each NOTAM id in the brief becomes a link, which highlights that particular NOTAM on the map.

The extension is available to install from the Google Chrome Gallery:

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/foncpdbdcabckbbkiklmilnaomcniphb?hl=en-gb

The permissions granted to the extension on install allow it to run when performing an AIS briefing, or using the demonstration page. The browser history facility seems to be implicit to all Chrome extensions, but is not used.

For Google Chrome users unfamiliar with browser extensions, an introduction is available here:

Extension basics : Explore Google Chrome features - Google Chrome Help (http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=154007)

Why start with Chrome, which is still a distinctly minority browser? - well, the extension interface is clean, well document, and the JavaScript engine is blindingly quick. Safari and Firefox are arguably less proficient in these areas, but still possible to support without a huge amount of effort. I haven't mentioned Internet Explorer.....and I don't propose to. I understand great things might be expected of the JavaScript performance in the next version of IE, but at the moment it isn't a candidate.

[gpn01]

Keep it up. I find the site really useful and use it in conunction with still manually checking the full NOTAM listing (I'm a luddite and know that with computers 'stuff goes wrong')!

[Blue Albatross]

....and I LOVE IT!! Well done. I've been searching for something like this for ages. Glad to see someone put together a great app which works so well.

THANKS!!

[eharding]

Thanks for the feedback chaps.

I'm planning a few enhancements, but I'd be interested in hearing what you think might be of immediate benefit.

1) Geolocation - the extension uses a reverse geocoding web-service to annotate the tree view with an approximate location name for the NOTAM centre co-ordinate. The web-service has a request-rate quota which means it takes a while to populate the tree view fully, particularly if you run a multi-FIR area brief. I'm planning on using the client-side SQL database in Chrome to cache these results so that a NOTAM which has previously been reverse geocoded has the location immediately available.

2) Using the same data storage, add a set of user preferences - fill/edge colors, transparency factors, radius thresholds at which only the outline of the NOTAM is shown.

3) Display filters, adding fine-tuning to the query parameters used to generate the AIS brief in the first place. Upper/Lower limits, start/end times. Filter out trigger NOTAMs. Also, a persistent kill-list of NOTAMs you don't wish to see again.

4) Quality check - highlight NOTAMs which appear to have been miscoded - by identifying cases where the text of the NOTAM included references to co-ordinates outside of the circular extent (for example B1724/10 this morning - temporary Class A from the Highlands to Stornaway, NOTAM had a 12nm circle over Anglesey)

5) Reverse navigation by NOTAM id from the map to the text of the AIS brief.

6) Narrow Route Brief preview. Currently if a Narrow Route Brief is run, the route is projected onto the map - including intermediate points identified by navaid ID, navaid plus offset, raw lat/lng and by airway/UAR segment traversal. It wouldn't be difficult to add a small preview map to the NRB query page showing the proposed route in the same way, before the NRB
is generated.

7) Optionally prune the text of the report for printing, either by a small
show/hide checkbox in the text report itself, or by linking visibility of
NOTAMs in the map to visibility in a printed report.

8) Obviously, extending support to Safari and Firefox - but ahead of the enhancements above?

Any other ideas, I'm all ears.

[gpn01]

I'd find 2. 3 & 4 particularly useful. Possible to have a 'Set xxxx as my home location' so that map would default to the location + n km surroundings?

[oversteer]

This is awesome :ok:

Any way of putting the major lat long lines on so it's easy to cross-reference with a half mil chart?

[Deeday]

eharding, have you tested Firefox 4 already? I'm curious to know how its JavaScript engine fares against Chrome, now that Mozilla boast the new version as 'six times faster' than v 3.6.