Pulsar Consulting | ATM Atlas

ATM Atlas

The ATM Atlas tool allows the quick creation of simple dynamic thematic maps on the web, based on the country geometry. ATM Atlas can also be used to visualize by colors the countries or regions involved in an organisation (NATO, Eurocontrol, ...).

More Information

Please find the advanced prototype of the application here.

Project Scope

The ATM Atlas application is composed of two modules:

ATM Atlas Manager - to create and publish thematic maps. This module is designed for project managers who want to quickly and easily create thematic maps and make them available on the internet. This Manager module is only available on the intranet, and is password protected.
ATM Atlas Viewer - to visualize and interact with thematic maps. This module is for the end-users and is freely accessible from the EUROCONTROL Public website. It allows the users to interact with the map and the associated themes (layers). The possible interaction are zooming, layer visibility and layer labelling.

Project Objectives

Pulsar Consulting was in charge of developing an web based training (CBT) to provide a user-friendly user guide that will enable understanding the ATM-ATLAS application. The target audiences for this CBT are the users of the application.

Application Scope

The learning material is very structured and we decided to follow the original sequence of the application screens, which consist of a sensible backbone on top of which the course is built. We divided the training into 3 modules (Introduction, Themes and Maps - “Themes” and “Maps” being the main functionalities of the application). All modules propose a large variety of illustrations and animations in order to make the learning quicker and more enjoyable. The course is based on simple HTML pages and can also be viewed offline if desired.

Technologies

This application was built using Pulsar's framework called PLMS (Pulsar eLearning Management System). PLMS is a web application used to create, maintain and publish an e-learning content. This framework allows rapid application development (RAD) of Web Based Training.

The main features of this framework are:

Administration console
Structured navigation
On-the-fly Glossary
Dynamic table of content
Rich text edition
Media upload
Streaming video
SCORM compatibility
LMS Interface

Moreover, the content of the course itself is based on the following technologies:

Flash
HTML/CSS
JavaScript
XML
Graphical Design
WBT Methodology

Main concepts

Maps: regional maps using a theme grouping and coloring of the associated countries.
Themes: a list of countries that has associated some color settings (fill color, outline color and width) used when drawing each country of the theme.

Color Palette: a tool allowing the user to select a fill or outline color for a theme.

ISO-3166 country codes: countries are identified from their standard ISO code
Publication cycles: the user can easily plan the publication of its maps and also use a testing environment before publishing it for real.
Authentication: standard web schemes are in use in order to provide a user-oriented map management.
LDAP synchronization: the application is synchronized with a LDAP repository in order to authenticate the users or allow access through groups.