This prototype product is designed to deliver the recently developed Huron to Erie Connecting Waterways Forecasting System (HECWFS) hydrodynamic model output using a new release of the Google Earth plug-in for Internet Explorer and Firefox Windows browsers. The HECWFS is a product developed by the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (NOAA-GLERL) for GLOS to simulate and forecast water levels and flows in the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River. Before the Google Earth plug-in was released, users had to accept model results as a Quicktime movie or install the full Google Earth Desktop application in order to view data created by the model.

Known Strengths: The HECWFS Google-Earth plug-in product is an exciting and powerful new addition to the GLOS-DMAC infrastructure. The Google Earth plug-in provides a full featured 3-dimensional viewing capacity, if observation or modeled output provides information in the 3rd dimension. The HECWFS product includes modeled output for surface currents on Lake St. Clair and 2d velocities for the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers. The Google Earth plug-in provides robust user capabilities to roam, scroll, pan and tilt within the local area of interest.

Known Weaknesses / Future Developmental Work: The Google Earth plug-in brings with it some display constraints, including very specific demands for map projections. The GLOS-DMAC development team will continue making improvements to this viewer in collaboration with the Google Earth team. The current HECWFS product does not work on Apple Macintosh or Linux operating machines; the Google Earth plug-in is currently not supported on these machines, although the Google development team has plans to port its functionality in these directions. The HECWFS prototype product requires substantial computer hardware requirements (CPU and memory demand); it is likely that users with limited computational capabilities or narrow Internet bandwidths will have some difficulty in accessing and using this product. The HECWFS product is currently limited to 2d (depth averaged) velocities throughout the corridor, although work is continuing to add a 3rd dimensional capability to the model suite. The delivery of this more sophisticated output will likely require substantial modifications to the current prototype viewer. Currently the Google Earth plug-in does not allow for users to ingest additional kml formatted datasets (NPDES discharge points and associated historic data, water level gauging and other shore station observations, etc.), which could be incorporated from the server side of the application if significant user interest is noted.