APL-UW Website - Profile

Troy Tanner

Principal Software Engineer

troyt@apl.uw.edu

Phone

206-685-2770

Research Interests

Interface Engineering, User-Centered Design, Web Application Development, 3D Visualization & Animation

Biosketch

Troy specializes in interface engineering, user-centered design, web applications, and digital graphics. Recent projects include the NANOOS Portal and Visualization System, Boater Information System (BIS) Portal, and the Dylan Diatom educational animation.

Troy has been with the Laboratory since 1993. He joined the professional staff in 1997.

Department Affiliation

Environmental & Information Systems

Education

B.A. Graphic Design, Architecture, Engineering, University of Washington - Seattle , 1997

Projects

NVS: NANOOS Visualization System

The NANOOS Visualization System (NVS) is your tool for easy access to data. NVS gathers data across a wide range of assets such as buoys, shore stations, and coastal land-based stations. Never before available downloads and visualizations are provided in a consistent format. You can access plots and data for almost all in-situ assets for the previous 30-day period.

2 Nov 2009

BIS: Boater Information System

The Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington developed a prototype Boater Information System (BIS) to help boaters access the best weather and oceanographic information for Puget Sound waterways. BIS gives sailors, power boaters, kayakers, fishermen, windsurfers, and kite boarders their own web portal tailored to their selected information needs.

1 Jan 2007

NANOOS: Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems

This Pacific Northwest regional association is a partnership of information producers and users allied to manage coastal ocean observing systems for the benefit of stakeholders and the public. NANOOS is creating customized information and tools for Washington, Oregon, and Northern California.

1 Jan 2004

Videos

The Important Little Life of Dylan Diatom

A 3D animation, "The Important Little Life of Dylan Diatom," shows the plight of a diatom in the Arctic Ocean. This slice of Dylan's life, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and animated by student Anna Czoski, shows middle school students the role of phytoplankton in the Arctic.

1 Jun 2009

Publications

2000-present and while at APL-UW

Natural hazards reconnaissance with the NHERI RAPID facility

Berman, J.W., and 12 others including T. Tanner, "Natural hazards reconnaissance with the NHERI RAPID facility," Front. Built Environ., 6, doi:10.3389/fbuil.2020.573067, 2020.

More Info

11 Nov 2020

In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded a multi-institution interdisciplinary team to develop and operate the Natural Hazards Reconnaissance Facility (known as the "RAPID") as part of the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) program. During the following 2 years, the RAPID facility developed its instrumentation portfolio and operational plan with input from the natural hazards community, the facility's leadership team, and an external steering committee. In September 2018, the RAPID began field operations, which continue today and include instrumentation, software, training, and support services to conduct reconnaissance research before, during, and after natural hazard and disaster events. Over the past 2 years, the RAPID has supported the data collection efforts for over 60 projects worldwide. Projects have spanned a wide range of disciplines and hazards and have also included data collection at large-scale experimental facilities in the United States and abroad. These projects have produced an unprecedented amount of high-quality field data archived on the DesignSafe cyberinfrastructure platform. This paper describes the RAPID facility's development, instrumentation portfolio (including the mobile application RApp), services and capabilities, and training activities. Additionally, overviews of three recent RAPID-supported projects are presented, including descriptions of field data collection workflows, details of the resulting data sets, and the impact of these project deployments on the natural hazard fields.

Research Needs, Challenges, and Strategic Approaches for Natural Hazards and Disaster Reconnaissance

Wartman, J., and 12 others including T. Tanner, "Research Needs, Challenges, and Strategic Approaches for Natural Hazards and Disaster Reconnaissance," Front. Built Environ., 6, 573068, doi:10.3389/fbuil.2020.573068, 2020.

More Info

10 Nov 2020

Natural hazards and disaster reconnaissance investigations have provided many lessons for the research and practice communities and have greatly improved our scientific understanding of extreme events. Yet, many challenges remain for these communities, including improving our ability to model hazards, make decisions in the face of uncertainty, enhance community resilience, and mitigate risk. State-of-the-art instrumentation and mobile data collection applications have significantly advanced the ability of field investigation teams to capture quickly perishable data in post-disaster settings. The NHERI RAPID Facility convened a community workshop of experts in the professional, government, and academic sectors to determine reconnaissance data needs and opportunities, and to identify the broader challenges facing the reconnaissance community that hinder data collection and use. Participants highlighted that field teams face many practical and operational challenges before and during reconnaissance investigations, including logistics concerns, safety issues, emotional trauma, and after-returning, issues with data processing and analysis. Field teams have executed many effective missions. Among the factors contributing to successful reconnaissance are having local contacts, effective teamwork, and pre-event training. Continued progress in natural hazard reconnaissance requires adaptation of new, strategic approaches that acquire and integrate data over a range of temporal, spatial, and social scales across disciplines.

The NANOOS Visualization System (NVS): A decade of development and progress addressing stakeholder needs

Risien, C. M., T. Tanner, E. Mayorga, J. C. Allan, J. A. Newton, M. Kosro, R. Wold, and C. Seaton, "The NANOOS Visualization System (NVS): A decade of development and progress addressing stakeholder needs," OCEANS 2019 MTS/IEEE SEATTLE, Seattle, WA (2019).

1 Oct 2019

More Publications

Recent NANOOS contributions to maritime operations and boater traffic

Newton, J. A, J. Allan, and T. Tanner, "Recent NANOOS contributions to maritime operations and boater traffic," Sidelights 44(3): 28-29 (2014).

1 Jun 2014

Using web-based and social networking technologies to disseminate coastal hazard mitigation information within the Pacific Northwest component of the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS)

Martin, D. L., J. C. Allan, J. Newton, D. W. Jones, S. Mikulak, E. Mayorga, T. Tanner, N. Lederer, A. Sprenger, R. Blair, and S. A. Uczekaj, "Using web-based and social networking technologies to disseminate coastal hazard mitigation information within the Pacific Northwest component of the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS)," OCEANS 2011 MTS/IEEE KONA, Waikoloa, HI (2011).

19 Sep 2011

The NANOOS Visualization System (NVS): Lessons learned in data aggregation, management and reuse, for a user application

Mayorga, E., T. Tanner, R. Blair, A.V. Jaramillo, N. Lederer, C.M. Risien, and C. Seaton, "The NANOOS Visualization System (NVS): Lessons learned in data aggregation, management and reuse, for a user application," In Proceedings, MTS/IEEE OCEANS 2010, Seattle, 20-23 September, doi:10.1109/OCEANS.2010.5663792 (MTS/IEEE, 2010).

More Info

20 Sep 2010

The mission of NANOOS is to coordinate and support the development, implementation, and operations of a regional coastal ocean observing system (RCOOS) for the Pacific Northwest region, as part of the U.S. IOOS. A key objective for NANOOS is to provide data and user-defined products to a diverse group of stakeholders in a timely fashion, and at spatial and temporal scales appropriate for their needs. To this end, NANOOS developed the NANOOS Visualization System (NVS), which aggregates, displays and serves meteorological and oceanographic data, derived from buoys, gliders, tide gauges, HF Radar, meteorological stations and satellites, as well as model forecast information in such a way that it presents end users with a rich, informative and user friendly experience.

First released in November 2009, NVS has already undergone several significant updates. While its original focus and continued strength is on near-real-time (NRT) observations from stationary platforms (buoys, coastal stations, etc.), it has evolved to include other types of observations as well as forecast information. NVS integrates data from a wide diversity of providers across the region, ranging from county agencies, private industry and regional partnerships, to core IOOS federal programs, and state agencies and academic groups that are principal partners in NANOOS' Data Management and Communication (DMAC) efforts. Regional and national feedback confirms that NVS has been well received by ocean observing and stakeholder communities alike.

This paper discusses, in detail, NVS 2.0, which was released in August 2010. In particular, we provide an in depth look at the database schema, metadata, data harvesting, and component communication. In addition, we discuss the NVS data management and communication approach in the context of the IOOS DMAC interoperability and standards-based efforts, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of application-focused vs. strong-interoperability-focused approaches. Lessons learned both from technical and project management perspectives are also presented.

Lastly, we discuss future plans for NVS. Anticipated improvements include automating asset metadata discovery and processing using IOOS standard protocols, and a NANOOS implementation of ERDDAP that will support NVS by replacing multiple, data-source-specific data harvesters with more generic and easier-to-maintain NERDDAP harvesters; and by enabling customized data subsetting and download capabilities that will be accessible through the NVS user interface.

The NANOOS Visualization System: Aggregating, displaying, and serving data

Risien, C.M., J.C. Allan, R. Blair, A.V. Jaramillo, D. Jones, P.M. Kosro, D. Martin, E. Mayorga, J.A. Newton, T. Tanner, and S.A. Uczekaj, "The NANOOS Visualization System: Aggregating, displaying, and serving data," In Proceedings, MTS/IEEE Oceans, Biloxi, MS, 26-29 October (MTS/IEEE, 2009).

More Info

26 Oct 2009

The Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (NANOOS) is one of eleven Regional Associations of the US Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS). NANOOS serves the Pacific Northwest from the US/Canada border to Cape Mendocino on the northern California coast. Its mission is to coordinate and support the development, implementation, and operations of a regional coastal ocean observing system (RCOOS) for the Pacific Northwest region, as part of IOOS. A key objective for NANOOS is to provide data and user-defined products regarding the coast, estuaries and ocean to a diverse group of end users in a timely fashion, and at spatial and temporal scales appropriate for their needs.

To this end, NANOOS is developing a web mapping portal, the NANOOS Visualization System (NVS), that aggregates, displays and serves near real-time coastal, estuarine, oceanographic and meteorological data, derived from buoys, gliders, tide gauges, HF Radar, meteorological stations, satellites and shore based coastal stations, as well as model forecast information in such a way that it presents end users with a rich, informative and meaningful experience. NVS makes use of a variety of services, including the Google Maps service and a data translation and visualization service known as ERDDAP (Environmental Research Division's Data Access Program), compliant Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web standards such as the Sensor Observation Service (SOS), Web Map Service (WMS), and Keyhole Markup Language (KML), as well as the Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (OPeNDAP) as served and cataloged by the NANOOS THREDDS (Thematic Realtime Environmental Distributed Data Services) Data Server (TDS). These heterogeneous data streams are transformed on-the-fly to other formats or representations, which NVS makes available to the end user via a Google Maps interface.

We will describe in detail the NVS development process and will demonstrate the ability of NVS to serve as a portal for one-stop access to near real-time regional data and forecast products, including NOAA's first seven core variables (ocean currents, temperature, salinity, water level, waves, chlorophyll and surface winds), by describing the data flows from NANOOS funded coastal and ocean observing and forecasting assets as well as Federal assets. In addition, we will describe future development plans that include greater functionality, iteratively improving NVS based on feedback received at planned training workshops and from identified stakeholders, and updating NVS to be compliant with future IOOS and OGC standards.

Improved decision making with Boater Information System

Olsonbaker, J., T. Tanner, and D. Jones, "Improved decision making with Boater Information System," Proc., Georgia Basin Puget Sound Research Conference, 26-29 March, Vancouver, B.C. (2007).

26 Mar 2007