The command staff combines status reports and current intelligence in maps to make decisions and synchronize friendly force actions. Maps communicate progress and assist in developing situational understanding during daily briefings.
Field operators use maps on mobile devices to collect information about local infrastructure, enemy disposition, or key terrain. They make and view reports, navigate, and get information about nearby events or observations.
Operations templates allow you to view and add current position reports, SPOT reports, and SigActs reports from blue forces. They also are used to display current red force intelligence and METOC weather alerts. These layers aid in the conduct of a military operation and are designed to be used in conjunction with the basemap template and planning template to complete successful operations.
Situation Awareness template
The Situation Awareness template is a web application template, designed to help you quickly set up a web application for monitoring operational reports in an operations center. The Situation Viewer web application lets you see reports as they are added to the geodatabase and track position reports from moving vehicles. The viewer allows the creation and viewing of many types of reports, including medical evacuation, significant activities (SIGACTS), and position reports (blue-force tracking). The template includes a geodatabase schema for the reports, a map document with which to publish the report services to the viewer (with appropriate symbology and pop-ups), and the Situation Viewer web application (built in Silverlight). This template also includes sample report simulators and instructions to help you set up the Situation Viewer.
Patrol Data Capture template
The Patrol Data Capture template is designed to help you learn how to import a sample .gpx file into ArcGIS to create patrol tracks on a map. Most GPS navigation devices, such as Garmin, together with software, such as MapSource, allow you to export a .gpx file that can be used in ArcGIS. For this template and its accompanying exercises, a sample .gpx file has been provided for you. All the sample data and tools you'll need to create patrol tracks from a .gpx file are provided as part of the template. You can look at the tools provided in the template to quickly gain an understanding of the tools, parameters, inputs, and outputs being used.
After you install and set up the template using instructions in this guide, you are ready to use the exercises in the accompanying "Using the Patrol Data Capture Template" guide, which step you through the process of importing the sample .gpx file and creating patrol tracks. The steps include:
- Importing the sample .gpx file
- Removing spikes (removing errors, for example, points the GPS created when connection to satellite was temporarily lost). Also known as de-spiking the data
- Making sure each track is distinguished from other tracks (has not merged into a previous or subsequent track)
- Creating the track lines in a layer by appending them to the layer
- Rejoining tracks
Once you have patrol tracks in your map and are confident in their quality, you can perform analysis on them. For example, you can visually look at the patrols to see which geographic areas are not getting patrol coverage or which have light coverage.