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AusOverwatch User Manual

Table of Contents

  1. Overview
  2. Getting Started
  3. Map Controls
  4. Data Layers
  5. Filters
  6. AI Situational Briefing
  7. World Events Mode
  8. Info Panel
  9. Map Themes & Views
  10. 3D Buildings & Street Explore
  11. Weather Radar Overlay
  12. Census Demographics
  13. Region Navigation
  14. My Neighbourhood
  15. Colour Coding Reference
  16. Data Sources & Update Rates
  17. Troubleshooting

1. Overview

AusOverwatch is a real-time geospatial intelligence platform for Australia. It aggregates 15 domestic data feeds onto a single interactive 3D globe, giving you a comprehensive situational picture of what is happening across the country at any moment. It also features a World Events intelligence mode for monitoring global hotspots with military aircraft, LADD aircraft, news events, conflict data, and GPS jamming detection.

Live site: ausoverwatch.com

What makes AusOverwatch unique

2. Getting Started

System Requirements

First Load

  1. Navigate to ausoverwatch.com
  2. The application loads with the 3D globe centred on Australia
  3. Default layers begin fetching data automatically — you will see entity counts appear next to each layer name as data loads
  4. Green toggle switches indicate active layers; grey switches indicate disabled layers

Interface Layout

+------------------+----------------------------------+------------------+
|                  |                                  |                  |
|   Layer Panel    |         3D Globe / Map           |   Info Panel     |
|   (left side)    |                                  |   (right side)   |
|                  |                                  |   appears when   |
|  - AI Briefing   |                                  |   you click an   |
|  - Layer toggles |                                  |   entity         |
|  - Map controls  |                                  |                  |
|  - Filters       |                                  |                  |
|                  |                                  |                  |
+------------------+----------------------------------+------------------+

3. Map Controls

Mouse Controls

Action Control
Pan the map Left-click and drag
Zoom in/out Scroll wheel
Tilt the camera (3D mode) Right-click and drag
Select an entity Left-click on any marker
Deselect entity Left-click on empty map area

Keyboard Controls

Key Action
Escape Close the info panel or briefing panel

Touch Controls (Mobile/Tablet)

Action Gesture
Pan One-finger drag
Zoom Pinch in/out
Tilt Two-finger drag (vertical)
Select entity Tap on marker

4. Data Layers

AusOverwatch provides 15 data layers organised into five categories. Each layer can be independently toggled on or off using the switches in the Layer Panel.

4.1 Event & Incident Layers

Earthquakes

Displays earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater from the past 7 days across the Australasian region.

Bushfires

Shows active fire hotspots detected by NASA satellites using the VIIRS sensor aboard the NOAA-20 satellite.

Weather Warnings

Displays active weather warnings issued by the Bureau of Meteorology, including flood, storm, heat, and wind warnings.

Traffic Incidents

Shows road incidents including crashes, roadwork, closures, and hazards in New South Wales and Victoria.

4.2 Transportation Layers

Flights

Shows live aircraft positions across the Australasian region. Aircraft icons rotate to show their heading direction and smoothly interpolate between position updates.

Vessels

Displays ships and maritime vessels in real-time using AIS (Automatic Identification System) data streamed via WebSocket.

Transit (Multi-State)

Displays real-time public transport vehicle positions across multiple Australian states, including buses, trains, ferries, and trams.

4.3 Atmosphere & Environment Layers

UV Index

Shows current ultraviolet radiation levels measured at 17 ARPANSA monitoring stations across Australia.

Air Quality

Displays Air Quality Index (AQI) readings from over 150 monitoring stations across the Australasian region.

Weather

Shows current weather conditions for 20 major Australian cities, displayed as weather icons with temperature labels.

4.4 Space Monitoring Layers

Satellites

Tracks the International Space Station (ISS) and weather satellites in orbit, showing their current positions and orbital paths. Satellites are visible in both domestic and World Events modes.

Webcams

Displays approximately 1,000 webcams across Australia from the Windy network, with live preview thumbnails.

4.5 Infrastructure & Demographic Layers

Energy Grid

Shows the current energy generation mix for each of the five National Electricity Market (NEM) regions, with a focus on renewable energy percentage.

Census 2021

Overlays 2021 Australian Census demographic data as a choropleth (colour-shaded) map across 2,454 Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2) regions.

Weather Radar

Overlays real-time precipitation radar data across Australia as a semi-transparent tile layer.

5. Filters

The Filters section appears at the bottom of the Layer Panel. Filters allow you to narrow down the data shown on each layer. Only active layers show their filters.

Available Filters

Layer Filter Options
Earthquakes Magnitude M0+ / M2+ / M3+ / M4+ / M5+
Earthquakes Time window 1h / 6h / 24h / 7 days / All
Flights Altitude All / Ground / Low / High
Bushfires Confidence Nominal+ / High only
Bushfires Time period 24h / 48h / 5 days
Bushfires Detection All / Day / Night
Vessels Type Cargo / Tanker / Passenger / Fishing / Other
Satellites Category Space Station / Weather Satellite
Webcams Category Beach / City / Traffic / Landscape / Other
UV Index Level Low / Moderate / High / Extreme
Air Quality Level Good / Moderate / Bad
Warnings Severity Watch / Warning / Severe
Traffic State NSW / VIC
Traffic Incident type Crash / Works / Closure / Hazard
Transit Vehicle type All / Bus / Train / Ferry / Tram
Census Metric See Section 11
Census Opacity 10–80% slider
Weather Radar Opacity 0–100% slider

How Filters Work

6. AI Situational Briefing

The AI Briefing feature uses GPT-4o-mini to generate a plain-English situational summary of current conditions across Australia or for a specific city/state.

How to Use

  1. Select a location from the dropdown at the top of the Layer Panel:
    • All Australia — national overview
    • Cities — Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Darwin, Hobart, Canberra
    • States — NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, NT, TAS, ACT
  2. Click the "Brief Me" button
  3. Wait 2–3 seconds while the AI analyses current data (button shows "Analysing...")
  4. The Briefing Panel slides in from the right with the generated summary

What the Briefing Includes

The AI receives a summary of all active layer data and generates a 3–5 sentence briefing highlighting:

Location Targeting

When you select a specific city or state, the system filters all data to only include entities within the relevant geographic radius before sending to the AI. This means the briefing focuses specifically on conditions in that area.

Closing the Briefing

Click the X button on the Briefing Panel or press Escape.

7. World Events Mode

World Events mode transforms AusOverwatch from a domestic monitoring platform into a global intelligence tool. It overlays military aircraft, restricted (LADD) aircraft, news events, conflict data, and GPS jamming detection for a selected global region.

How to Activate

  1. Click the "World Events" button in the Layer Panel
  2. Select a region from the dropdown:
    • Middle East — Persian Gulf, Levant, Arabian Peninsula
    • Ukraine / Black Sea — Eastern Europe conflict zone
    • South China Sea — Maritime territorial disputes
    • Taiwan Strait — Cross-strait monitoring
    • Korean Peninsula — DMZ and surrounding waters
    • Indo-Pacific — Broader Asia-Pacific region
  3. The camera flies to the selected region
  4. Intelligence layers activate automatically
  5. Regional flights and vessels are fetched for the selected area
  6. The sidebar shows region-filtered counts for flights and vessels (not global totals)

Layer Behaviour in World Events

When World Events is active, domestic-only layers (earthquakes, bushfires, webcams, UV, air quality, warnings, traffic, transit, energy, weather, census, weather radar) are dimmed and non-interactive. Global layers (flights, vessels, satellites) remain fully interactive, as they are relevant in any region.

World Events Layers

Military Aircraft (Crimson)

Displays military aircraft tracked via ADS-B transponders. Aircraft icons are crimson with dead-reckoning interpolation between polls.

LADD Aircraft (Amber)

LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed) aircraft are those blocked from normal public tracking — often military, government, or VIP aircraft. When they appear on ADS-B, they are flagged with special database flags.

News Events (Coloured Pins)

Displays recent news events from the GDELT project, geolocated on the map and colour-coded by category.

Conflict Events (Fatality-Scaled Icons)

Displays armed conflict events from the ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data) project. Events include battles, explosions, protests, riots, and violence against civilians.

GPS Jamming Detection (Red Zones)

Automatically detects areas where GPS integrity may be degraded by analysing the Navigation Integrity Category (NIC) values of military aircraft. When multiple aircraft in a cluster report low NIC values, it suggests GPS interference.

Intel Brief

The Intel Brief button generates an AI intelligence analysis of the selected region using all active World Events data.

  1. With World Events active, click "Intel Brief" in the Layer Panel
  2. The AI analyses military aircraft density, LADD activity, news developments, conflict events, and GPS jamming indicators
  3. A 3–5 sentence intelligence briefing appears highlighting correlations and notable activity

Regional Flights & Vessels

In World Events mode, the platform automatically fetches flight data from the selected region using airplanes.live point queries (in addition to the standard Australian coverage). These regional flights are merged with domestic flights and deduplicated. Similarly, the AIS WebSocket subscription is expanded to include the WE region bounding box, so vessels in the selected area appear on the map.

The entity counts shown in the World Events sidebar panel reflect only the entities within the selected region bounding box — not global totals.

Exiting World Events

Click the "Exit World Events" button to return to domestic Australian monitoring mode. All World Events layers are removed, regional data fetching stops, AIS subscription resets to Australia-only, and domestic layers are restored.

8. Info Panel

The Info Panel appears on the right side of the screen when you click any entity (marker) on the map.

Panel Structure

Information Shown by Entity Type

Earthquake

Flight

Bushfire

Vessel

Satellite

Webcam

UV Index

Air Quality

Weather Warning

Traffic Incident

Transit Vehicle

Energy Region

Weather Station

Military Aircraft

LADD Aircraft

Conflict Event

GPS Jamming Zone

Closing the Info Panel

9. Map Themes & Views

Themes

Three map themes are available under the MAP section of the Layer Panel:

Theme Description Best For
Dark Dark grey CartoDB tiles with subtle labels Night viewing, data visibility, default
Light Light grey CartoDB tiles with clear labels Daytime viewing, presentations
Sat Esri satellite imagery Geographic context, natural features

Click the theme button to switch. The map transitions instantly.

View Modes

Mode Description
3D Full 3D globe with perspective camera. Tilt and rotate freely. Default mode.
2D Flat orthographic projection (bird's-eye view). Traditional map layout.

Switching between modes uses a smooth 1-second morph animation.

10. 3D Buildings & Street Explore

Google Photorealistic 3D Buildings

When available (requires Google Maps API key), you can toggle 3D Photorealistic Buildings. This overlays photorealistic 3D building models from Google on the map.

Street Explore Mode

Street Explore lets you fly down to street level in any major Australian city with 3D buildings enabled.

How to enter:

  1. Select a city from the Street Explore dropdown in the Layer Panel
  2. The camera flies down to 400 metres altitude with a tilted perspective
  3. 3D Buildings are automatically enabled
  4. All data layer markers are temporarily hidden for a clean view

Navigation in Street Explore:

How to exit:

11. Weather Radar Overlay

The Weather Radar layer overlays real-time precipitation data from RainViewer across Australia.

Features

Tips

12. Census Demographics

The Census 2021 layer displays Australian Bureau of Statistics demographic data as a choropleth overlay across 2,454 Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2) regions.

Loading

The Census layer is lazy-loaded when first enabled — it downloads approximately 2,454 polygon regions from the ABS. This takes about 10 seconds. A progress bar and elapsed timer show the download status. Once loaded, the data is cached for 24 hours.

Metrics

Switch between 8 demographic metrics using the metric selector:

Metric Colour Scale Unit
Household Income Red (low) → Green (high) $/week
Median Rent Green (low) → Red (high) $/week
Median Age Blue (young) → Orange (old) Years
Population Light purple (sparse) → Dark purple (dense) People
Indigenous % Light amber → Dark amber Percentage
Born Overseas % Light teal → Dark teal Percentage
Unemployment % Green (low) → Red (high) Percentage
Household Size Light blue → Dark blue People

Colour Scale

The colour legend at the bottom of the census filter section shows the gradient with minimum and maximum values. Colours are calibrated to the 5th–95th percentile range to avoid outliers distorting the scale.

Opacity

Adjust the census overlay opacity using the slider (10–80%) to balance visibility of the choropleth data against the underlying map.

Clicking a Region

Click any shaded SA2 region to see its full demographic profile in the Info Panel:

Tips

13. Region Navigation

The Regions dropdown in the Layer Panel lets you quickly fly the camera to any major Australian city or back to the national overview.

Available Presets

Region Camera Height
All Australia 5,000 km
Sydney 100 km
Melbourne 100 km
Brisbane 100 km
Perth 100 km
Adelaide 100 km
Darwin 100 km
Hobart 100 km

Each selection triggers a smooth 1.5-second camera flight animation.

14. My Neighbourhood

My Neighbourhood is a personalised dashboard that shows everything happening near your home address. Save your address once, and a green button appears on the map — click it to open a full-screen futuristic dashboard with proximity-based data cards and local news headlines.

Setting Up Your Address

  1. Click the green button on the bottom-left of the map (to the right of the Layer Panel)
    • If no address is saved yet, the button pulses with a green glow to prompt setup
  2. The My Neighbourhood Dashboard opens with an address input field
  3. Type your Australian address (e.g., "18 Corton Street The Gap QLD")
  4. Click Save — the address is geocoded and saved to your browser
  5. The dashboard immediately populates with nearby data

Your address is stored in your browser's local storage and persists across sessions. You can change or clear it at any time.

Dashboard Layout

The dashboard displays 12 data cards in a 4-column grid, plus a local news section:

Row 1 — Environment

Card What It Shows Radius
Weather Temperature, condition, humidity, wind from nearest station 100 km
UV Index Current UV level and risk category from nearest ARPANSA station 150 km
Air Quality AQI reading and health category from nearest station 50 km
Warnings Count of active BOM weather warnings nearby 200 km

Row 2 — Transport & Infrastructure

Card What It Shows Radius
Energy Grid Renewable energy percentage for your NEM state region 2,000 km
Flights Count of aircraft overhead + closest flight callsign and altitude 50 km
Transit Count of buses, trains, ferries, trams nearby, broken down by type 3 km
Traffic Count of traffic incidents nearby 30 km

Row 3 — Maritime, Hazards & Space

Card What It Shows Radius
Vessels Count of ships nearby + closest vessel name and type 80 km
Earthquakes Count of recent quakes + strongest magnitude and location 300 km
Fires Count of active fire hotspots nearby 100 km
Satellites Count of satellites currently overhead 500 km

Local News

Below the cards, the dashboard shows 3 local news headlines from Google News, automatically targeted to your state (e.g., "QLD news today"). Each headline shows the source and relative time.

Card Design

Each card uses a futuristic glass-morphism design with:

Changing Your Address

  1. Open the dashboard by clicking the green button
  2. Click Change in the dashboard header
  3. Enter a new address and click Save

Clearing Your Address

  1. Open the dashboard
  2. Click Change in the header
  3. Click Clear to remove your saved address
  4. The dashboard reverts to the address input view

Tips

15. Colour Coding Reference

Earthquakes (by magnitude)

Magnitude Colour Size
2.0–3.9 Green Small
4.0–5.9 Yellow Medium
6.0+ Red Large

Bushfires (by Fire Radiative Power)

FRP Colour
Under 10 MW Yellow
10–29 MW Orange
30–99 MW Orange-red
100+ MW Red

Flights

Status Colour
In air Blue
On ground Grey

Vessels (by type)

Type Colour
Cargo Blue
Tanker Purple
Passenger Green
Fishing Amber
Other Grey

UV Index

UV Range Level Colour
0–2 Low Green
3–5 Moderate Yellow
6–7 High Orange
8–10 Very High Red
11+ Extreme Purple

Air Quality (AQI)

AQI Range Category Colour
0–50 Good Green
51–100 Moderate Yellow
101–150 Unhealthy (Sensitive) Orange
151–200 Very Unhealthy Red
200+ Hazardous Purple

Weather Warnings

Severity Colour
Watch Yellow
Warning Orange
Severe Red

Traffic Incidents

Severity Colour
Minor Yellow
Moderate Orange
Major Red

Transit (by vehicle type)

Type Colour Hex
Bus Pink #ec4899
Train Blue #3b82f6
Ferry Teal #14b8a6
Tram Purple #a855f7

Military Aircraft

Status Colour
Airborne Crimson
On ground Dark grey

LADD Aircraft

Status Colour
All Amber

Conflict Events (by fatalities)

Fatalities Colour
>10 Dark red
1–10 Red
0 Orange

Conflict Event Icons

Event Type Icon
Battles Crossed swords
Explosions / Remote Star burst
Protests / Riots Raised fist
Violence against civilians Warning triangle

GPS Jamming Zones

Indicator Colour
Cluster zone (2+ aircraft) Red translucent ellipse
Single degraded aircraft Red warning ring (30km)

Energy Grid (Renewable %)

Renewable % Colour
Under 30% Orange
30–59% Yellow
60%+ Green

16. Data Sources & Update Rates

Layer Source Auth Required Update Rate Cache Duration
Earthquakes USGS None 60 seconds None
Flights airplanes.live / adsb.lol None 15 seconds 60 seconds
Bushfires NASA FIRMS API Key 5 minutes 5 minutes
Vessels AISStream API Key Real-time None
Satellites CelesTrak None 60 seconds 6 hours
Webcams Windy API Key Once on load 5 minutes
UV Index ARPANSA None 2 minutes 2 minutes
Air Quality WAQI API Key 5 minutes 5 minutes
Warnings BOM None 5 minutes 5 minutes
Traffic TfNSW + VicRoads API Keys 2 minutes 2 minutes
Energy Grid OpenElectricity API Key 5 minutes 5 minutes
Weather WeatherAPI API Key 10 minutes 10 minutes
Transit (Multi-State) GTFS-RT (QLD, SA, ACT, WA, TAS) None 30 seconds 30 seconds
Census 2021 ABS (Esri) None Once on load 24 hours
Weather Radar RainViewer None On toggle None
Military Aircraft airplanes.live + hexdb.io None 60 seconds 60 seconds
LADD Aircraft airplanes.live None 60 seconds 60 seconds
News Events GDELT None 5 minutes 5 minutes
Conflict Events ACLED Optional API Key 15 minutes 15 minutes
GPS Jamming Derived from military NIC None Real-time None
AI Briefing OpenAI GPT-4o-mini API Key On demand None
Regional News Google News RSS None On demand 10 minutes
Geocoding OpenStreetMap Nominatim None On demand None

17. Troubleshooting

No data loading / all layers show 0

A specific layer shows "API error"

Map is blank or black

Census layer takes a long time to load

3D Buildings not showing

Webcam timelapse not playing

AI Briefing not generating

Flights showing 0

World Events layers showing no data

My Neighbourhood "Address not found"

My Neighbourhood cards showing 0

Vessels showing 0

AusOverwatch — Real-time geospatial intelligence for Australia Version 2.4 | ausoverwatch.com