2. Advanced Menu Structure

2.1. General structure of the ELFI Inferface

After your login you will find the Main Menue in the top line. This main menue is built up in 5 different categories:

The relevant menu items are

Forecast Data Availability Tools Forecast Sites Support

plus language selection

and the logout.

Your comments and suggestions are welcome - please use the menu

to send your feedback.

2.2. Functionality and Features of ELFI’s advanced Menu

To find out more about ELFI, to get familiar with the interface, please follow the next questions where we built up a structure to explain you step by step bottum-up the functionality of this Interface.

The following questions in this FAQ system will guide you to get more and more detail information. Please have a look on the structure first.

2.3. Introduction to ELFI’s advanced menu

First of all you should have a look into the main menu Forecast Data. Click on the Forecast Data button and you will see in a new window which input is needed for getting a forecast graph.

Open the „Location“ pull-down menu and you can see your sites already registered. If there is no entry then you have to jump to main menue „Forecast sites“ to register your first site.

You can also have a look on the europe weather card, where you can see the weather development for the next hours and days as an animated sequence.

Start the weather map animation with the play button.

If there is a location available, then select your site, the type of forecast, the timeframe and check the timezone given. Below you can now see your selected forecast as a graph including the uncertainty band with WEPROGs min, max, optimal and 9 percentiles which will be explained later.

After this first impression go to the next questions which will guide you step by step to the benefits and all the functionalities. Why the graph is built up like this will be explained later so that you are able to identify the uncertainty in the weather development.

2.4. Forecast View in the advance menu

The following describes the selection process to create a graph of forecasts with the advanced menu.

2.4.1. Selection Process for Forecast View

At the top of the “Forecast Data” interface the user is supposed to make a number of selections in order generate a graph for a specific forecast and location. The selections are:

A Location

B Type

C Timeframe

D Timezone

2.4.2. Thumbnail View of the Location’s available data

The thumbnail view of the selected location’s available data is shown as a time series, where the selection make in the top menu is marked with a yellowish colour. The thumbnail view has a number of very specific and useful features that will be described now.

2.4.2.1. Making a selection of a time frame

On the top of the frame there are 2 blue buttons that can be moved with the mouse curser to change the time frame of the graph.

Note

Any changes to the start and stop dates in this view will automatically change the selection of the dates in the upper top menu.

2.4.2.2. Moving the selected time frame forward and backward

Once a specific time frame of the graphics view has been made the buttons to the left and right of the thumbnail view can be used to move forward (right button) or backward (left button) with exactly that time frame.

2.4.3. Features of the Graph

The shown graphs always contain uncertainty information as well as timeseries curves of the so-called optimal forecast and other user specific timeseries curves.

---

The legend below the graph is not only showing which lines and patterns below to which forecast and percentile range, but is also configurable for the timeseries curves u1..u4, f1..f4 and ANN.

2.4.4. Generating a Graph with the Baseline Feature

The baseline feature is especially useful to plot the absolute uncertainty of a forecast. When selecting the baseline as the minimum of the forecast, the abolute spread of the forecast in its selected unit will become visible. You can however use any of the forecast curves and set it to the baseline in orer to view the absolute uncertainty in relation to this specific forecast.