Click on map, click on themes, click on features – obtain database information
Choose to have information emailed, cached on ftp site or displayed on screen.
Log on to the HEED portal
Type free text query –obtain URL containing descriptor of database information, thematic maps and reports as selectable options for each returned result. Choose to have information emailed, cached on a ftp site or displayed on screen.
- Receive, pushed news and reports based upon customizable, preset or adaptive preferences. Choose to have information emailed, cached on ftp site or displayed on screen.
Choose a place and time period - receive a graph of a disturbance regime for that selection containing thematic composites. Choose to have information emailed, cached on ftp site or displayed on screen.
Select a disciplinary or categorical series of pages and enter a threaded discussion/chat forum to participate in either live conferencing or view a hierarchical digested forum. Search the forums or create a new forum, use email and listserver push to notify of change.
Log on to the HEED portal
Obtain Email (at POP3 compliant address) provided upon subscription) with threaded content and updates relevant to an interest survey each user fills out.
Log on to the HEED portal
Browse the database record by record using space/time/category/scale/quality/ownership and source constraining rules and change notate or flag data that requires modification. View the update on a map and via searches. Choose to have information emailed, cached on ftp site or displayed on screen.
Select map, database, chart or document view and for every results page VOTE using predetermined validity scales on the confidence associated with the data, see instantly how others have voted in pop-up windows (before and after each vote cast). The vote composites become thematic layers of quality part of the online linked GIS
Submit an entry (occurrence report) based upon material at user site or obtained via keyword search of the HEED distributed catalogs. These user-contributed reports populate the HEED database and are flagged as unvetted material.
Public health practioners
Epidemiologists
Pathologists Animal/Human
Toxicologists
Veterinarians wildlife/domestic
Ornithologists
Zoologists/botanists
Ichthyologists
Fisheries science
Wildlife ecologists
Aquaculturists
Parisitologists
Microbiologists
Phycologists
Clinmatologists
Oceanographers
Ecologists
Rural sociologists
Economists
Library scientists
Remote sensing and GIS specialists
Geographers
Resource Managers
Resource Administrators
Federal/State/Local Field Personnel
Public Advocates
Non Governmental Organizations
Individual Internet Surfers Including k-12 Public
Marine Scientists
Politicians/Legislative Aides
Etc.
The aforementioned user community has as a common frame of reference: the ability to organize information by place, category, time and relevance. Should a front end website Portal reflect those “ways of knowing” and provide interactive capabilities in each of these areas that yield the information of the other areas, then it makes no real difference that the data are Marine, Demographic, Public Health etc. because features are shared among themes. HEED is merely an exploratory tool to integrate information that typically is not integrated to help provide inference or help generate hypotheses. The disturbance data, including disease incidences of wildlife and humans and other impacts that are relevant tie into the Ecological Sustainability Indicators initiative, the GPW initiative, the Ozone UV dose initiative, the NBII initiative etc.. The online communities of experts brought into the HEED MD realm could use the simplified space/time/type/scale/source/quality HEED methodology to contribute point data to their own projects and fields of research.
The most important aspect of the HEED program that has remained relatively unexploited is the capacity to obtain via Lexis/Nexis digital print media references to economic hardships and expenditures devoted to the incidences recorded in the HEED database. This globally available information combined with standard economic measures (fisheries effort, catch statistics, closures) will be the only source of data available that tabulates COST per disturbance. Presently all other forms of accounting are model based, or survey based, not reality based. Though the reporting medium leaves huge quality questions, the simple fact that this information is published means it has an effect. Accounting for the composite effects will provide a research with a unique global dataset, prototyped on HEED data, but expandable to other areas. This is called a sensitivity layer useful for public policy decision-making and such layers are more retroactively predictive than the best models.