Without knowing that Bharath is working on integrating ALOHA Plume models into Depiction, one of our users contacted the ALOHA developers and asked them how to export a model as a shapefile. This would allow him (and other users) to import that file into Depiction. The ALOHA team was glad to help, and gave these instructions:

To make your shapefile:
1. Run the scenario and display the threat zone in ALOHA.
2. Open MARPLOT and click on the lat/long where the chemical was released.
3. From the ALOHA Sharing menu in MARPLOT, choose Set Source Point. The ALOHA threat zone is now displayed in MARPLOT with the source point of the release at the lat/long location that you clicked on.
4. In MARPLOT, select the ALOHA threat zone.
5. In MARPLOT File menu, choose Export Overlay Objects.
6. On the Export dialog, choose the Shapefile format. Note that if you have selected both polygon objects (the threat zones) and point objects (the ALOHA source point and/or the ALOHA threat point) you will need to perform separate exports for each type of object.

This assumes that the user is already familiar with ALOHA and MARPLOT, and considering the number of requests we have gotten for this information, many Depiction users are.

The user was also kind enough to send a depiction he then created using this method. I have altered it a bit (changed colors to match the descriptions of red, orange and yellow zones and the icons to our plume icon) for posting a clip here.

ALOHA Plume imported as shapefiles in Depiction

Screen capture of ALOHA/MARPLOT files in Depiction

I hope this will make Depiction all the more useful for our Emergency Management users.

Happy Depicting!

George