Graphical user interface for the nuclear material accounting and control system

Challenge
Personnel responsible for the control of reactor fuel constantly monitors a large amount of data related to the use, storage and transfer of fuel units. Accounting and control of nuclear materials are performed in line with national and international regulations. Reporting documents sent to the regulatory authorities include dozens of different official forms. To minimize the time required to analyze information and make correct reports, a well-designed graphical user interface is required.

Key system requirements:

• Ergonomic GUI: operational comfort for personnel and minimization of time spent on navigation.
• Validation of the data: minimization of operator errors, verification of input data for compliance with validation criteria.
• Adjustability: ability to quickly customize a system according to the requirements and regulations of a particular facility, national legislation, and international norms.

 
Solution
The software for nuclear power plants has many domain-specific scenarios. To ensure the high level of usability the development team took the iterative approach for implementation. After every iteration, we did a thorough review of every function with domain experts from research institutes, power plants or controlling organizations. All the findings were incorporated within the next iterations.
 
The graphical user interface allows reviewing cartograms, editing tables, exporting data, receiving notifications and generating reports in accordance with the requirements of regulatory authorities. The interface is integrated with other services and systems: access control and management, report generation, automatic updates and automated diagnostics of updated versions, automatic data backup.

The GUI contains the function of data and forms validation, lists of predefined values to ensure the validity of data and minimize human errors.
The graphical user interface should provide comfortable work with more than 2000 objects. Each of them has about 20 properties, the system must allow to edit the properties of any object. We used HTML5 Canvas to implement this functionality. Our solution includes such functions as click, hover, multiple selection, etc. Different view modes and grouping features allow quick data analysis.
 
Technology stack: HTML5 Canvas, JavaScript, Fabric.js, AJAX, Bootstrap, ASP.NET MVC, EntityFramework.
 
 
Results
The well-thought graphical user interface provides a clear overview of the actual situation in the reactor core, cooling pools, and nuclear fuel storage facilities, as well as detailed information on the location and state of each accounting unit at any particular time.
Our solution assures high-performance visualization of complex functionality with a large number of objects, makes it easy to find the necessary information and perform basic operations with data in 3-4 clicks. The system seamlessly adapts to the different facilities.