A worked example for organisers

What SwimSignal already gives a club, an activity centre or an event organiser, shown on one planned session at four real bathing waters on Windermere, with the live forecast. The activity centre is invented for the example.

1. The session

2. The session briefing

A briefing is what the session's decision maker reads before the session: what the forecast covers and what it does not, who decides, then each spot's level on the day with the reason. This is the text a pilot briefing would carry (scripts/briefing.py), drawn here from the live forecast.

3. Several venues on one page

The sites view puts every spot an organiser uses on one page, with each spot's five days and its level on the session's day. Any list of spots can be made into one from the organisers' page or a named list on the Saved page. The spots are in the link, so nothing is stored.

4. What changed since the last update

The forecast is updated several times a day, so a briefing read in the evening can be out of date by the morning. Each spot's page says what moved since the previous update, and in which inputs. During a pilot, a short note would say what changed since the briefing was sent.

5. A decision record, kept

The decision record is one spot on one day, on up to two A4 pages: what the forecast is and is not, the level and why, every input with its age and source, what it cannot see, then lines for the decision and a signature. Printed or saved as a PDF when the decision is made, it shows what was known then.

Today nothing is kept for you: the pages show the latest forecast, and the copy you print is yours. During a pilot, each briefing would be kept as a fixed copy (the PDFs, the data they were drawn from and the issue id) for an agreed period, so it could be found again and shown as it was.

6. At the water

Each spot with its own page, Millerground Landing here, has a sign to print, with a QR code to the spot's forecast, and a live sign for a screen in a club hut or a centre's reception, which updates itself. A club's website can show the same card with the embed.

Where to go next

• Clubs, centres and leaders: what the levels mean for a group, by how wet people get.
• For event organisers: one spot and one day, the overflows upstream, and a checklist from British Triathlon's and Swim England's guidance.
• What SwimSignal takes responsibility for when it is used to run a session or an event.
• If you run sessions and want to say what would help, or what you do now, the feedback page reaches Ethan.