The decision support system RODOS (Ehrhardt and Weis, 2000) contains a large set of
simulation models, data bases, user interfaces and system functionalities. However these
many options resulted in heavy-weight and complex user interfaces difficult to handle by
non-experts. For this reason a user friendly and light-weight access to the RODOS
functionalities was requested by the end users. This was fulfilled by the design and
implementation of a new user interface named RODOS-Lite. The main purpose of this
redesigned user interface is to gently lead operators through a sequential line of input
masks, hiding rarely used parameters (defaults are set) from the operator but still
providing the possibility to access them if necessary. Additionally, the interface is
strongly safeguarded to prevent operators from entering wrong input values. This is
achieved by systematically checking input values and even suggesting occasionally best
estimate parameters. RODOS-Lite is complemented by various simple but nevertheless
extremely useful features such as online access to Google maps or source term
visualisation.