We have a similar issue & idea here at NAPSG Foundation:
Real-world Problem: Here at NAPSG Foundation, we are working on a mutual aid resource planning tool. The problem we are trying to solve is identifying potential impacts of forecast, simulated, and actual disasters to make more informed decisions on resources needed. The impacts we would like to evaluate are related to both special needs populations and community lifelines (see this link for more details on lifeline categories).
Audience: Emergency Managers and First Responders with little or no GIS Background
Current Solution: We have been using the Situational Awareness Widget / Solution configuration of Web AppBuilder. It works well when evaluating 4-7 layers for impacts.
GIS / Technical Problem: The information needs identified by our audience include many more than 30 layers. The current configuration of the situational awareness widget provides a very flat interface without any way to organize by themes. This results in a long scrolling horizontal list that would not provide information in a way that allows decision makers to see the impacts by theme. It is discouraging and decreases the likelihood they will use the tool. In addition, we are not able to control the way the layers are stored since we are not the hosts / custodians of the data. We also looked into utilizing a Story Map, with different tabs for each Lifeline; however when embedding situational awareness viewers in tabs within a story map, the “set location” and map extent are not shared between tabs. So, users have to re-navigate to their desired location, re-draw their desired area or re-select their “set location.”
Proposed Solution: To allow for a tabbed hierarchy or grouping of layers / information by themes. You could allow the configurator to create categories or themes and then “bin” layers by these themes.
Linked here is a similar idea posted in March 2018: Situational Awareness Widget - allow multiple layers under one tab.
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