LEAD Status Report
October 2004
Doug Lindholm
Tom Baltzer
Mohan Ramamurthy
Overview
The Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD) is a National Science Foundation
Large Information Technology Research (ITR) project that is creating
an integrated, scalable cyberinfrastructure for mesoscale meteorology
research and education. It is a five year effort that started in the
Fall of 2003.
The UPC is working in collaboration with several other University partners to set
up a collection of test bed computer systems to support the research
and educational goals of the LEAD project. Each test bed, including
one at the UPC, will integrate existing and new tools (e.g. for data
gathering, serving, mining, assimilation, and forecast modeling) and
enable them to interoperate under the dynamic control of a Grid
environment.
Unidata's Role in LEAD
The primary roles that Unidata will play in the near term in the LEAD effort include:
- Support data delivery to the LEAD test beds via the IDD, LDM, and decoders.
- Provide data discovery and access mechanisms via THREDDS, OPeNDAP, ADDE, and NetCDF.
- Provide visualization and analysis capabilities via the IDV.
- Enhance Unidata tools to work in a Grid and Web Services environment.
- Help design and implement the software architecture of the LEAD Grid test beds.
- Help define the meteorology research and education use case scenarios that drive the
development.
Benefits to Unidata Community
In addition to meeting the goals of the LEAD project, Unidata's
efforts toward these ends will enhance our ability to serve the
community. In fact, we are concentrating our efforts initially on the
aspects of LEAD in which we think our community is most interested.
Some of the community benefits will include:
- Improved procedures for tool installation and configuration.
- Improved documentation of existing Unidata tools.
- Enhanced tool features and capabilities.
- Improved interoperability between and better integration of Unidata tools and systems.
- UPC expertise in the installation and operation of WRF, data assimilation, data mining,
and Grid and Web Service technologies.
- Access to atmospheric discovery capabilities unachievable today.
Recent Accomplishments
- Demonstrated an end to end system which involved running the LDM,
decoders, THREDDS, and OPeNDAP on the UPC LEAD testbed and presenting the results in the IDV.
- Contributed to the design of a series of prototypes to
guide the LEAD development.
- Configured the UPC testbed hardware and software to support Prototype 1a.
- Created a Jython workflow script and coordinated the configuration and
testing of the LDM, decoders, and the IDV at other LEAD testbed sites
to fulfill the requirements of Prototype 1a.
- Worked with Indiana University to incorporate the workflow script into
a portal interface mock-up.
- Added limited support for WRF NetCDF data in the IDV.
- Experimented with the UPC testbed hardware configuration.
- Attended the LEAD all-hands meeting in Huntsville.
- Contributed to the LEAD Annual Report.
- Attended a meeting of LEAD's External Advisory Panel (EAP)
which included a demonstration of Prototype 1a.
- Actively participated in LEAD meetings via the Access Grid.
- Submitted LEAD related abstracts to the Fall 2004
meeting of the American Geophysicsl Union (AGU) and the 2005 meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS).
Ongoing Efforts
- Modifying the Jython workflow script to support the development of subsequent LEAD prototypes.
- Contributing to the definition of an interchange language for LEAD
metadata.
- Working with Indiana University to include adequate metadata in THREDDS catalogs
to support rich queries.
- Working with the University of Oklahoma to define NetCDF conventions
for their ARPS Data Analysis System (ADAS).
- Completing support for WRF NetCDF data in the IDV.
- Preparing a self-education session for other LEAD participants on the
topics of THREDDS and OPeNDAP.
- Creating instructions for other LEAD testbeds to install and configure
THREDDS and OPeNDAP.
- Contributing to the LEAD portal design.
- Developing interfaces to decoders and the IDV to enable them to serve as Web Services.
- Working to install the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model on the UPC LEAD testbed.
- Experimenting with clustering and grid software.
- Working to configure the UPC LEAD testbed to run as two
clusters to support development, testing, and demonstrations.
