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22-24 June 2005

Linda Miller   

Mohan Ramamurthy and I met with several senior people at National Weather Service, followed by a meeting with Cliff Jacobs and Bernard Grant, National Science Foundation. Below are some highlights from these meetings.

22 June 2005

Leroy Spayd, NWS-301.713.1858 x105

Will Fellows, NWS-301-713-0262 x132

Paul Chan, NWS-301-713-0262 x132

Fred Branski, NWS-301-713-0864 x146

Jack Hayes, NationalOcean Service-301-713-3074 x156

Greg Mandt, Office of Science & Technology-301-713-1746 x102

• Leroy Spayd, NWS liaison to the Policy Committee, provided assistance in coordinating several of the meetings on our behalf.
• Will Fellows, is program manager of the lightning data program at NWS.
• Present contractor (awarded this year) is Vaisala, who provides cloud to ground data via National Lightning Detection Network (same as SUNY-Albany provides to Unidata community)
• NWS recently issued an RFI and has evaluated the responses. There is also an OFCM Joint Action Group (JAG) on the Lightning Data Program.
• Data presently being displayed on AWIPS with a NEXRAD overlay
• NWS holding off on recompetition for now-will stick with Vaisala
• Investigation on the United States Precision Lightning Network (USPLN)
• Cloud to ground strokes for 48 states through USPLN
• Currently, Alaska has lightning data via BLM

Action: Unidata should arrange for a presentation of the USPLN during the Users Committee meeting.

Considerations: SUNY-Albany and NLDN have provided the lightning data to Unidata universities for several years. We need to be sensitive to this to avoid losing the service.

Meeting with:

• Paul Chan, CIO
• Larry Curran, Head of Operations
• Fred Branski, Data Management

Main thrust of discussion was CONDUIT distribution and the limitations of the TGSV32 computer at the NWSTG. The machine needs more memory, and is at the core of the problem of delivering more data via CONDUIT. Equipped with information from Steve Chiswell and Tom Yoksas, we discussed options for moving data, including addition of future data without latency problems. We provided information on the test conducted by Unidata pushing over 5TB/day, even suggesting that Unidata install a machine at the gateway for testing. This is not doable, due to the “operational” nature of the gateway, security issues, etc. They explained that the AFS they use for the I/O is a major bottleneck and they have plans (Sept-Oct 2005) to implement SAN solutions to address that problem. 

Meeting with:

Jack Hayes, Deputy Director, NOAAOcean Service

Marie Colton, previously NESDIS, technical director

David Zilkoski, IOOS Lead

Discussed Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) and GEOSS planning. Unidata is already involved through Ben Domenico’s participation in the data management and Communications Committee. The design of the data distribution is underway, and it's likely that we will be a partner in the design standards. Russ Rew is working on a NOAA Data Management and Integration Team effort which should be integral to future Unidata data planning efforts. We believe all of these activities will be advantageous to our planning efforts on behalf of the Unidata community. NOS is working on soliciting and developing partnerships, including academic partners, and Unidata can play a significant role.

Meeting with:

Greg Mandt (Leroy Spayd joined us for this meeting)

Discussion with Greg on GEOSS, next generation AWIPS, and other related activities. We discussed our interactions with FSL and next generation AWIPS planning through Darien Davis. The next generation AWIPS contractor will be chosen very soon. Interest in involving Unidata in planning efforts, but nothing concrete was established.

23 June 2005

Attended the NWS Partners’ Meeting

Much of the discussion during the Partners’ meeting was based on the NOAA Partnership Policy. Apparently, the policy triggered fear as to the intent of the policy. Private industry felt that the NWS was attempting to usurp business opportunities.

Family of Services/NOAAPORT Meeting. See the following URL for meeting presentations and information:

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/datamgmt/

Noteworthy:

• Level II update
• Target architecture eliminates Regional Headquarters from distribution architecture
• NWS is designing a new architecture for Level II data distribution which sends the data directly to the Telecommunications Operations Center (TOC) with a backup site (yet to be determined)
• Concept will be implemented within one year
• Single point of failure will be remedied by this change
• Interim design uses NWSnet (OC3) and the TOC for the backup site (See Sandman’s slides in URL above)
• Joel Martin, IRaDS, Oklahoma, read a prepared statement pertaining to the reliability issues and the intent of 95% which is not acceptable when trying to conduct business. He indicated there had been 35 days with outages over one year with 32 outages.
• FY08 NOAAPORT capacity will double.

24 June 2005

Meeting with:

Cliff Jacobs

Bernard Grant  

• Budget level appears to be the same as last year, at this time
• Metrics and assessment was discussed. Cliff and Bernard provided some ideas from NSF point of view for Unidata consideration in this planning activity.
• Discussed International activities with Cliff and Bernard. Cliff had tried to set up a meeting with the international group, but there was a major conflict on Friday. They invited us to meet with them on the next visit.
• Contact Steve Meacham regarding planning grant for 06. This could facilitate the planning needed for a similar proposal to the DDDAS leveraging the work of hydrology, ocean, THREDDS, LEAD, etc. Need to do this quickly!

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