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Re: Fwd: netCDF and IDV for the Deepwater Horizon



Hi John,

What you say is true, BUT the time it takes to process information into a decision product is a HUGE issue for us. For example, if one of the NOAA Scientific Support Coordinators has a meeting with the Unified Command at 3 PM. If we get the information he needs to him at 2:55 PM we are close, but can make it. By 3:00 the meeting has started, and we've lost that battle, but not providing him the information he needs in time. The Unified Command has to make a decision. We often don't get much notice when these decisions will need to be made. Worst case is when someone gets an email from DC that has the phrase "HE is interested in ...."

So we have many of our own tools that use the C libraries to read/write netCDF data, that may process info that goes into another system. Making an analyst stop to use another tool and then pick up just slows them down. PMEL is providing data process for us for their LAS, but when data is coming back from all 8 vessels, and needs available on the "now or sooner" timescale, processing time again becomes an issue.

Emergency response is a very different world...

Will get you a sample as soon as I can.

Best regards,
CJ

John Caron wrote:
Hi CJ:

We are recommending that new netCDF data follow the CF "discrete sampling" data proposal at:

https://cf-pcmdi.llnl.gov/trac/wiki/PointObservationConventions <https://cf-pcmdi.llnl.gov/trac/wiki/PointObservationConventions>

Unfortunately, it is not a final standard yet, and has changed a bit in the last week. However, Im hopeful its very close. See section 9.4 for trajectory data. Any comments on that proposal would be appreciated, in particular if it meets your needs. If you'd like to try putting it into that format and sending us a sample file, we may be able to the process .

You can use any software to write netCDF, Java is not needed. The IDV will be able to read that format (not the current release, but soon after).

Regards,
John



Hello Ben,

I've been talking with Tiffany Vance and Steve Hankin about our data and visualization needs for the incident. I'm one of the trajectory modelers with NOAA Office of Response and Restoration / Emergency Response Division, and working on making new kinds of displays for information. We have the lead for modeling for the incident, and are putting out the daily trajectory forecasts. We are moving quickly to 3D forecasting. I have questions along two lines.

netCDF - we are pushing for using netCDF for all the information management for the modeling team. The two data streams are to move things into GIS for the spatial folks, and netCDF for those of us doing modeling and obs analysis. We have some issues that Unidata may be able to help with. For example, -we use the C libraries that always seem to be behind the java libraries in development -are their standards now for trajectory, cruise profiles, glider data, etc? We will have a large number of observational platforms, and want to be able to leverage all the data in modeling and forecasting. Visualization - IDV. I'm an IDV novice, but a big fan. Working on the HabitatSpace project with Tiffany, we ran into some little bugs that caused headaches. In looking at how to do 4D visualization for obs and models, I'd really like to use IDV. Is there help available to make sure that it works for what we need?

If you need more background on our needs, or what we do, let me know.

Best regards,
CJ