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On Friday and Saturday, April 18-19, 2014, the University of Miami hosted a Unidata Regional Workshop on the use of Unidata's Integrated Data Viewer (IDV); the open source Repository for Archiving, Managing, and Accessing Diverse DAta (RAMADDA); and data and tools available from Unidata.
The 21 workshop attendees included students and scientists from the University of Miami, the Florida Institute of Technology, the University of South Florida, and Duke University. While most of those attending were focused on meteorology or atmospheric and ocean science, the group included a conservation biologist studying geotagged Sooty Tern seabirds. Many attendees brought data sets used in their own research, which enhanced the workshop experience greatly.
“Seeing the flight of the Sooty Tern — which spends months at sea — visualized in the IDV was memorably novel and fun,” said Dr. Brian Mapes, who organized the workshop at the University of Miami. Visualizing cross-sections through sea and air from a coupled atmosphere-wave-ocean model of a hurricane was more in line with most of the attendees' research interests. “A visualization of a 2D solar radiation field "as topography" on the sphere was laugh-out-loud goofy, a colorful lumpy lobe wobbling itself comically around the planet's surface,” Dr. Mapes continued.
Network hiccups in the computer lab where the workshop was held were just frequent enough to give trainees a realistic view some peculiar confusions of IDV work, but not so bad as to interfere with eventual problem solving and success, Dr. Mapes added.
Regional workshops not only give attendees a chance to spend time working directly with Unidata Program Center developers, they provide valuable user feedback to the developers. UPC staff make it a priority to attend regional workshops, and fit their schedules to the needs of the hosting institution. The University of Miami workshop's Friday and Saturday format was “as much sacrifice of time from both work and private lives as many attendees could afford, and lent a useful air of commitment and camaraderie,” according to Dr. Mapes.
If you are interested in hosting a Unidata regional workshop at your institution, contact support@unidata.ucar.edu.
