Unidata Users Committee Meeting Summary

6-7 April 2009
Boulder , Colorado

Acronym List

Monday, 6 April 2009

Meeting Agenda
Meeting Action Items

Administrative Items:

• The fall Users Committee Meeting will be combined with the Policy Committee. A date has not been determined. Amended: Dates of meeting have been set for October 15-16, 2009,
• Review of Action items:
  • Action 3 carried over-action should be taken for the next meeting
    Action 5-site contact list-updates need to be shared and efficient use could be made via GoogleDocs
  • Jen is mining the database
  • CONDUIT-information sent by Tom Yoksas—request for individual members of ensembles-should we add full SREF ensembles?
    • We need a central location where people can look up what’s available in CONDUIT (work with NCEP on this)

PolComm report-Gary and Mohan

It has been suggested by Rudy Husar, who sits on the Unidata Policy Committee, that EPA data be made available to the Unidata community.  This is air quality data. Unidata has unsuccessfully tried to access the data in the past.  Rudy has recommended that we hold off on real time data distribution of air quality data.  AirNow data is available via WebServices.  Collection of the data is done on a daily basis.  The committee is unsure about the interest in various departments in the community. Within the Green River project–people do not want to release data until it’s validated.  EPA is an enforcement entity, so the culture has been not to release the data. It was suggested that a poll of the community be done to gauge the level of interest and then to go back to EPA to see if any progress can be made.  If we had more evidence of need, it could add more strength to the argument for providing the data to the community.

Action 1: Conduct a poll of the community to gauge level of interest in real time air quality products. (Gary Lackmann will coordinate with Rudy Husar)

Mike Bevis gave a presentation about the synergy between geodesy and meteorology during the last Policy Committee meeting.
Eric Barron gave a talk- on perspectives of collaborations Mohan commented that subsequent to that meeting NCAR is developing its strategic plan.  Nearly done with first draft—Eric has been breaking up imperatives and frontiers—must versus like to do.
3rd category-fabric area-guiding principles and values-who we are-strategic plan should be available to community very soon.

Director’s report - Mohan

Unidata participated in the UOP's open house, where each program provides information and refreshments to the UOP participants about their program. Unidata had about 60 people show up for the event.

Planning has been underway since the last UserComm meeting for the 2009 triennial users workshop. Coordination with the sub-committee and several Unidata staff has worked well. The workshop information is available from the home page.

The DeSouza Award was presented to Elen Cutrim for dedication, enthusiasm, and inspiration that truly reflect the goals and ideals of the Unidata program. Elen has been a member of the Unidata Users Committee since 2003, and has been actively engaged in the Unidata triennial workshops.  Elen has been an inspiration and a source of strength for her colleagues on the Users Committee, as well as the Unidata staff, always projecting her enthusiasm, radiant smile, unrivaled optimism, and incredible kindness.

Other information includes:

• 483 machines running LDM6 at 550 sites reporting stats. CONDUIT and WSR-88D level II data make up the bulk of the volume
• A verbal commitment that AWIPS-II software will be available for use by the U.S. university community.
• Remote data access infrastructure continues to progress through THREDDS, netCDF, CDM, RAMADDA, GALEON, etc.
  netCDF use continues growing-NASA, NESDIS, IPCC, OPeNDAP
• IDV-use is growing 300-400 institutions. 1372 institutions have used IDV at least 5 times. IDV team won UCAR's outstanding achievement award for education and outreach in December
• GEMPAK users have been added to the IDV steering committee
• software download and support metrics
• outreach activities

Check the Director's report for additional information.

Discussion:

The question of the value of status reports was raised and a suggestion of creating a "CliffsNotes version" (a quick glance) was mentioned. An idea of posting the question of what's new with a focus of where we're going might be useful. This is a change to be considered by the UPC.

Status Reports

• CADIS - Weber, Ramamurthy
• Community Services - Miller, Weber, Hansen
• Decoders - Kambic
• Equipment Awards - Mitchell
• GALEON and related outreach - Domenico
• GEMPAK - NAWIPS - James
• IDV Development - Murray
• International Activities - Yoksas
• LDM/IDD - Emmerson, Schmidt, Weber, Yoksas
• LEAD - Ramamurthy
• McIDAS - Yoksas
• NetCDF - Rew, Hartnett, Heimbigner
• Case Studies - Weber, Ramamurthy
• NEXRAD-Hydrology ITR Project - Weber, Ramamurthy
• RAMADDA - McWhirter
• Support - Yoksas
  • Support by topic
• THREDDS - Caron, Davis
• Unidata Training Workshop - Campbell
• Web Development-Oxelson

Following is a synthesis of comments made during the discussion of the status reports:

• New data column in the newsletter is helpful
• Decoder-Java library-outside organizations request functionality, and the functionality is implemented
  • Two rotated lat/lon projections have been implemented recently.  One
    is for ECMWF grids another version for WRF grids.  IDV should be able
    to visualize them.
• GALEON-is there an effort to get data from societal group into our data systems
  • Could make use of GALEON’s database and tools-working with hydrology folks and ESRI tools
  • East Carolina Univ-using GIS with Weather data. 
• GEMPAK – Michael James is working with the community of National Center evaluators providing input on installation and existing functionality
  of the NCEP version of AWIPS2.  NCEP will help with installation of LDM
• Intial version of NAWIPS replacement based on the AWIPS II T010 release has been made available to the National Centers and Unidata.  It uses HDF5 file format.  Most data is decoded into into HDF-5, obs data decoded directly into database.  NCEP is rewriting the GEMPAK DM library to be able to access the AWIPS-II database and HDF5 files.  There will be one more release of GEMPAK (version 6.0) in the fall with this capability.
• Raytheon is developing D2D version for NWS offices
• Question of IDV, TC-IDV plug in-functionality that uses ATCF grid-dataspecial ATCF tropical storm data. NHC FTP site
  can compare charts and differences in 24 hr forecasts.
• IDV can now load a GEMPAK surface file now-no subsetting capabilities yet - waiting for netCDF-Java mods. IDV relies on georeferenced data so
  at present can't display idealized WRF grids.
• Can now take advantage of multi-threading for IDV which provides increased speed and performance. 
• There was a question of  international university sites access to data.  Unidata tries to encourage new international sites to provide data or something useful for other sites, i.e., quid-pro-quo arrangement. 
• A change in COSMIC data distribution is being planned. Unidata provides the data feed. LDM will be used.
• The question of 31 feed types-is it doable to have multiple feed types? The feed types are based on 32 integers, and if backward compatibility is to be maintained, 32 is the max. A good naming scheme is important, and the exp can be used for any of the data streams.
• NDFD is used for operations for forecasters-should there be a CONDUIT feed for NDFD (perhaps the early hours of NDFD); perhaps two CONDUIT feeds are needed
• Comment about the full ensemble set for SREF was also discussed for addition to the CONDUIT data stream
• LEAD will organize a community workshop with some supplemental funding, but the long term future of LEAD is still in question, due to lack of funding.
• McIDAS V is IDV with a few other functions added to it. As McIDAS V is extended we hope that those applications will be shared with IDV.  Just as GEON IDV is tailored for geology, others can tailor IDV to their field. The primary design of IDV is for education.
• Case studies-looking for people to adopt THREDDS and RAMADDA. With additional curriculum materials, presentations, etc. added to case studies, the case studies become more valuable.

Action 2: Request to add early hours of NDFD on CONDUIT feed, as well as the individual members of the SREF ensemble. (Tom Yoksas will coordinate)

New resources are available via RAMADDA and we would like to see the RAMADDA federated at various Unidata sites. Gary Lackmann and Bill Gallus both said they have lots of data available to add.

Action 3: RAMADDA demos should be provided semi-regular at the UserComm meetings when new features become available. (Jeff McWhirter and/or Jeff Weber)

Workshop discussion

Work needs to be done to come up with creative methods to advertise and to increase attendance, although we're ahead of schedule from the 2006 workshop. Advertising should pick up by sending the workshop announcement to email lists, and people/groups who might be interested in attending.

Co-chairs are typically responsible for final paper to be submitted to AMS/BAMS – Brian, Sean, Larry and Gary. They can coordinate with Jo Hansen on the workshop summary/article after the workshop.

Jen mentioned the work on the Web site from the 2006 workshop.  She will retain that information. Jen could provide a mailing list and could begin a RAMADDA site for bios, data, abstracts, etc. 

Action 4: The workshop sub-committee should touch base with each presenter to find out what software datasets, format for data, storage requirements are needed. The presenters need to register, and provide their bios and abstracts.  

RAMADDA will fill the role of being a resource for participants

How do we engage the participants to provide information to RAMADDA? Jeff McW will give a talk about RAMADDA at 2:10-2:40 on Monday 8 June to provide an overview of RAMADDA capabilities, focused on the workshop.

Action 5: Set up email list for workshop sub-committee, speakers, and certain staff. (Email the list of presenters to Jen for setting up email list.)

Some site contacts were made by committee members. Results have been placed in Google.docs.

Action 6: Do a demo to show workshop speakers how to use RAMADDA for upload of their presentation materials. Create a one--page summary of instructions for presenters.

Discussion of AWIPS-II

Discussion of Brent Gordon's Presentation: 

• Currently AWIPS-II does not run with Solaris
• Hardware upgrades will be necessary within the community
• Unidata needs the source code for AWIPS-II

User Stories:

• NAWIPS user stories--unique functionality of GEMPAK
• Wants package to run on standard system, not higher end system
• Read and write into Fortran
• Migrate between Fortran and the new package
• Python is important for the next generation of users
• Modelers are still using Fortran--30% of research community
• Java is #1 program being taught on campuses today
• OU holds Python workshop
• workshops being conducted with GEMPAK
• intro, weather briefing and seminars--use of GEMPAK

Action 7: Obtain a collection of GEMPAK scripts and outcomes to compare with IDV capabilities.

Discussion of Metrics Information

List of questions and ideas:

• Collection of weblog analysis
• Unique-tracking people via IP address-education research project
• Interpretation of downloads and metrics numbers- look for overall trends
• Looking for increased or decreased numbers
• Glean information for customer relationship
• Should ask the question of why are we doing this--sponsorship, goals & objectives
  
• Site surveys - need to ask the question again-what are we looking for
• What is distribution of users in Unidata-edu, gov, etc.

Example: Learning outcomes-Scott teaches a senior seminar class-capstone experience-were they able to design project?

• List of outcomes-set up metrics to assess the list
• How they learn and how the different classes fit together
  Success of teachers to teach skills and text-writing, research, exam results
  Are we meeting our objectives?
  Is Unidata providing the data, s/w, etc. to help students?
• Can we measure how life would be without Unidata?
• Students using Unidata - higher job placement rate?.
• It was agreed that many students do not know that Unidata provides the tools and data they use for their classes. How can that be changed? Could there be a two or three question exit survey about Unidata when students move on? Can teachers tell them?