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This report updates the status of Unidata's IDV development efforts since the last report (October, 2009).

Objectives:

In the Unidata 2013 proposal, IDV development was defined under the proposed thematic area 3 "Developing and deploying useful tools". Under this endeavor, the following goals were outlined:

1. Ability to access and visualize every datastream provided by Unidata.
2. Support for analysis and visualization of ensemble model output (e.g., probabilistic threat and multivariate probabilities, mean-spread analysis, spaghetti diagrams, and aggregated remote access to large ensemble archives).
3. Improved handling of sub-minute data (lightning and model) as well as long range climate data.
4. Support for field project operations and datasets.
5. Adaptation to GIS frameworks and integration of GIS data.
6. Enhancements to the IDV framework and plug-in capabilities for a range of customized applications (e.g., lightweight IDV for use in educational settings).

The numbers are not in order of priority, but are used to indicate steps toward that goal in this report.

Progress since last report:

• IDV version 2.8 was initially released on January 15, 2010, and one update has since been released. The latest update can be downloaded at http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/downloads/idv/.

  Some of the new features in this release include:

  • Radar Cross Section (Goal 1)
  • Globe Display improvements (Goal 5)
  • Support for new high-resolution NEXRAD Level III products (Goal 1)
  • Support for lightning and ship/buoy reports (Goal 1)

  See the IDV 2.8u1 Release Notes, for more information.

• The IDV developers have been collaborating with the 4DWX project in NCAR/RAL. They are replacing their JViz system with a customized IDV to support the Army Proving Grounds (ATEC). They are also using the TDS to replace their legacy data system. RAL has developed a plugin with customized choosers, defaults, station models, etc to support this effort. A workshop was held by RAL during the week of February 24 to introduce the forecasters to the IDV. (Goal 6)
• The IDV and THREDDS/netCDF-Java developers have been collaborating on the CDM definitions for point data. Some progress has been made on remote access to GEMPAK surface data through the TDS. The new COSMIC data access and display uses the CDM TrajectoryFeatureType (Goal 1)
• Meetings/Presentations:
  • Don and Jeff attended the AGU Fall Meeting and presented an interactive poster with Jeff Weber during the interactive Virtual Globes session.
  • Don and Jeff made a very productive site visit to Dave Dempsey at SFSU while they were at AGU. Dave was interested in the IDV COSMIC displays. He got a RAMADDA server running during the visit and was able to access and display his local COSMIC data from that server.
  • Don and Yuan attended the AMS Annual Meeting. IDV demos were displayed during both AGU and AMS meetings in the UCP booth.
  • Yuan gave a presentation on Unidata and IDV to the COSMIC group.
  • Jeff gave RAMADDA presentations to NOAA and UNAVCO where he showed how IDV can interact with RAMADDA.

New development:

Development is underway for the next release of the IDV (2.9) which should be released in summer 2010. Several of these features are already available for testing in the IDV nightly build.

• Continued performance improvement work with SSEC for images
• Continued improvements in the globe display to be more "GoogleEarth-like". (Goal 5)
• Support for GEMPAK surface and upper air data (Goal 1)
• Support for WSI NOWrad images in archives (e.g. case studies)
• Additional GEMPAK diagnostic functions (PVOR, RELH, SM5S, SM9S, GWFS, SAVG/SAVS)
• Improved labelling and color bars
• Improved time handling to allow data selection based on existing displayed data (Goal 3)
• Improved access and display of COSMIC data (Goal 1)
• User defined fly-throughs
• Better Mac OS-X integration

Ongoing efforts include:

• Collaborating in the development of VisAD and McIDAS-V
• Keeping up with new Java interfaces and developments
• Various and sundry IDV bug fixes and enhancements.

Metrics:

IDV usage:**

The number of IDV users is slightly increasing. During the months of January/February 2010, the IDV was being used an average of ~450 times per day with 99 sites running the IDV 20 or more times during the month. Top known sites are University of Wisconsin (Mc-V), China, Korea, UIUC, Lyndon State College, Western Illinois, NCAR/RAL, EUMETSAT, Millersville and University of Wyoming.

Metrics data: Mar 1 2009 to Feb 28 2010

• Download data
• Mailing list data
• Comparison of post, subscription and unsubscription data
• Post data
• Subscription data
• Unsubscription data
• Support data

**When the IDV starts up interactively (i.e. not in script mode), it accesses some resource files (e.g. Favorite Bundles list) from the Unidata web server. The standard web server logs are used to generate information on what sites are running the IDV.

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This document is maintained by Don Murray <dmurray@unidata.ucar.edu>