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NOAA/NESDIS/RAMM Team
CIRA, West Laporte Avenue
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1375
January 23, 2002
MEMORANDUM FOR: Mary M. Glackin, Director
NOAA/NESDIS/ORA
FROM: Debra A. Molenar, Computer Specialist
NOAA/NESDIS/RAMMT
SUBJECT: Trip Report
Interactive Symposium on the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS)
American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting
January 13-17, 2002, Orlando, FL
I attended the Interactive Symposium on the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) held at the AMS Conference in Orlando on 13-17 January 2002. The Symposium offered an excellent compilation of information regarding current AWIPS application development efforts and future AWIPS directions. I was able to meet with many FSL, NWS and NESDIS personnel involved with various aspects of AWIPS. I will complete a more detailed report with plans and timelines for evolution of our Team’s AWIPS capacity and computing capabilities, but for now, here is a summary of some of the information obtained:
o Fresh on the heels of our decision not to support Linux, FSL is rapidly moving towards full AWIPS capability on Linux (Intel) platforms. The goal is to have complete AWIPS functionality on a PC by 2003. NWS is currently deploying 2 Linux workstations to all AWIPS sites as supplemental/evaluational workstations. In 2004, the decision on what to do with the existing AWIPS HP workstations will be made. I met with Darien Davis of NOAA/FSL who is actively involved in the Linux port, and she indicated that all of the components we are currently using for our ‘experimental AWIPS’ configuration have been ported, therefore the ingest routines we currently use could easily be installed on Tethys (the VISIT DRT system). This benefits us in many ways and provides a clear path for us to be able to install & use the latest version of AWIPS rather than having to wait for releases from COMET, etc. I will be looking into this in more detail in the coming weeks to determine the most efficient implementation path, and how we transition our AWIPS capabilities from HP-UX to Linux over the next few years.
o The AWIPS Program Office has relaxed control on local application development, and a web library of applications developed by various sites is now available. I also met with some of the individual developers who gave talks at the Symposium, and the information they provided will help jump start our effort to implement the climatologies on our local workstation. Applications have been developed in almost every language, from FORTRAN to Tcl/Tk and Python.
o Almost every talk concerning the future direction of AWIPS had a bullet referencing inclusion of NESDIS satellite products and applications as a high priority for the future. However, there is no clear mechanism on how this can be accomplished. I believe this is an area where we can take the lead and I will be investigating this further in the coming weeks.
o I also met with several developers from the McIDAS community. Two key McIDAS users, Unidata and Johnson Space Flight Center, have plans to discontinue McIDAS support by the year 2003. FSL is currently working to port Johnson’s McIDAS applications to a specialized AWIPS system that is customized to handle global data. Unidata is currently developing a new package that is focused on data integration and visualization, providing many 3D capabilities. The package utilizes GEMPAK and VIS5D as a base, with a Java overlay. I believe this means we should evaluate our future McIDAS requirements, and could possibly reduce some of our McIDAS support costs but paring down it’s use, or limiting use to the Windows platform only. I will also be looking into possible directions for our Team in the 1-2 year time frame.
cc: F. Holt, E/RA2
J. Key, E/RA2