Community Services

Linda Miller, Doug Dirks, Jeff Weber

Strategic Focus Areas

Community Services supports the following goals described in Unidata Strategic Plan:

Enable widespread, efficient access to geoscience data
We monitor and collaborate with data sources to stay apprised of impending changes and to advocate for the needs of our user community. We provide user workshops, tutorials, and community workshops to help build supportive relationships between community members.
Develop and provide open-source tools for effective use of geoscience data
We promote Unidata tools and software for multi-disciplinary use, with an eye toward finding additional research and educational communities that can benefit from our work.
Provide cyberinfrastructure leadership in data discovery, access, and use
We work with government and industry data providers to secure access to data for Unidata community members.
Build, support, and advocate for the diverse geoscience community
We coordinate with our governing committees to find ways to expand Unidata's community participation. We use our web site, electronic newsletters, and social media to keep community members informed about enhanced data services, software tools, and cyberinfrastructure.

We participate in UCAR/NCAR and NSF projects for underrepresnted populations and minority communities (SOARS, AIHEC, outreach to HBCUs). We provide services and tools to facilitate education and research in diverse communities. We work to broaden the Unidata community by participating in student and professional conferences.

Posts to the News@Unidata blog appear regularly, but not on a specific schedule. Some highlights:

Discussion of Space Weather data planning with Brent Gordon, NOAA/Space Weather Prediction Center. Options will be discussed with Users Committee at October 2013 meeting
Distributon of Lightning data from Earth Networks Total Lightning Data is under discussion
Coordinating with Peter Neilley, The Weather Companies, and Ben Kyger, NCEP, about the Open Weather and Climate Service and how we might work cooperatively to provide a server at Reston, VA that could make high-resoluton datasets that are in demand, but not currently available, to our community. This is an exploratory project where Peter Neilley is the lead. This service will not supersede CONDUIT. (For more information, see the relevant slides from the August 2013 NWS Partners meeting.)
Coordinating with ESRL/GSD on distribution of HRRR and FIM data

HRRR Status Update

Participate in weekly AWIPS II meetings with NCEP Headquarters and NCEP Centers technical staff discussing progress and technical issues
The Russell L. DeSouza award will be presented to Larry Oolman at the October 2013 Users Committee meeting
Planning, support, and input for Unidata's strategic plan
Participating in the AMS's Committee to Improve Climate Change Communcations (CICCC)
Continue to mentor SOARS proteges
Actively engaged in the Education Working Group at UCAR to explore novel techniques and applications for the educational community
Participated in the Industry Day to explore potential collaborations with the private weather enterprise

We have continued to update the Facebook and Twitter feeds.
We have begun publishing short videos/screencasts on the Unidata YouTube channel.

We plan to continue the following activities:

AWIPS II Imagery Update

We plan to organize or take part in the following:

Statistics from the Community pages on the Unidata web site. Comparisons are made with statistics from the previous six-month period.

Most recent six months

Prepared September 2013