Unidata Users Committee Meeting Summary

24-25 October 2002

Boulder, Colorado

Members:	UPC Staff:
Rich Clark, Millersville Univ, Chair	Steve Chiswell
Bill Fingerhut, Lyndon State College	Sherri Corpuz
Anton Kruger, Univ of Iowa	Ethan Davis
Mark Laufersweiler, Univ of Oklahoma	Ben Domenico
Michael Morgan, Univ of Wisc-Madison	Emily Doremire
Larry Riddle, Univ of Calif-San Diego	Steve Emmerson
Tony Rockwood, Metropolitan State	Joanne Graham
James Steenburgh, Univ of Utah	Jo Hansen
Donna Tucker, Univ of Kansas	Yuan Ho
	Robb Kambic
Ex-Officio Members:	Jeff McWhirter
Charles Murphy, Kean Univ	Linda Miller
Tom Whittaker, Univ of Wis-Madison, ATAC Rep	Don Murray
	Russ Rew
Mohan Ramamurthy, Univ of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Visitor	Jeff Weber
	Stu Wier
	Tom Yoksas

Administrative

Welcomed new Users Committee members; Donna Tucker, Univ of Kansas; Anton Kruger, Univ of Iowa;Chuck Graves, St Louis Univ was unable to attend. Michael Morgan, Univ of Wisconsin-Madison, agreed to an extended term and will be co-chairing the Unidata summer workshop, 2003.
Mohan Ramamurthy, Univ of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana; joined the Users Committee. Dr. Ramamurthy is incoming Director to the Unidata Program Center, scheduled to begin 6 January 2003.
The next Users Committee meeting is proposed for 13-14 March 2003.
Review of the Action Items from the 14-15 March 2002 meeting.
- Discussion of Action 2 - it was decided that this action would be visited at a later time.
- All other Actions are in the process of being implemented or have been satisfied.
Responding to Actions directed to the Users Committee from the Unidata Policy Committee, 20-21 May 2002
- Discussions of the case study project yielded agreement that the case studies are valuable and useful to students and faculty, thus, should be considered for inclusion in the THREDDS portion of the proposal. It was agreed that there should be an ongoing dialog with the Users Committee, including some type of discussion on the Plaza site on the value and possible directions of the case study project.
- Anton Kruger will serve on the Users Committee Summer Workshop Planning Committee as a member outside of the "core" Unidata community.
- Charlie Murphy and Rich Clark are discussing the possibility of a Regional Workshop in the Northeast U.S.

Action 1: The 2001 Users Survey Summary should be linked to the Unidata home page, following review by the Users Committee.

Policy Committee Liaison Report - Charlie Murphy

Last two Policy Committee meetings focused much time on the Unidata Proposal 2008
A liaison from DLESE should be represented at the Unidata Users Committee to facilitate coordination
Coordination among UCAR/NCAR should be encouraged and demonstrated for the proposal
Role of WRF model training and output connections needs to be explored
University sites should create reference to data sources for attribution
Peter Milne is now working with Cliff Jacobs and Bernard Grant at NSF
Schedule for Unidata's five-year funding proposal is:
- submit - end of November
- analysis - end of January 2003
- on site panel - end of February 2003
- complete - April
Equipment grants proposal review should be completed by 12 November 2002
NOMADS is considered a "grassroots" effort, with much interest (even British Atmospheric Data Services).
- A Unidata university NOMADS steering committee representative was selected. Jim Steenburgh, University of Utah was selected.
David Helms, NWS, discussed the Science & Technology Infusion Plan from the Office of Science and Technology
Martha Maiden, NASA representative, presented information on data management, distribution and modeling. Three Pedabytes of data are currently archived for NASA. The NPOES data will be archived at NCDC. NASA CAN RFPs have been released.
The following resolution was passed during the Policy Committee Meeting:

Resolution:
==========
On behalf of the Unidata community the Policy Committee expresses its
appreciation to Ben Domenico for is leadership as acting Director of the
Unidata Program.

Ben's conscientious efforts at guiding the development of the Unidata 2008
proposal over the last few months are especially commendable. The
collaborative and multi-disciplinary contracts and alliances he has forged
will benefit the program significantly, and we look forward to his ongoing
contributions and collegial interactions.

Discussion:

ACTION 2: It was agreed that there are many changes taking place regarding types of data, data management, data access, and data volume. Unidata should invite agency representatives to provide briefings at future meetings.

Director's Report - Ben Domenico

Staff changes include new Unidata Director, Mohan Ramamurthy
The Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) was released (included collaborations with ATD for IHOP)
Unidata's new Web site <my.unidata> was announced
Users phone survey to ascertain broader impact of Unidata - 98 sites completed, with approximately 35 remaining
Reference to 2003 Summer Workshop organized by Users Committee and UPC
Unidata five-year funding proposal is due in late November to NSF
Working on other funding proposals
Discussion of CRAFT status and ACARS data availability. CRAFT funding ends 31 Oct 2002. ACARS data availability is threatened due to United Airlines budget crisis. United has been funding the majority of the ACARS data distribution.

NOTE: 28 October 2002 - received a note indicating there will be a December 2002 stakeholders meeting regarding the status of the service of MDCRS/ACARS. The meeting is being hosted by the NWS.

Status Reports

The status report discussions were based on comments and/or questions resulting from the status reports that were provided in their entirety via the agenda links.

GEMPAK - Congratulations to Steve Chiswell who worked with Art Person, Penn State University, to provide a solution to the 16-24 bit problem that had been discussed previously at the Users Committee, and through email discussions by the GEMPAK users. The solution was provided to NCEP and has been folded into the release of their software. NAWIPS/GEMPAK is still being used at the NCEP Centers.
The question of the McIDAS GUI and its use was raised. The GUI is used by all McIDAS users. ADDE use is rising.
NOAAPort Gini compression was discussed. Tom Renkevens from NOAA is using a wavelet compression technique which is experimental, 5/1, 10/1, even 50/1 compression. This method typically gets 2/1 compression ratios. The timeframe for the method to be released is Spring, 2003. There are several different types of compression methods that are being researched at the UPC; lossless, lossy, etc.
Plaza - online support has not yet been included. Email support will be supplemented through development of email searchable archives and a method for on-line support, including Q&A.
THREDDS is using THREDDS technology to build data servers. The IDV can be used for the client. Both "Pull" and "Push" techniques are used for THREDDS. The THREDDS catalog is an important component which will enhance data access and use.

ACTION 3: Rajul Pandya will provide a demonstration of the Virtual Geophysical Exploration Environment (VGEE) at the next Users Committee meeting.

LDM - Future needs of LDM and Resource Issues - Russ Rew

The LDM version 5.3 is in the works. Steve Emmerson has been reassigned to work on LDM support and development. Currently the LDM can handle up to 30 GB/day, however some Remote Procedure Call (RPC) work is being performed (Steve Emmerson, Tom Yoksas and Steve Chiswell) which may alleviate some of the latency problems through opening parallel connections and dividing datastreams. This method will be available in the LDM Version 5.3 to be released soon.

LDM6 uses NNTP protocols.With NNTP protocols, it is anticipated that up to 500GB of data per day can be relayed. The NNTP version uses no RPCs. The data are sent asynchronously.

LDM-Lite is a client for windows platforms. Some University of Colorado students are working on LDM-Lite with guidance and oversight from Unidata, as a student project.

Discussion:

The LDM has become a resource for a broad community of users. The UPC needs to be cautious of use of support resources for research and education users and not become a support group for operations, thereby presenting an element of liability, and diluting support for the research and education users. Partners and team efforts, e.g., CRAFT, CONDUIT, are very important to the university community however. With regard to resources, a need still exists for one additional LDM developer to perform testing, and augment development and support efforts.

Future of MetApps Task Force - Charlie Murphy

The role of the Unidata MetApps Task Force has been fulfilled to the degree that its mission was defined. Should the task force become a "think tank" for future MetApps applications? There's a framework of components and a huge potential user base, but some organization needs to be implemented to tap the current users and to secure information on how the application is being used, and what is missing. Charlie Murphy was tasked to become Chair of the reconstituted Advisory Group with Harry Edmon and Tom Whittaker as advisors to the development group. The Developers and the Advisory Group need to connect closely and work together to provide what is needed by the Users. One task of the Advisory Group will be to act as an outreach to the community users to facilitate use of the IDV.

Action 4: Charlie Murphy, Don Murray, Tom Whittaker, Rich Clark, John Caron, and Jeff McWhirter will create a white paper discussing potential outreach and developmental needs to elucidate the needs of developers and users, considering the "expert group" approach.

Action 5: Unidata will check the viability of having a Unidata special IIPS session during the 2004 AMS Annual Meeting on IDV applications and use.

Workshop Planning - Mark Laufersweiler and Michael Morgan, Co-Chairs

New title for the workshop is: "Expanding Horizons Using Environmental Data for Education, Research and Decision Making."
A draft proposal to the NSF will be provided by Joanne Graham for Users Committee review, after which it will be sent to the NSF by mid-December. COMET will provide about one-third of the cost of the workshop.
Logistics
- Williams Village on the Campus of CU (?)
- Tuesday evening Mesa Lab or Center Green for dinner and poster session
- Thursday evening - Flagstaff Mountain BBQ
Anton Kruger agreed to participate on the Workshop Program Committee. Greg Byrd, COMET, will participate. Other members include: Mark Laufersweiler, Michael Morgan, Rich Clark, Joanne Graham, Emily Doremire and Linda Miller.
The workshop has been announced to the community and is posted on the new Unidata Plaza site.
There is a speaker nomination Web page provided for community nominations that everybody should use to enable tracking of potential speaker candidates.
- The speakers pool will be determined by the pool of nominations and Users Committee contacts. The names will be provided to the Program Committee who will develop a first draft of the Workshop program. Technical Requirements will be provided by the speakers.
OpenGIS is a consortium of mostly commercial vendors in an attempt to develop standards for formatting toolsets used in GIS
- OpenGIS needs to be represented at the workshop
- Merging of Unidata community with GIS community
Planning needs to include the question of "Who is the participant?" Traditional Users, Where is Unidata going? "Unidata at 20"
Possible scholarship for K-12 teacher who is interested in science, with the caveat that the teacher is willing to write an article for a publication discussing the workshop.

Action 6: Check on feasibility of providing continuing education credit through a university, UCAR/NCAR, for a K-12 teacher to attend the 2003 summer workshop. (Tony Rockwood will check with Metro State)

An idea for the first day session was based on the similarities and differences between meteorological applications and GIS applications; archived data versus real time data.
- Discussion of other daily themes, e.g., agriculture, fire weather decision making were also considered.

Action 7: Ben Domenico will discuss the GIS aspect of the workshop with Olga Wilhelmi, NCAR/ESIG, to derive ideas for speakers and attendees for the workshop from the GIS community.

The BAMS article, scribes/recorders, and other miscellaneous issues will be discussed and determined at the March meeting.

Wrap Up and Miscellaneous Items

Tim Spangler sent an email to the Users Committee regarding the Polar Orbiting Satellite Program. COMET will be providing some training modules, based on Polar Orbiting data and Spangler suggested exposing the Unidata community to Polar Orbiter data through the use of the COMET modules and and by making some Polar Orbiter data available to the community.
- Discussion revolved around the myriad satellite data becoming available in the future from GOES, Aqua, Terra, etc.
- There are tradeoffs when selecting datasets to become available via the Unidata-Wisconsin datastream, due to costs.
Consideration for the 2006 Summer workshop should be given toward a focus on satellite data availability and application in classrooms and labs.
THREDDS could consider working the polar orbiting data into a THREDDS server approach.

Action: 8: Unidata will coordinate with COMET and provide a "community" announcement for COMET's Polar Orbiting modules.

The Users Committee endorsed the Policy Committee's Resolution (noted in the Policy Committee Liaison Report above).

Resolution:
==========
On behalf of the Unidata community the Policy Committee expresses its
appreciation to Ben Domenico for is leadership as acting Director of the
Unidata Program.

The pros and cons of "Pay per Byte," which was raised by Bill Noon, Cornell, in an LDM-Users email exchange was discussed by the Committee. A "model" discussed was a university site which is using the Internet2 for university use, and the dorms are using the commodity Internet and charged separately.

NSF, Cliff Jacobs, is discussing the "pay per byte" issue within the NSF and will follow up when he has some recommendations.
Due to the data dissemination methods being employed at NOAA, it was suggested that NOAA be contacted regarding this issue. This could be done in conjunction with actions and recommendations from the NSF.
It was suggested that some institutions were funded with grants to cover such expenditures, and now the grants are ending, so the institutions are trying to think of creative methods for dealing with the cost.

Baron Services has offered 80 TV owned radars providing surveillance and constant scanning as contributed data.
Don Murray and Jim Steenburgh gave a demonstration of some of the capabilities of the IDV.
The Users Committee expressed deep concern that the CRAFT initiative, as a proof-of-concept, is coming to an end without a plan in place for real-time distribution of the all of the WSR-88D radar data to the universities, and to complete the plan for archiving all WSR-88D Level II data at NCDC so universities can access the archive, in a timely manner, for the purpose of education and research.

Action 9: Ben Domenico will follow up with Baron Services on questions pertaining to calibration, data format, etc, of 80 TV-owned radars providing surveillance and constant scanning. If feasible, this might be considered as another point-to-point community resource.

Resolution 2: The Users Committee requests that the Policy Committee send forward letters to NWS, NESDIS, and other groups as appropriate, to continue CRAFT or a CRAFT-like initiative for the purposes of real-time WSR-88D level II data distribution using Unidata LDM/IDD system in order to provide timely data to the university community and to complete the plan to archive all WSR-88D level II data at NCDC for access by the university community for education and research.

The meeting adjourned at 12:00 Noon.

Linda Miller
External Liaison, Unidata
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
P.O. Box 3000
Boulder, CO 80307-3000
303-497-8646 fax: 303-497-8690