[idvusers] Response to the Unidata User's Survey

Dear IDV Community,

The IDV team appreciates the thoughtful comments that users and stakeholders provided in the IDV-related portion of the recent Unidata User's Survey. This feedback gives us a wealth of information to better understand your needs. From its inception, your requirements have driven IDV development. The IDV community has expanded from the traditional synoptic meteorology community to include many new disciplines (e.g., hydrology, oceanography, geophysics, etc.). It is our goal to continue to provide all of these communities with new and innovative ways of analyzing and visualizing Earth system data, as well as providing standardized displays to meet your expectations.

The IDV team would like to express some feedback regarding concerns expressed in the survey.

Some users are considering the IDV as a replacement for GEMPAK as NOAA/NCEP transitions from development/support of GEMPAK to AWIPS-II/NAWIPS-II. We understand that particular features of GEMPAK are critical to allow these users to make such a transition. We have already implemented many GEMPAK features (e.g., grid diagnostics) in the IDV, and adding the features that steering committees have deemed to be most important continues to be our highest priority task.

We also received many comments concerning the requirement that the IDV produce publication quality graphics. We realize this issue is of critical importance to our community, and we are having follow-up conversations with several you to define this goal. Moreover, we are working with the VisAD and McIDAS-V development teams to achieve this important objective. Please send us your specific and detailed feedback in this area so that we can best meet your expectations!

A number of users expressed concern about the IDV's memory footprint and performance. We strongly encourage users to test the latest IDV releases. The IDV has recently improved in terms of both memory consumption and performance. In fact, the IDV outperforms C and Fortran-based meteorological packages in many situations.

We would also like to highlight, that in addition to 2D, 3D, and 4D visualization capabilities, the IDV provides many innovative features such as creation of mini-case studies which can be shared easily through the RAMADDA geosciences content management system. We deem that these data sharing capabilities are of the utmost importance for academic use and scientific discovery.

In summary, the IDV team strongly values the ideas and concerns you expressed in the Unidata User's Survey. We encourage you to continue this conversation by sending us your requirements, suggestions, and ideas to best improve the IDV.

Best regards,

The Unidata IDV Team
support-idv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



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