IDV Development Status Report

Don Murray
April 24, 2007

This report updates the status of Unidata's IDV development efforts since the last report (March, 2007).

Objectives

In the Unidata 2008 proposal, IDV development was defined under the proposed Endeavor 4 "Software to Analyze and Visualize Geoscience Data". Under this endeavor, the following goals were outlined:

Supporting analysis and visualization of local modeling efforts (e.g., WRF and MM5 output)
Incorporating new datasets and data types
Exploring new approaches to visualizing and interacting with Earth system data, focusing on novel 3-D techniques that fuse data from multiple sources
Expanding IDV capabilities to support the creation of exploration based, interactive, pedagogic materials and integration with digital libraries.
Developing collaborative tools to make effective use of shared visualizations
Developing a framework that allows end-user assembly and integration of IDV components
Adapting to GIS frameworks (OpenGIS and ISO standards), content-based data mining, and other evolving technologies

Progress since last report:

IDV version 2.1 was released on December 27, 2006, and can be downloaded at http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/idv/.
A more complete list of new features can be found in the IDV 2.1 Release Notes, but a few hightlights are:
- Level subsetting of grids which significantly reduces the time to download data.
- Support for import/export of Google Earth KML/KMZ
- New contouring algorithm which improves the speed and reduced the memory consumption when contouring
- The plugin facility for the IDV has been greatly improved and enhanced. The Plugins Manager now allows you to load in some standard plugins available on the Unidata web site. You can also view the contents of a plugin. A new Plugin Creator has been added to allow users to create their own plugins for customizing the IDV.
- Several issues (see Bug Fixes below) relating to the display of vector fields have been addressed which improves the overall rendering display time.

The IDV User Training Workshop was held November 6-8 as part of the the 2006 Training Workshop for Unidata Software. It was completely subscribed and introduced users to the basics of IDV use as well as the upcoming features in version 2.1. Work is underway on writing a developer's guide for the Summer 2007 IDV Developer's Workshop requested by the Policy Committee.

The IDV was featured in several talks/posters at the annual AGU and AMS meetings. Chuck Meertens (UNAVCO) and Don Murray presented a poster on the GEON-IDV at the Fall 2006 AGU meeting. Jeff McWhirter presented a talk on the current state of the IDV at the 2007 AMS IIPS session in San Antonio. Shelley Holmberg from University of North Carolina - Charlotte presented a talk at AMS on the use of the IDV as part of the 2005 Climatology of the Hurricane season case study that was funded by UOP Storm funds. There was a lot of of interest in the IDV and interaction with users in the Unidata booth at AMS.

The GEON-IDV is being promoted by UNAVCO for use in the solid earth geo-sciences. An article about it being mentioned on the Google Earth blog appeared in the February 2007 issue of the GEON newsletter.

A teleconference was held by the IDV Steering Committee on Sept 13, 2006 to discuss the 2.0 release and set priorities for the next 3-6 months. Top priorities are (not in order):
- preserving data in bundles
- performance with images - mostly memory requirements
- continue implementation of diagnostic functions and operators
- better support for staggered grids (waiting on CF conventions)
- more NWS products (hurricane positions, watches, warnings)
- continue work on mini-topic over-the-web lectures
A teleconference was held by the IDV Steering Committee on April 17, 2007 to discuss the 2.2 release and set priorities for the next 3-6 months. Top priorities are (not in order):
- continue work on preserving data in bundles
- configurable bundles (templates)
- continue implementation of diagnostic functions and operators
- outstanding performance issues
- website/forum for users to post bundles and images
Additionally, the committee members were asked for input on the 5 year proposal. For the IDV, the question was raised about who should we be developing for - the broad community or a focus on the traditional atmospheric science communit.
Several trips occurred or are planned in 2007 by the IDV developers to promote use of the IDV in the Unidata and other communities. Don Murray attended the 2007 Northeast Storm Conference March 9-11 and presented a talk and poster on the IDV and Unidata. Jeff McWhirter did a site visit with Steve Chiswell to Saint Louis University (at their request) to give a seminar on the IDV. Don and Yuan Ho travelled to China March 23-31 to discuss the use of the IDV and other Unidata technologies at the GuangZhou Tropical Meteorological Research Center and the National Meteorological Information Center in Beijing. A regional workshop is planned for September at Oklahoma University which will feature an IDV session.

Use of IDV continues to increase. During the month of February 2007, the IDV was being used over 300 times per (week) day with 75 sites running the IDV 20 or more times during the month. These numbers to not include the use of the IDV in batch/scripting mode. Top known sites are University of Wisconsin, UIUC (presumably part of LEAD), University of Utah, Millersville University, Purdue University and NCSU. There has been an corresponding increase in the IDV increased support load. The IDV developers have answered over 300 support requests since September 2006

In an effort to help the IDV developers with documentation, example generation and some coding, Unidata advertised to hire a student position, but this was unsuccessful. All qualified applicants declined the job after the interviews for various reasons. We plan to advertise again in the spring.

New development

Development and testing is underway for the next release of the IDV (2.2) which should be released in May 2007. A beta release of 2.2 was made available to the IDV Steering Committee and is being used in the LEAD project. New features included in the 2.2 beta 3 release: