Case Studies

Case Studies Status Report: February 2004

Prepared by Jeff Weber and Yuan Ho
February 2004

Case Studies and the Unidata Program Center

Mission Contribution

Endeavor 5:
Distributed, organized collections of digital material

"The need for convenient access to historical data was articulated by the NSF review panel"

Case studies delivers access to historical data, and provides accompanying educational material. The format and concept for case study delivery can hopefully be translated to efforts in near real-time delivery of disparate data sources.

There are now forty-four (44) case studies available

---http://www.joss.ucar.edu/cometCases/avail.html

Recent Additions to the Library

Case Study 044: Fall Tornado Outbreak 10-13 November, 2002 [UPC Case]

Recent Changes in the Case Study Project

The Case Study Project is no longer funded by the NWS via the COMET program.
Unidata hopes to continue to provide ongoing maintenance and continue to make available the case studies via the CODIAC system and on CD. Unidata acknowledges the benefit of these case studies and the impact they have on universities and research institutions for creating curricula. COMET passed on their CD/DVD duplicator to the UPC to aid in this endeavor.
Community input has indicated a desire for continuation of these case studies, and Unidata is evaluating these desires with existing resources for continuation of the case study effort in some form. Options include working in conjunction with the THREDDS project to provide important connections to the digital libraries and educational curriculum materials.
In preparation for this possible transition, Unidata is creating client/server access, like THREDDS and ADDE to these datasets via format conversions and possibly a DODS/THREDDS server on the CODIAC system.
These decoders are being installed and tested on the CODIAC system, for use with case study data.

Data Ordered

(1 Sept 2003 -> 31 January 2004)

Cases ordered=1
Data orders=310
Case Studies Statistics ---http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/casestudies/execSummary/200402/stats.html

Future

Currently working on the next UPC case study "Presidents Day Blizzard, Feb 15-17 2003".
Currently working on the first IDV case study "May 8 Tornado Outbreak KS/OK 2003".
Continue to explore case study data access via OPeNDAP/THREDDS servers.
COMET is no longer collaborating with the UPC in the case study effort in any financial way, and will not provide data for future cases. Some DRT/WES case study data sets may be made available from COMET and their associated study guides.
Please see: WES announcement from COMET
The UPC continues to encourage our user community for input regarding new case study material, lab exercises and curriculum development for the cases developed at the UPC, and are awaiting out first Antarctic data set/case study from: Matthew Lazzara -Meteorologist- Antarctic Meteorological Research Center.