Policy Committee Meeting Summary:

17-18 October 2002

Arlington, Virginia

Participants

Administrative Matters

• Agenda was approved
• Summary Notes of the May 2002 meeting were approved pending suggested minor editorial changes by Mohan Ramamurthy.
• Next meeting dates:
  • 20-21 February 2003 in Boulder
  • 19-20 May 2003 in Boulder
• Action Items:
  1. Send thank you letters to Users Committee nominees (incomplete)
  2. Appoint Raj Pandja DLESE liaison to the Users Committee (done)
  3. Revise charge to the Users Committee to reflect number 2 (done)
  4. Circulate LEAD proposal's reviewers comments to the committee (not done)
  5. Circulate Terri Bettancourt (RAP) internal report re GIS data (not done )
  6. Seek additional collaboration letters for 2008 proposal. (done)
  7. Submit funding proposal via Fastlane and simultaneously send 1 hard copy notebook. (done)
  8. Prepare and send proposal CDs to NSF (done)
  9. Possible submission of proposal to directorates other than GEO (pending).
  10. Make community aware that IDV support is available. (Done. Covered by IDV group)

Status Reports

Director's Report (Domenico)

Staffing: New UPC staff include Sherri Corpuz (addition to the admin staff), Doug Smith (addition to the systems admin staff), Raj Pandya (working jointly with DLESE and UPC). Ben also announced that Chuck Wash has had to retire from the committee, and that Stefano Nativi has returned to his home base in Italy.

Coordination with other UCAR groups has included IHOP (with ATD), MeteoForum (with COMET), GIS (with ESIG), Web Portal Development (with SCD), THREDDS (with DLESE and NSDL).

Proposals in development stage include: DLESE data services, NASA NRA for netCDF work with NCSA, and the Unidata Core Funding proposal. Several other proposals that may be developed in the future are: NASA CAN (with Rhode Island and another with PMEL).

In the UPC: web development (My.Unidata) continues. Incremental releases of GEMPAK and McIDAS are ongoing.

There is concern about ACARS data from FSL. Possible approaches to the potential loss of the data are: Seek user committee input as to its priority; lobby for maintaining ACARS distribution; seek additional funding for its continuance.

In non-ATM funding projects: case studies has sufficient funding only through FY04. OPeNDAP funding cycle ends during the coming year. THREDDS funding ends in the current fiscal year.

Budget Report (Graham)

A budget picture showing funding and anticipated expenditures for all Unidata funding sources was provided. All funding terms come to an end during or at the end of FY03. We look to be in good financial health to the end of FY03. Funding for FY02 was 3.125M. UPC held over 100K of that funding (as presented to the Policy Committee last Spring) to help fund equipment grants in FY03, bringing the pool for one year to 200K. If the Equipment Grant proposal is successful, this should help to fund the anticipated bow wave of requests.

Users Committee (Clark)

Survey Summary: Rich provided a summary of the Unidata Users Community.

New committee members: Donna Tucker, Chuck Graves, and Anton Kruger. Michael Morgan will remain on the committee, serving out Raj Pandja's term through the summer

Planning for the Summer Users Workshop is underway. The workshop, tentatively entitled "Expanding Horizons: Using Environmental Data and Model Output for Education, Prediction, and Decision Making." Mark Laufersweiler and Michael Morgan will serve as co-chairs.

Agency Reports

National Science Foundation: (Grant)

Peter Milne is now working with Cliff and Bernard at NSF

The schedule for Unidata's five-year funding proposal is [NOTE: these dates slipped subsequent to this meeting]:

submit - end of November
analysis - end of January 2003
on site panel - end of February 2003
complete - April

NCDC: (Watkins)

NCDC is archiving data from 58 NEXRAD sites and making them available to the community at a 95% reliability rate.

NOAA/NWS: (Helms)

Dave's report discussed the Science & Technology Infusion Plan from the Office of Science and Technology

NASA: (Maiden)

Martha presented information on data management, distribution and modeling. Three Petabytes of data are currently archived for NASA.

NPOES data will be archived at NCDC.

NASA CAN RFPs have been released.

Other Proposals (Domenico, Rew)

• DLESE: The UPC will submit a proposal (with TERC) for the DLESE data services RFP.
  
  
• NASA/NCSA: With Mike Folk (University of Illinois/NCSA) the UPC will submit a proposal in response to the NASA-NRA RFP. Proposed will be a merger of netCDF and HDF.
  
  
• THREDDS-2: Present THREDDS funding runs out at the end of FY03.

The remainder of the meeting was devoted to discussion of the Unidata 2008 funding proposal: Shaping the Future of Data Use in the Geosciences. Suggestions and comments were extracted from the dialogue.

General Comments:

• Submit the proposal to several NSF groups simultaneously (e.g., EHR and CISE)? May not be interested.
• Reorganize and shorten sentence length for increased clarity.
• Review the Grant Proposal Guide
• Submit a notebook simultaneously
• Submit CDs
  

Introduction

Unidata needs to ask itself the fundamental question: Why submit the proposal? Why should reviewers consider that these people [UPC] can do the work outlined the proposal's goals sections? The proposal ought to create new ways of thinking about and solving problems in the geosciences. The why question is critical.
The proposal should begin with the response to national documents and needs identified in them. The proposal needs to state that the tasks come out of the community.
Core values should be stated in this section, the introduction, rather than in the goals section. Move them.
In summary, the introduction should state the mission, past successes in meeting needs, define current needs and why Unidata can address them, then go into the Goals or Endeavors.

Goals

In general:

• Goals are compartmentalized in the current draft and do not connect with the introduction.
• Emphasize the process. Make the point that the goals resulted from community input.
• There is a need to state clearly the process followed for arriving at this set of goals.
• Need a creative response to expressed or perceived need: Define the difference between the two.
• A question: should all goals and their associated activities be placed in a table? Answer: they are in the milestones table.
• There may be an over-emphasis on new intentions.
• Use strategies instead of goals? Or Endeavors?
• Make two broad categories: Support and a more diverse community (goals 1 and 2 fit here), and Data (goals 3-7 under this broad grouping.
• 5 years ago the Review Panel wanted inclusion of retrospective data access. The UPC has made a strategic decision that now is the time to invest in this activity.
• Will reviewers think that the proposal is too ambitious?

Goal 1: A Broader and More Diverse Community. Discussion centered around:

LDM and LDM-lite will facilitate introducing community colleges and K-12 organization
Needed is a community college strategy for "supporting outreach from universities" mentioned in this goal.

Goal 2: Comprehensive Support Services

Is it possible that this would be strengthened by omitting reference to MeteoForum? Not really, but emphasis should be on partnerships (COMET in this case).

Goal 3: Real-time, Self-managing Data Flows

Goals 3-7 should fit together better. A suggested solution would be a diagram.
Reviewers will want to know: "what is the big deal with data?" Needed is a larger data philosophy and how components fit.
Need to explain "self-managing." Sounds good, but what does it mean?

Goal 4: Software to Visualize and Analyze Geoscience Data

Change "visualize and analyze" to "analyze and visualize."
GEMPAK and McIDAS development: how much more is planned?
Needed is reassurance that GEMPAK and McIDAS will be supported; IDV and platform-independence are the future.

Goal 5: Distributed, Organized Collections of Digital Material

We are seeking other funding for Goals 5 and 6. Should that be stated in the proposal?
Need to avoid the perception of double-dipping. This will not happen, if document is up front with reviewers, i.e., use examples. If proposals such as THREDDS are successful, budget will be adjusted downward accordingly.
Unidata has demonstrated through grants such as THREDDS that it has a record of success. Since the projects are successful, they are now included as part of the core.
There may be too much emphasis on "distribution" and not enough on "organization" in this section.

Goal 6: Improved Scientific Data Access Infrastructure

netCDF is strong and does not need beefing up. Concern that "a widely used standard" is an overstatement.

Goal 7: New Data Types and Sources

The GIS statement needs more specifics.
Unidata plays an important advocacy role, but this is done in partnership with others.
Emphasize benefits in both directions, i.e., to the GIS community and to the geosciences community.

Governance:

This section needs to introduce the idea that as new disciplines get involved in Unidata, the program will benefit.
Suggested wordsmithing: change "must be augmented" to "will continue to augment."

Broader Impacts:

Include minority data in a sidebar? This is a possibility. (In all disciplines, 57% of graduate students are women; in the atmospheric sciences the percentage may be as low as 30.)
Web sites powered by Unidata tools and data are available to students at all levels, and they attract students to geosciences.

Methodology: Unidata Milestones and Resource Requirements

This demonstrates that the UPC has planned an organized approach
The section should recap the goals.

Summary of activities proposed and work accomplished under previous grant:

Need number of papers produced during 1998-2003 to assess intellectual merit
Retrospective data access is included in the unanticipated opportunities section of the "results of prior" table.
Number of support inquiries should be included.

Letters of Collaboration

FNMOC, GODAE, PMEL, GEON, ESIP, CUAHSI, ESIG, ATD, SCD, WSI, NCAR/Director

Resolution:

The Policy Committee unanimously adopted the following resolution:

On behalf of the Unidata community the Policy Committee expresses its appreciation to Ben Domenico for his 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.

Address questions or suggested changes to Jo Hansen.