Unidata Users Committee Meeting Summary

13-14 March 2003

Boulder, Colorado

 

Members:

UPC Staff:

Rich Clark, Millersville Univ, Chair

Steve Chiswell

Bill Fingerhut, Lyndon State College

Sherri Corpuz

Charles Graves, St Louis Univ

Ethan Davis

Anton Kruger, Univ of Iowa

Ben Domenico

Mark Laufersweiler, Univ of Oklahoma

Emily Doremire

Michael Morgan, Univ of Wisc-Madison

Steve Emmerson

Tony Rockwood, Metropolitan State

Joanne Graham

James Steenburgh, Univ of Utah (not attending)

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

 

Mohan Ramamurthy

 

Russ Rew

 

Jeff Weber

 

Stu Wier

 

Anne Wilson

 

Tom Yoksas

Administrative Items

Policy Committee Report - Charlie Murphy

Action 1: A community Email and Web Portal query from the Users Committee will be created by Charlie Murphy, Policy Committee Liaison and Rich Clark, Users Committee Chair, regarding the following issues:

Discussion: Issue of visualization of the data and training was discussed. Tim Spangler noted that radar (and Level II data) could be the topic of COMET's University Faculty workshop in 2004. The volume of the Level II data was discussed, but Unidata technical staff members are confident that the new version of LDM 6 can handle the data volume.  NLDM continues to be tested in parallel with the LDM 6.

Director's Report - Mohan Ramamurthy

Discussion:

Action 2: Unidata should start exploring technical solutions pertaining to improved methods of sharing the data load at IDD sites.

Action 3: Investigate the Warning Event Simulator (WES) case studies with COMET regarding the proprietary Informix database. Find out if the case studies will be available to the community and what equipment will be needed to run the case studies. Jeff Weber, Unidata will report at next meeting.

VGEE Presentation - Rajul Pandya

Raj provided a presentation of the Visual Geophysical Exploration Environment (VGEE) discussing the connection to IDV and THREDDS.

Action 4: Rajul Pandya will make the VGEE presentation from the Users Committee meeting available on Unidata's Web site.

Equipment Awards - Joanne Graham

Following a discussion about reviewer selection for the Equipment Awards, the following action item was developed:

Action 5: Reviewers for the Equipment awards will be selected from the Users Committee after all proposals have been submitted, to avoid recruiting representatives who are interested in submitting proposals.

Workshop Planning - All

Workshop Title: "Expanding Horizons Using Environmental Data for Education, Research and Decision Making."
Workshop logistics were reviewed.
Rich Clark created a schedule as discussions evolved.

The following action items spawned from several hours of workshop discussion and planning activities.

Workshop Actions:

Action 1: Charlie Murphy and Bill Fingerhut will work together to provide an IDV lab presentation.

Action 2: Linda Miller will contact Olga Wilhelmi to ask her to provide a plenary presentation on GIS activities at UCAR and ESIG on Tuesday morning, along with participating on the Friday morning panel.

Action 3: Workshop Planning Committee who have been contacted for Labs (hands-on sessions) need to be contacted regarding the possibility of presenting two hands-on lab sessions, rather than one.

Action 4: Linda Miller will contact Ted Habermann, NGDC, about providing a presentation on “What is GIS?”

Action 5: Ben Domenico will contact Stefano Nativi about providing a case study on OpenGIS which includes the area of his research interest.

Action 6: Anton Kruger will contact Witek Krajewski regarding a presentation on hydrologic modeling and the use of GIS.

Action 7: Ben Domenico will provide a presentation on THREDDS on Tuesday morning, followed by Ted Habermann and Scott Shipley, if we can obtain agreement from all.

Action 8: Scribes need to be identified. A combination of Users Committee and student attendees will be considered to fill the role.

Action 9: Student participants should create a statement of interest for workshop participation. Tony Rockwood and Charlie Murphy will review student registration to determine possible scholarship awards.

Action 10: There will be a “meet the developers” session dedicated to enable participants to discuss various aspects of the applications pertaining to their education and research activities. This will include, GEMPAK, IDV, McIDAS, OPeNDAP (DODS), THREDDS, and software for GIS.

Action 11: A very brief exit survey will be required for the attendees.

Action 12: A title and one or two-sentence description of each presentation is required. This will be provided in a document for attendees to take home.

Action 13: The Panel Discussion should address opportunities and obstacles of each workshop topic, e.g., decision making, policy (intellectual property), GIS, modeling.

Action 14: Electronic and Paper posters will be invited to be displayed during the Mesa visit on Tuesday evening. Tom Whittaker, Linda Miller

Action 15: Two 7-12 teachers will be identified by Tony Rockwood and will be asked to attend the workshop with the proviso that they publish an article in some education or science periodical, e.g., National Science Teachers Association. Credit will be provided to the teachers for attending through Metropolitan State College.

Suggested Improvements:

  • Build in "clear cache" feature
  • Build a meter stick that can be moved around the globe to provide a vertical reference
  • Add a probe that can be embedded in the image and display values
  • Rotate globe more slowly or allow adjustability
  • Requirements page has been updated (per Action Item 4) to reflect the need of 512MB memory better or more. Processor speed over 1GHz,Pentium 4
  • Don demonstrated getting Vis5D data off the Internet (from Jim Steenburgh's site) and displaying it in the IDV
  • Display of preliminary integration of IDV and Web log (blogs)
  • The data disappears after a certain time, and when a bundle is reloaded, if the data is no longer on the THREDDS server, it will not be found. This is a problem being worked with the THREDDS group to provide time relative links to data (i.e. latest). The IDV group is also looking at caching data locally if it has been loaded in.

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