Status Report
Linda Miller, External Liaison
March 1-May 18, 2003

Community Outreach

• Coordinating monthly seminars ( a new activity recommended by Mohan Ramamurthy) which includes presentations on interesting and timely topics from staff and others from our community. These seminars are advertised through UCAR/NCAR's "This Week" Meetings of Interest.
  • March--we had three presenters (Don Murray, Ben Domenico and Rajul Pandya) discussing IDV, THREDDS and Visual Geophysical Exploration Environment (VGEE). These presentations were weaved together attracting a diverse UCAR/NCAR audience. During April, Tim Spangler provided a seminar entitled, "A brief tour through COMET with a look to the future."
  • April-- Renate Brummer and Ning Wang, FSL, gave a presentation on "Wavelet Transform-Based Data Compression and its Application to the Multi-Dimensional Gridded Data Sets."
  • Future--During June, John Caron, Unidata will be presenting his work on THREDDS and other work associated with his job at Unidata.
• Conducted a brief community survey created by the NWS to facilitate strategic planning for data dissemination. Upon receipt of community input, a short summary of results was produced.
• 19-21 March-DODS-OPeNDAP workshop, attended by approximately 35 people (in spite of the snowy weather and UCAR closure)
• Working with the 2003 summer workshop committee on speaker nominations, etc.
• Co-chair of AMS-IIPS for 2003-2006, planning underway for the next meeting in Seattle 11-15 January 2004.
  • Working on the mid-term review of AMS 10 Year Vision with a small working group.

Case Studies and DODS-OPeNDAP

• Jeff Weber and Yuan Ho continue to work on case studies on a reduced basis, due to carry over funding which is nearly depleted. A contributed case study from Arlene Laing was recently prepared and announced to the case study community. See Jeff Weber's status report.
• Yuan Ho continues to divide his time between the Case Studies and DODS-OPeNDAP support. Yuan provides most of the support for the DODS-OPeNDAP project.
• Ethan Davis continues to work on THREDDS and DODS-OPeNDAP. See Status Report.
• To date, Unidata has not received word on the two NASA-REASON proposals for funding - both related to the DODS-OPeNDAP system (Univ of RI and PMEL)
  • If successful, Unidata will continue the provision of support and some OPeNDAP development and coordination with THREDDS.
• Jeff Weber is dividing his work schedule between Case Studies, IDD-LDM support (including SuomiNet), and general Unidata support. Jeff is also representing Unidata with Ben Domenico in GIS-related activities.

Data Access and Distribution

• Continued support and coordination with CRAFT, and the NWS for Level II NEXRAD data distribution.
  • Mohan Ramamurthy and I met with NWS staff to discuss strategic planning for NWS data distribution. See Meeting Report.
• Coordinating with Bob Gall, USWRP, for a CONDUIT working group meeting to be scheduled for 29 May 2003 in the Damon Room, NCAR Mesa. Some discussion issues include identifying additional and new data sets to be incorporated into the CONDUIT data stream, integrating CRAFT with CONDUIT planning activities, status of current system, and suggestions for future coordination and use of the data as a community tool "national instrument" for WRF and mesoscale modeling.

Miscellaneous

• Advocacy - Due to the possible loss of the NOAA Profiler Network, Cindy Schmidt, UCAR-Office of Development and Government Affairs, contacted Unidata to collect testimonials from the community on their use of Profiler data for research and education at their institutions. I worked closely with Cindy on this effort, which will be presented at the UCAR/BOT meeting.

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