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This report updates the status of Unidata's IDV development efforts since the last report (March, 2010).

Objectives:

In the Unidata 2013 proposal, IDV development was defined under the proposed thematic area 3 "Developing and deploying useful tools". Under this endeavor, the following goals were outlined:

1. Ability to access and visualize every datastream provided by Unidata.
2. Support for analysis and visualization of ensemble model output (e.g., probabilistic threat and multivariate probabilities, mean-spread analysis, spaghetti diagrams, and aggregated remote access to large ensemble archives).
3. Improved handling of sub-minute data (lightning and model) as well as long range climate data.
4. Support for field project operations and datasets.
5. Adaptation to GIS frameworks and integration of GIS data.
6. Enhancements to the IDV framework and plug-in capabilities for a range of customized applications (e.g., lightweight IDV for use in educational settings).

The numbers are not in order of priority, but are used to indicate steps toward that goal in this report.

Progress since last report:

• IDV version 2.9 was initially released on May 27, 2010, and one update has since been released. The latest update can be downloaded at http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/downloads/idv/.

  Some of the new features in this release include:

  • Smoothing of grids (Goal 1)
  • New grid diagnostics (Goal 6)
  • GRIB indexing(Goal 1)
  • Capture time height wind profiler images (Goal 6)
  • Support for the CDM profiler data type (Goal 1)
  • Support for WSI NOWrad images in archives (Goal 1)
  • Support for the point cloud data type (Goal 1)

  See the IDV 2.9u1 Release Notes, for more information.

• The IDV developers have been collaborating with the 4DWX project in NCAR/RAL. They are replacing their JViz system with a customized IDV to support the Army Proving Grounds (ATEC). They are currently working on the displaying the RAL's MDV radar datsets in the IDV. (Goal 6)
• The IDV and THREDDS/netCDF-Java developers have been collaborating on the CDM definitions for point data. Some progress has been made on remote access to GEMPAK surface data through the TDS. The new CAP and NPN profiler data access and display uses the CDM PointFeatureType (Goal 1)
• Meetings/Presentations:
  • Yuan will attend the AGU Fall Meeting and give a presentation on "Visualization and data sharing of COSMIC radio occultation dataset". IDV demos are going to be displayed during AGU meetings.

New development:

Development is underway for the next release of the IDV (2.9) which should be released in summer 2010. Several of these features are already available for testing in the IDV nightly build.

• Continued performance improvement work with SSEC for images
• Support for GEMPAK surface and upper air data (Goal 1)
• Support for multi trajectories display uses the CDM TrajectoryFeatureType (Goal 1)
• Support for Dual Pole NEXRAD dataset (Goal 1)
• Additional GEMPAK diagnostic functions (PVOR, RELH, SM5S, SM9S, GWFS, SAVG/SAVS)
• Improved labelling and color bars
• Improved time handling to allow data selection based on existing displayed data (Goal 3)
• Collaborating with CDM/TDS groups on improving access and display of COSMIC data (Goal 1)
• Better Mac OS-X integration

Ongoing efforts include:

• Collaborating in the development of VisAD and McIDAS-V
• Keeping up with new Java interfaces and developments
• Various and sundry IDV bug fixes and enhancements.

Metrics:

IDV usage:**

The number of IDV users is slightly increasing. During the months of August/September 2010, the IDV was being used an average of ~470 times per day with more than 100 sites running the IDV 20 or more times during these months. Top known sites are University of Wisconsin (Mc-V), Wetland (USGS), China, Korea, UIUC, Lyndon State College, Western Illinois, NCAR/RAL, EUMETSAT, Millersville and University of Wyoming.

Metrics data: Mar 1 2010 to Sep 30 2010

• Download data
• Mailing list data
• Comparison of post, subscription and unsubscription data
• Post data
• Subscription data
• Unsubscription data
• Support data

**When the IDV starts up interactively (i.e. not in script mode), it accesses some resource files (e.g. Favorite Bundles list) from the Unidata web server. The standard web server logs are used to generate information on what sites are running the IDV.

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This document is maintained by Yuan Ho <yuanho@unidata.ucar.edu>