Dear Unidata GEMPAK/N-AWIPS users:
At the recent meetings of the Unidata Users Committee and Policy
Committee, discussions were held on how the Unidata Program Center (UPC)
should proceed with support for N-AWIPS/GEMPAK and evaluation of AWIPS
II (see background information below). The UPC is keenly aware that
changes envisioned will have a significant impact on our community and
that many of you have concerns. Be assured that we are fully committed
to supporting university GEMPAK users for as long as feasible, even as
we work with our users in providing a smooth and orderly migration to
other long term solutions. The UPC is most interested in your thoughts
on this matter and invites community input. Please send your comments,
concerns, or suggestions to nawipsmigration@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. To
facilitate discussion on this topic, the UPC has also set up an online
forum at: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=21.
After extensive discussion and careful consideration, the following
resolutions were developed by the two committees:
/
*User Committee: */
The Users Committee strongly endorses Unidata’s position on future
support of GEMPAK and the transition to AWIPS-II:
a.) Unidata will stand behind the latest release of GEMPAK at least
until the point when alternative packages with the same functionality
are available to the community.
b.) Unidata will continue to monitor and stay involved with the AWIPS-II
efforts in NOAA/NWS, in expectation that this package will be made
available to the University community when viable.
/*Policy Committee: */
The Unidata Policy Committee recommends that the UPC move forward on two
fronts.
1) maintain support for the current GEMPAK release during the
development of AWIPS-II, while continuing a dialogue with NWS/NCEP to
ensure a relatively seamless transition to AWIPS-II
2) incorporate GEMPAK functionalities into IDV as informed by the user
community. The Users Committee should survey the user community to find
out what specific functionalities are desirable.
In addition, the Unidata Policy Committee recommends that Unidata use
whatever influence it has to ensure that the AWIPS-II software is
developed and made available under an open source arrangement that will
facilitate Unidata distribution, enhancement and support of AWIPS-II for
the Unidata community.
-------------------------------------
/Background Information /
The Unidata Program Center (UPC) makes the National Centers AWIPS
package (N-AWIPS, of which GEMPAK is a primary component), currently
developed at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP),
available to the university community. The UPC provides additional
features (e.g. GARP, Level II radar support, decoders for special
datastreams) in the Unidata release of this software. GEMPAK/N-AWIPS is
the most widely used analysis and visualization package that Unidata
supports.
As some of you know, the National Weather Service (NWS) is in the
process of developing the next generation of its AWIPS software (AWIPS
II) to provide a comprehensive package in support of its forecasting and
public service operations. This new software will be developed in Java,
allowing it to run on more platforms than the current AWIPS software.
Many of the underlying technologies in AWIPS II will be based on open
source projects and the plan is to make AWIPS II software also open
source. Currently, the NWS National Centers and NWS field forecast
offices use different tools to support their mission, with the National
Centers using N-AWIPS, and NWS forecast offices use AWIPS, which is
fundamentally different and not compatible with N-AWIPS. The new AWIPS
II architecture will allow the NWS to reduce development time, expand
data access and provide better integration and collaboration between the
NWS field offices, river forecast centers and National Centers. Raytheon
has been selected as the primary contractor for the AWIPS II development.
NCEP has announced plans to migrate the current N-AWIPS functionality
into the AWIPS II environment. While NCEP will work closely with
Raytheon contractors, NCEP is charged with migrating N-AWIPS
functionality into the AWIPS-II architecture and completing the
deployment of this system by 2011. The following presentations provide
an overview of the rationale and plan for this work:
N-AWIPS Evolution:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/Presentations/AWIPS/AE_Overview_NCEP_v2-1.pdf
Integrating N-AWIPS into the new NWS Service Oriented Architecture:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/Presentations/AWIPS/AMS%202008%20Briefing%206A-3%20final.pdf
The current NCEP plan calls for a moratorium on the development of the
existing N-AWIPS software beginning this fall, with the last NCEP
release of N-AWIPS in August 2008. After that, only emergency
maintenance (bug fixes, table/map updates as necessary) will occur. The
UPC will incorporate our local changes to that release and make it
available as we have with past releases.
Unidata has relied heavily on and leveraged the efforts of several
developers at NCEP to advance GEMPAK, along with local enhancements by
UPC to meet the needs of its users. NCEP developers address data stream
changes, add new programs and features to the N-AWIPS GUI programs, and
provide bug fixes to the core library. As computer technology (new
versions of OS and supporting libraries) and datastreams change, the
moratorium on N-AWIPS development at NCEP will make it increasingly
difficult for the UPC to maintain the GEMPAK/N-AWIPS package in the long
run.
There is strong interest within the NWS and NCEP to maintain a close
working relationship with Unidata during and after the AWIPS II
migration. The UPC is actively involved in discussions and is working
closely with NCEP and Raytheon to ensure that the needs of the Unidata
university community are incorporated into the AWIPS II migration
strategy. UPC staff are participating in the monthly N-AWIPS Migration
Teleconferences and have been invited to attend the AWIPS II
architecture training sessions. The UPC has also been provided access to
the pre-releases of the AWIPS II software through a non-disclosure
agreement and is actively evaluating the software.
Unidata is aware of the benefits to the university/research community of
keeping pace with the highly leveraged NWS display software. Therefore,
we are carefully monitoring the development of the AWIPS II software and
evaluating it for use by the Unidata community. A final decision on the
deployment of and support for AWIPS II software in universities depends
on the anticipated open-source licensing of the AWIPS II software to our
community and on technical/resource considerations.
Meanwhile, the UPC is developing a plan to provide continued support for GEMPAK/N-AWIPS to the university community. We are moving ahead with a search to fill the currently vacant GEMPAK developer/support position. We continue to prioritize IDV development in order to migrate some of the GEMPAK functionalities into that application. A brief summary of the strengths and weaknesses of the three visualization/analysis packages in question is available at: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/committees/polcom/2008spring/packagescomps.html
Again, the UPC is most interested in your input on this matter. Please
send your comments, concerns, or suggestions to
nawipsmigration@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, or directly contact any of the
individuals listed below. Also, please share this message with other
interested users in your institution that might not be subscribed to the
gembud mailing list.
Sincerely,
Mohan Ramamurthy, UPC Director (mohan@xxxxxxxx)
Steven Businger, Chair, Unidata Policy Committee (businger@xxxxxxxxxx)
Gary Lackmann, Chair, Unidata Users Committee (gary@xxxxxxxx)
