Transcript Director’s Report Unidata Policy Committee Meeting 24 May 2004 Mohan Ramamurthy Unidata Program Center UCAR Office of Programs Boulder, CO.

Director’s Report
Unidata Policy Committee Meeting
24 May 2004
Mohan Ramamurthy
Unidata Program Center
UCAR Office of Programs
Boulder, CO
Community Relations:
Regional Workshop
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Unidata Users Committee will
be conducting a regional
workshop for June 8-9 at
Millersville University.
The workshop is being hosted
by Rich Clark, former chair of
the Users Committee.
The purpose of the workshop:
• to provide training in the use
of Unidata's Integrated Data
Viewer (IDV), and
• to present use cases of IDV
and other Unidata services
(data and tools) in the
classroom.
Monthly Newsletter
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Based on recommendations from the Users
Committee, the UPC launched a new monthly
newsletter in April to inform the community.
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The newsletter will keep the community informed
on new activities, projects, and people within the
Program Center and the community;
The newsletter is available at:
http://my.unidata.ucar.edu/content/currentNL.htm
Equipment Awards
 For the second year in a
row, the Equipment Awards
were again made to the
community;
 We received 10 proposals,
totaling $182,959 ($242K
with UCAR overhead);
 5 proposals were funded;
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University of Oklahoma
San Jose State University
Valparaiso State University
Central Michigan University
Universidade Federal Do Para
Brazil
 More details in the
notebook
Improved Performance of
Real-time Data Flows
• 192 machines in 112 network
domains are running LDM-6 and
reporting real time statistics.
• As a result of the improved
performance of the LDM, 29 sites
are now receiving CONDUIT data
• 55 sites are receiving WSR-88D
Level II data via CRAFT
• NWS will use LDM-6 to distribute
WSR-88D Level II data
operationally.
• Some new sites on the IDD:
•Moscow State University
•National Center for HydroMeteorological Forecasting of
Vietnam
• NCEP Model Data
reception, via IDD/LDM6,
in Vietnam
Internet2 Traffic
(Week of May 10, ’04)
1)
Application
Iperf
Octets
27.33%
Octets
109.2TB
2)
NNTP
10.04%
40.16TB
3)
HTTP
8.46%
33.81TB
4)
FTP
3.63%
14.50TB
5)
BitTorrent
5.81%
23.217TB
6)
Shoutcast
3.33%
13.31TB
7)
Unidata LDM
2.82%
11.28TB
Unidata IDD/LDM uses more of the Internet2 than
any other advanced application;
MeteoForum:
A new community building project
 MeteoForum is international pilot
project to bring Unidata and COMET
capabilities to a network of WMO
Regional Meteorological Training
Centers (RMTCs) in South America
and the Caribbean.
Bridgetown
San Jose
• Funded by UCAR Office of Program
(UOP) Director’s STORM
(opportunity) funds;
• Principals: Tom Yoksas (UPC) and
Tim Spangler (COMET, PI);
• MeteoForum promotes collaboration
among RMTCs, universities, and
national meteorological services;
• Enables free access to rich data
resources, software for data
analysis, and training and reference
materials;
• Unidata has built a data distribution
system in South America that
connects several universities (IDDBrazil), and installed a NOAAport
satellite downlink system in San
Jose, Costa Rica.
Car
aca
s
Belem
Rio de Janeiro
Buenos Aires
IDD-Brazil Connects to Unidata IDD
 Current Participants
• Unidata
• University of Miami
• Universidade Federal do Rio
de Janeiro (UFRJ, IDD-Brazil)
• INPE/CPTEC (IDD-Brazil)
• Universidade de Sao Paulo
(IDD-Brazil)
• Universidade Federal do Para
(IDD-Brazil)
• Universidad de Buenos Aires
(IDD-Brazil, imminent)
 Infrastructure
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Internet2
AMPATH (NSF)
Global Crossing
RNP
ANSP
Software Development and Use
 NetCDF-HDF merger: Our goal is to implement an enhanced
netCDF interface using HDF5 (a data model, interface, and format
from NCSA) for storage.
 Implementation of netCDF-3 on HDF5 is essentially complete; work in
progress in implementing netCDF-4 on HDF5.
 IDV: In March, a new release (1.1 beta 3) was made available to
the community. The IDV is now being used at 35 institutions
throughout the world.
 The IDV will be used in the Rain in Cumulus over the Ocean
Experiment (RICO) next January.
 Project conducted in collaboration with ATD/NCAR and JOSS/UOP
 The IDV will provide 3-dimensional real-time displays consisting of
high resolution satellite data, S-Pol radar data, aircraft track/state data
from the three aircraft and Mobile GLASS soundings.
 This will provide a unique and exciting opportunity for future scientists
in the atmospheric sciences to interact with the latest analysis
software in a field project setting.
 GEMPAK: A new release of GEMPAK was made to the community
in April. Downloads: 725 unique users for recent releases.
 McIDAS Version 2003 Downloads: 103 unique sites
Staffing
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Two Software Engineers, Tom Balzer
(top right ) and Doug Lindholm (bottom
right), have joined the UPC to
participate in the LEAD project.
We have also hired a new
Administrative Assistant, Sandra Petrie
(left); Sandra will serve as our meetings
and travel coordinator. She will also
assume the role of coordinator for
Unidata's Community Equipment
Awards program.
We are taking a cautious approach to
filling two other vacancies (one in the
IDV group and the other in the Web
development area. Some decisions will
be made soon.
New Organization Structure
Director
(Mohan)
Admin
(Joanne)
System Admin
(Mike)
Deputy Director
(Ben)
Community
Services
(Linda)
Data Services
(Russ)
Data Distribution
(Tom)
The proposed organizational refinement
will focus our talents and resources
even more precisely
Data
Infrastructure &
Collections
(John C.)
Data
Visualization
(Don)
Integrated
Systems
(Ben)
Community Services and
Collaborators
*Based on the recommendation by the
Reorganization Task Force,
Chair: Ben Domenico
Will become effective on June 1
Email Support Load
 The total support load at the UPC remains high.
 A Support Task Force, chaired by Tom Yoksas, has been
appointed to explore ways to enhance the provision of support
to the community, including our support infrastructure.
New Proposal Activity
 Unidata is listed as a collaborator in a new NSF-NMI proposal
(submitted 10 days ago):
• VEOLA: A Virtual Earth Observatory and Laboratory
• PI: Ian Foster, U. Chicago. (Co-PIs: Ben Domenico and Liping Di)
• The project will harness and integrate advanced software and
computational resources to create a national geospatial
information integration and processing system.
• The proposed GeoGrid will provide both scientists and students
with an unprecedented ability to conduct rapid and productive
explorations and analysis of datasets from remote sensing, in-situ
observation, and simulation.
• Data will come from NASA EOS, Unidata IDD, USGS EDC, NOAA
NCDC, Geospatial-one-stop framework data, and other providers,
and will span a wide temporal range from historical archives
through the latest processed sensor readings.
• Resources requested at the UPC are modest (0.5 FTE/year for
three years)
State of the Program:
A Snapshot
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Community relations
Data Flows
Data sources
IDD
Software Development
Collaborations
Staffing
Support
Space
Finances
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Green
Green
Green
Green
Yellow
Green
Yellow
Green
Yellow, soon to be Green
: Green (for FY04)