AFPS Quarterly Report (94Q3)
AFPS Quarterly Report FY94 Q3: April - June 1994
AFPS Quarterly Report
The AWIPS Forecast Preparation System (AFPS) is being developed by the
Enhanced Forecaster Tools Branch of the Forecast Systems Laboratory
(FSL) Modernization Division and some of the staff of the NWS Office
of Systems Development (OSD) Techniques Development Laboratory (TDL).
Most of this report covers FSL work. Except in the TDL Activities
section (based on information provided by Matt Peroutka of TDL), the
use of "we" below refers to FSL staff.
In mid-April, Sue Young left FSL to enter private consulting. Also,
Stuart Wier, who had been working as a contractor to FSL, was selected
for the Civil Service programmer position we mentioned in previous
reports. We hope to fill one of these vacancies in the next quarter.
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Key activities during this quarter were the com pletion of the AFPS
Level 1b milestone and the third meeting of the AFPS Forecaster
Working Group (AFWG).
Most of the new features of Level 1b were listed in the last report;
specifically, image depiction of spatial continuous data, samples,
labeled contour fields, freehand tools (paint, spray, bulldozer),
point and area selection tools, gridpoint tools (push-pull and copy),
and time series.
Additional tools and features implemented this quarter include
everything listed in the previous report except the undo
function. Specifically,
- Three types of wind display are now available colored wind barbs, colored arrows, and a combination speed-component image with overlaid monochrome barbs.
- Weather fields can be viewed in image form. Our prototype depiction uses horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines to indicate weather coverage; color for type (e.g., green for liquid precipitation, blue for freezing, and white for frozen); and brightness for intensity. Patterns and colors are combined for mixed weather. An example is shown here.
Note: AFWG members suggested a slightly different approach to weather depictions, using various densities of fill patterns instead of lines. The basic concept shown here is still valid.
- A vector tool allows the user to modify wind data by dragging a vector indicating speed and direction. Changes may be applied to an area in absolute or relative (vector addition to original data) mode.
- A new smoothing function can be applied to selected areas. Local maxima or minima may be smoothed away or preserved.
- The partially-implemented copy command is now complete, along
with a similar move tool.
- A value can be applied to selected grid points using the set value
tool.
- Several additional temporal depictions have been implemented.
- Legends, showing value-color relationships, are now included in
image depictions. This example is from a visibility image.
Once again, we were very pleased with the just-completed meeting of
the AFWG. The bulk of the meeting was spent in hands-on sessions,
becoming familiar with the AFPS prototype and its displays and
editing tools, and doing a forecast-simulation exercise to begin to
see how quickly users could become comfortable with the system and how
effectively they could use it. While the AFPS prototype is not yet
nearly complete enough to simulate an operational environment, we did
get much valuable feedback from the group members. We will use this to
good advantage as our work progresses to the Level 1c milestone.
In mid-April, our staff gave up the Sun SPARC-station 2GXPlus
workstations that we had used for two years, replacing them with HP
9000 mod el 730 and 725s. While not as powerful as the models
currently slated for use in AWIPS, these are completely compatible
with the Government Development Platform (GDP) workstations. (TDL's
AWIPS development is being done on GDP systems at NWS HQ.) The
transition was fairly easy, though it took a while for our staff to
get comfortable with the new environment.
Other activities:
- We now have a script which allows us easily to initialize the
database with LAPS grids from FSL's data reposito ry.
- We have continued to work with TDL on plans for the work required
to merge their extensive ICWF initialization scheme into AFPS.
- We have prepared preliminary worksheet requirements, which were presented to the AFWG at our recent meeting. The worksheet is probably the most significant element of the Level 1c milestone. It will provide status information on the weather element information in the database (e.g., locked by the current or another user, "original" or edited, interpolated), and will also be used to select fields for display and/or editing. It is a critical requirement of the AFPS, necessary for managing the volume of forecast data in the system.A revised version of these requirements is being sent for review to members of the AFWG.
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We hosted a number of visitors this quarter. In addition to the AFWG meeting discussed above, we talked with the following visitors:
- John Jannuzzi, MIC/AM WSFO BOI, visited 2 May to discuss NWS Fire-Weather risk reduction activities, and related aspects of AFPS.
- We gave Glenn Rutledge, OM, an overview of AFPS work, as part of his familiarization visit on 4 May.
- A team from the GAO visited Boulder and Silver Spring in May to "...examine the capability of [TDL and FSL] to develop production quality software." Their report has not yet been issued.
- We gave a demo to the National Research Council NWS Modernization Committee on 26 May.
- Lou Uccellini, acting head of OM, visited Boulder on 1 Jun. The focus of his visit was how work being done in Boulder will be shared with other groups doing preliminary AWIPS work.
- Jim McNamee, Director, Office of Information Policy and Technology; Information Resources Management; Office of Administration; DoC, visited on 8 June.
- Matt Peroutka and Mark Oberfield of TDL visited FSL on 13
June. (See TDL Activities, below.)
- The NWS Modernization Transition committee met in Boulder 22-23
June to consider the move of WSFO SFO from Redwood City to
Monterey. We presented an overview and status report on AFPS
development to this group.
Mark Mathewson and Joe Wakefield traveled to Silver Spring for two
presentations:
- to the AWIPS Independent Review Team, 16 May;
- an OSD Advanced Development and Demonstration Laboratory (ADD Lab)
program review, 10 June. We reviewed our progress since the last such
review in July, 1993, and outlined our plans through FY95.
Two abstracts have been submitted for the 11th annual IIPS conference
(Dallas, January) Operational Forecasting with AFPS, by Tom LeFebvre, and Interpolating Between Grids of Meteorological Data, by
Stuart Wier. Copies of the papers will be attached to the next AFPS
Quarterly Report. In addition, Mark Mathewson has submitted an
abstract for the NWA conference in Salt Lake City (October) entitled
An Integrated Approach to Graphical Forecast Editing.
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Developers at TDL continue to port the Interactive Computer Worded
Forecast (ICWF) program into the UNIX environment. Some of these modules will become the initialization and product formatting components
of AFPS. Many of the modules have been successfully ported and testing is underway.
FSL and TDL developers met in Boulder to design the interfaces which they will use to integrate the various modules of AFPS. FSL developers will write C-callable functions which will allow TDL's software to access theAFPS database objects. TDL will develop AFPS-compatible versions of the initialization and summarization modules. For the Level 1c milestone, ICWF formatters will be used virtually "as is."
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Although we replaced our Sun workstations with HPs, we are still using our Sun file server. However, since we have to build our software on an HP, we are using one of the GDP workstations for that purpose. We will be working on procuring a new HP server.
When we moved to the HP environment, we began use of an updated version of C++, but did not take advantage of new language features. With FSL's FX-ALPHA team, our staff have developed new support functions. We will be converting our code to use these new, more compact, routines.
We will finish writing documentation of the Level 1b design and software, and begin design activities for the next round of development. The major items to be considered are the worksheet concept, continued work on weather, depiction and editing of clouds, and time interpolation between forecaster-edited fields.
Coding of the Level 1c milestone will commence this quarter, with completion scheduled for late 1994. This work will include the FSL-TDL interface routines noted in the previous section, providing the capability to perform (limited) end-to-end testing of AFPS.
As noted, we expect to fill one of our two programmer vacancies this quarter.
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Corby Bacco Programmer (base maps, database)
303-938-2067
bacco@fsl.noaa.gov
Tom LeFebvre Meteorologist/Programmer (database,
303-938-2086 graphic editors, design)
lefebvre@fsl.noaa.gov
Jennifer Longstaff Programmer (graphics, UI)
303-938-2069
longstaff@fsl.noaa.gov
Mark Mathewson Technical Manager Meteorologist/
303-938-2061Programmer/Designer
mathewson@fsl.noaa.gov
Bob Mayer Programmer (graphics, design)
303-938-2075
rmayer@fsl.noaa.gov
Joe Wakefield Project Manager Meteorologist
303-938-2089
wakefield@fsl.noaa.gov
Stuart Wier Programmer (graphics displays,
303-938-2078 contouring, interpolation)
wier@fsl.noaa.gov
Our fax number is 303-497-3096.
Information about AFPS and the EFT Branch is available on the World-Wide Web via URL http://www-md.fsl.noaa.gov/eft/EFTHome.html.
Please direct comments on or questions about this report to Joe Wakefield.
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Last modified: Wed Aug 21 16:50:05 MDT