EPIC Systems Architecture: Enabling Rapid Innovation

The NOAA Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) program has enabled rapid innovation within the numerical weather model community through its implementation of various tools. This presentation will explore those tools' impact and capability to enable collaboration between various government, academic, and enterprise partners. Swift integration and feedback through various CI/CD code pipeline tools and processes have broken down the bottlenecks that once constrained innovation. Additionally, creating public community dashboards has further progressed the level of transparency within the modeling community to foster a climate of collaboration and rapid innovation. This collaborative spirit has increased community engagement and broken down the silos that once existed between scientific research groups. Creating a robust regression testing framework has allowed expedient testing of new scientific innovations while ensuring integrity. Further quality control measures have been enforced through static code analysis tools to ensure contributions conform to operational compliance standards. Coupled with effective code management these measures should lead to faster adoption of improved modeling techniques and overall forecast skill.