The Near Storm Environment Awareness (NSEA) Project

The Near Storm Environment Awareness (NSEA) Project developed an AWIPS application and digital cursor readout tool to increase situational awareness of convective storm environments to better anticipate thunderstorm hazards that can then be messaged to stakeholders. The intended users of these applications are the National Weather Service (NWS) warning team, meso-analyst, and enhanced short term forecaster.

The Research-to-Operations (R2O) development of the NSEA project began in 2015 when a multi-regional team of NWS meteorologists and programmers came together with a shared vision to improve Weather Forecast Office capabilities to monitor the near storm environment. In 2016, the team became one of the national SOO/DOH projects, and the software was later evaluated at the Operations Proving Ground (OPG) in the late spring of 2017. The NSEA project tools were released to the NWS field during the spring and summer of 2018.

The management, documentation, and program testing and development were greatly aided by the use of NOAA’s Virtual Laboratory (VLAB) Community and Redmine pages. This presentation will provide an overview of the R2O process of the NSEA project applications from the initial team development to the release of tools to the field.