Integrated Dissemination Program—The Data Platform for a Weather-Ready Nation

Integrated Dissemination Program - The Data Platform For A Weather Ready Nation

The Integrated Dissemination Program (IDP) is critical to building a Weather Ready Nation. The theme os this year's AMS meeting is linking information to knowledge, and the IDP environment is a key platform to share data and inform users across the weather enterprise. As the core component to deliver weather models to all forecasters in the United States, the performance and the reliability of the infrastructure to support these efforts are subject to constant scrutiny of the customers it serves, and the leadership of NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS). This responsibility to the citizens results in significant investment, and constant effort by the NWS and its technology partners to deliver this promise, and meet the country's needs during various weather events, nationwide. This presentation is part of the EIPT Conference and "Services Update for Weather Agencies." The session will describe how the IDP IT infrastructure currently meets these needs and outlines the improvements that are continuously made to support the weather community. It will also highlight ways that the platform can be extended for the future needs of the weather enterprise.

Building the infrastructure to support the customers that the NWS expected to attract to IDP had many challenges. The growth of the infrastructure, such as storage, compute, networking, and software, was rapid. Determining the best IT technology partners has always been very important to building a successful platform for delivering the service. It has always been necessary to find people that have the technical skill, and the attitude, to succeed in a highly dynamic environment. A mission critical system must deliver, regardless of the demands on the system. Severe weather events dramatically increases the number of customers to the system for their forecasting needs, and it is unacceptable for the performance to fail to meet their needs.

Leadership in the NWS and National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) have managed the systems to a higher level of capacity planning, both in performance and the data storage space. Non-disruptive operations are another attribute of the storage environment to improve the availability of data for the IDP customers, so that that necessary upgrades and maintenance can be performed while data availability continues. At the heart of the program are the applications that weather scientists have developed to explore these models, and a better understanding of the impact an individual application will have on the entire system is always a consideration prior to adding it to the application suite.

The presentation topics will include:

• Initial Challenges
• Current IDP Capabilities
• Proven Reliability for Customers
• Current IDP Architecture and Technology Partnership
• Weather Application Planning
• Program and Architecture Direction

Given that virtually every forecaster relies on IDP systems for forecasts and weather warnings, and the reliance that the general public has on personal decisions for their safety during severe weather events, this presentation will be of interest to many attendees at American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting in Boston. Weather scientists, application developers, and forecasters should all appreciate an update on the improvements made to further the cause of our Weather Ready Nation.