The Compression and Relay Management System (CRMS), combined with wavelet compression as part of the Gridded FX-Net system, has become an integral tool for the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) and Geographical Area Coordination Center (GACC) Predictive Services forecasters in support of numerous fire weather programs and operations.

The CRMS is the enabling technology for the Gridded FX-Net system. The Gridded FX-Net system is an extended version of the National Weather Services' AWIPS (Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System), providing remote, distributed, users with access to NOAAPort and LDM data utilizing the AWIPS D2D interface. CRMS is a powerful and extremely configurable system which can take advantage of different compression techniques or transfer technologies to deliver complete grid and image datasets to remote locations.

CRMS uses the latest wavelet compression technology developed by the Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL). The wavelet compression algorithms have been improved to reduce gridded data transmission bandwidth needed and lower memory requirements. By using this wavelet compression technology CRMS allows access to an almost complete set of NOAAPORT data through a Local Area Network (LAN), without the need for a local NOAAPORT ground station. The Gridded FX-Net system also includes various tools to extract and manipulate data from grids for use in specialized algorithms, web applications and GIS display tools.