McIDAS-V, the next generation McIDAS, is being developed here at SSEC and is

aimed at the data analysis and visualization requirements for the next generation

research and operational Earth observing systems. McIDAS-V is an extension the IDV (Integrated Data Viewer), a framework for User Interface development, geo-science data access (remote and local) and data integration. The workhorse of the IDV is VisAD, developed by the SSEC Visualization Project. VisAD is a state-of-the-art, interactive display and data integration, extensible, application programming interface. VisAD is a cross-platform, Java-based, open source, library enabling the development of highly interactive, 3-D displays of a complex array data sources. The core of VisAD is its data model: a mathematical abstraction to which any numerical data can be modeled. This model provides built-in metadata for describing the data structure, physical units, sampling topology and both data, domain, and display coordinate transformations.

The generality of this model can be extended to the specific characteristics of new instruments by adapting to, or extending the api. McIDAS-V will have an emphasis on

remote sensing analysis and visualization with keen focus on NPOESS and GOES-R, and

provide extended HYDRA capabilities. HYDRA is an interactive visualization and analysis tool developed to explore and research multi- and hyper-spectral satellite data. It is used extensively around the world in the education and training of remote sensing scientists, as well as, in the development of remote sensing applications. Building McIDAS-V with the IDV and HYDRA, will provided new opportunities for scientists

by providing a system which can integrate, analyze and visualize data from disparate

sources, eg. satellite, NWP and in-situ observations.