Interactive, collaborative case studies using the IDV and RAMADDA

Case studies are a staple in Synoptic and Mesoscale meteorology education. Often times, case studies are created using data and tools that are difficult to access off campus. One of the many positive aspects of case studies is that students are allowed to interactively explore the atmospheric environment; however, sharing analysis can be very limited, from static images and pre-generated animations, which are not interactive, to exchanging shell scripts, which are most often tied to specific on campus resources. In addition, non-atmospheric data, such as social information, eye-witness photographs, videos, etc., do not fit into many of the commonly used tools for performing the case study analysis, and may get left out of the case study experience.

This presentation will discuss the use of the Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) in combination with a Repository for Archiving, Managing and Accessing Diverse DAta (RAMADDA) server, for enhancing the educational experience provided through case studies by lowering the barriers for interactive collaboration across a variety of disparate datasets. RAMADDA is a freely available, open-source content and data repository for the sciences. In addition to managing all types of digital content - documents, photos, wikis, data, maps, etc. - it easily serves as a collaborative hub for students to discuss and exchange case study analyses, ideas, and new datasets, as well as compose interactive group project reports 'in the cloud'. The combination of the IDV's robust cross-platform analysis capabilities with RAMADDA's remote access and publishing features allows students to create and share scientific content over any network connection, from any location, on their own computers.