The Meteorology and Impacts of Superstorm Sandy: Creation of an Educational Case Study Using IDV and RAMADDA

Case studies are commonly used to promote learning in a variety of disciplines. They allow learners to apply theoretical concepts toward the understanding of a single “real life” event. In producing a case study, the creator must acquire data that can be interrogated to meet the learning objectives defined for the case study. The creator must store the data in such a way that the learner can easily access it. The creator must also provide the learner with the technology appropriate for interrogating the data, as well as some guidance in using the technology to meet the learning objectives. This presentation will demonstrate how to create a guided case study using the Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) to interact with data housed on a Repository for Archiving, Managing, and Accessing Diverse Data (RAMADDA) server.

In the classroom (or project), students are lead through the case study via questions designed to enable fulfillment of the learning objectives. Each question is associated with pre-selected data that can be visualized in the IDV with a single click. The case study presented here guides the learner toward an understanding of the atmospheric dynamics associated with Superstorm Sandy. In addition, the case study makes use of non-atmospheric data (e.g., population data, videos) to allow students to assess the impact the storm might have on the built environment. The case study questions and associated data are publicly accessible for anyone to modify and reuse for their specific purposes.