Activities in the Experimental Products Development Team at SPoRT

The AWIPS II architecture is the main processing and visualization software package used by the National Weather Service (NWS). The AWIPS II architecture is extendable to incorporate new products and services through the development of software plug-ins. In 2012, NASA SPoRT developed the Experimental Products Development Team (EPDT) to create, provide and collect training on AWIPS II development. A highly successful AWIPS II development training program has been developed as part of EPDT. Since the creation of EPDT over 45 participants have received AWIPS II development training through EPDT. The EPDT training program combines two types of training, instructor led classroom training and hands-on real world development activities. Through the combination of these two types of training participants develop skills and continue to refine them by solving problems that are beneficial to the meteorology community while enabling new data and displays in AWIPS II. The active development process of EPDT is managed through coordinated intensive software development meetings called “code sprints”. During the “code sprint” the participants choose a project to work on and intensively develop the project over a three day period working toward a fully functioning plug-in. The code sprints have developed plug-ins that have been incorporated into the AWIPS II baseline and many more are in the process of being incorporated. Three groups have attended the learning sessions associated with the EPDT and an update will be given on the development activities of these groups during their “code sprints” for the last year, as well as the current and future activities of the EPDT group.