Operational Geographic Information System Services for a Weather Ready Nation

Many offices and programs in NOAA have relied on grassroots efforts and local servers to enable geospatial services for partners. In the Fall of 2013, NWS and NOAA leadership approved the formation of a project to establish an enterprise GIS dissemination system. This marked the first time NWS devoted resources to a 24/7 operational GIS dissemination system with the same level of support as other operational dissemination systems. In the two years that have followed, teams from within NOAA, primarily NWS and NOS, have worked to implement services and an application on this 24/7. These implementations included working through challenges of a new environment, increased requirements for stability than previous NOAA GIS projects, and documenting best practices as NOAA increases our geospatial technology portfolio. These services allow for stakeholders to integrate NWS data directly into their common operational pictures and other decision support systems used to support a Weather Ready Nation. This presentation will discuss lessons learned as well as current and future geospatial services.