The Importance of the Provider-User Relationship as Part of an Undergraduate Meteorology Capstone Course

At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Daytona Beach campus, the capstone course for the B.S. degree in Operational Meteorology is known as the Operational Meteorology Seminar (WX 442). WX 442 is a culmination course that exposes graduating seniors to the various ways in which different User communities access and employ weather and climate information in their daily operations. In order to provide an appropriate framework for presenting the material in the course, the author adapted a business process model that examines the Weather Information Processing Cycle (WIPC) and Provider-User Relationship (PUR) (Lanicci, 2012). When the author used this model in a senior-level weather forecasting course (WX427), he employed the WIPC and PUR in equal proportions throughout the semester, by spending the first half of the course concentrating on analysis and forecasting as a scientific process, and spending the second half introducing the PUR to the students through various forecasting exercises. In WX 442, a different approach is taken, in which the PUR is the main focus for the entire semester.

This presentation will discuss the framework in which the PUR is employed in this course, using three main concepts. The first concept is that of determining the User type through means of a semi-structured User Identification Table. The second concept analyzes the User's business operations through means of a Mission Space analysis adapted from the author's experience in the U.S. Air Force. The Mission Space consists of Resource Protection, Risk Mitigation, and Weather/Climate Exploitation; these terms will be defined and their use in the Mission Space analysis described. Finally, a six-step user requirements analysis procedure adapted from the Weather Risk Management Association (WRMA) is presented, and the author will briefly describe how it is employed throughout the course to examine User sectors such as Aviation, Insurance/Reinsurance, Agriculture, and Energy. The WRMA process is also used by the students in their final projects, which involve making contact with a potential User of weather/climate information, conducting a series of User requirements meetings, and developing a proposal for a suite of weather/climate products designed to enable the User to optimize his/her business operations in one or more of the three Mission Space areas presented earlier.

The author has employed this model in teaching WX 442 over the last three years with good success. A quick summary of the types of student projects developed using this approach will be given to close the presentation.

J.M. Lanicci, 2012: Using a Business Process Model as a Central Organizing Construct for an Undergraduate Weather Forecasting Course. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 93, 697–709. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00016.1