Improving the Efficiency of Product Processing and Research to Operations for an Enterprise Ground System

An Enterprise Ground System (EGS) is a unified system consisting of several “stove-piped” systems merged together. There are several characteristics of an EGS that should be considered during its planning stages. These characteristics include multi-mission architecture, broad-based algorithms able to process data from more than one sensor, easy insertion of new algorithms, and a robust Research to Operations as well as a robust Operations to Research (R2O2R) capability. There are several types of missions in the meteorological community and they may be classified in many ways. One way to classify the mission is by orbit type. For example, the same architecture should be able to simultaneously operate with Low Earth Orbit (LEO) sun synchronous missions as well as Geosynchronous (GEO) missions. Broad-based algorithms that operate on different sensors (for example, MODIS and VIIRS) could save manpower and costs by having common software physics, but utilizing different sensor interfaces. Easy insertion of algorithms is a requirement for any system in order to save cost and schedule. However, a corollary with of ease of insertion is R2O2R. If an algorithm is easy to move from research venues to the operational system (thus reducing cost and schedule for improvements to meteorological users) then it should also be easy to move the algorithm from the operational system to a research venue. Each of these concepts will be discussed.