The WES Scripting Language for AWIPS 2 – Augmenting Training Simulations of Archived Weather Data in AWIPS-2

With the advancement of the Weather Event Simulator (WES) to the AWIPS-2 platform, the Scripting Language for the WES (WESSL) also made the transition. Both WES (now termed “WES-2 Bridge”) and WESSL-2 were developed by staff at the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS) at the University of Oklahoma, in conjunction with the Warning Decision Training Division (WDTD) of the National Weather Service (NWS).

WESSL-2 is a platform to enhance WES-2 Bridge simulations by presenting information that is not viewable in AWIPS-2. Communicating with the WES-2 Bridge, WESSL-2 displays events at specified times during a simulation. These events consist of displaying maps indicating storm report type and location, launching pages with detailed environmental situational awareness, presenting multimedia content, as well as spawning any system command.  

Developed in Python, WESSL-2 utilizes SQLite databases to store and launch events during a simulation. WESSL-2 consists of two components: a graphical script builder application and an interactive event browser launched by WES-2 Bridge during a simulation  

In this paper, the development, capabilities, and current and potential applications of the WESSL-2 scripting language is discussed. A vision of future WESSL-2 enhancements will also be presented.