The FX-CAVE System Demonstration for the National Interagency Fire Weather Program

The Predictive Services Units (PSU) at the Geographic Area Coordination Centers (GACC) and at the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) have the responsibility of predicting weather and climate patterns to fulfill their mission of supporting the wildland fire community and others with information and decision support products. The U. S. Department of Commerce National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Global Systems Division (GSD) has developed software specifically addressing PSU’s needs. This capability, called FX-CAVE, utilizes AWIPS-II software as the basis for the system. The software has been customized to provide Predictive Services forecasters with meteorological data sets and tools for their use. The FX-CAVE system delivers NWS high-resolution gridded numerical weather prediction model data, surface observations, satellite imagery, and radar data from a central server to all the GACC offices and the NIFC. It has been running successfully as a demonstration for several years and is planned to be transitioned to operations.

This presentation will discuss the initial development of the software, based on AWIPS-I, the transition to AWIPS-II; the evolution of hosted hardware platforms, and possible paths forward to move it into operations.