Extended Abstract (36K)2.5
FX-Net, An Expandable Fire Weather Workstation
Sher W. Schranz, CIRA/Colorado State Univ., Ft. Collins, and NOAA/FSL, Boulder, CO; and S. Madine
FX-Net, an Expandable Fire Weather Workstation
FX-Net is a weather forecasting PC workstation that provides access to the basic display capability of an AWIPS workstation via the Internet. Bandwidth limitations are addressed by using new data compression techniques along with multithreaded client-side processing and communication.
FX-Net has become the primary meteorological forecast workstation used at the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise Idaho and at the eleven Geographic Area Coordination Centers (GACCs) throughout the continental US and Alaska. Each GACC office, which is in charge of the overall coordination of fighting large wildland fires, has two meteorologists using FX-Net. This workstation has been in use at NIFC headquarters and the GACC offices since November, 2001.
The National Weather Service Western Region HQ has tested FX-Net extensively in the field. This site has served as an FX-Net test site for several years. The system supported the outdoor venue weather forecasters for the Salt Lake City Olympic Winter Games in February 2002. In addition, several NWS Regional Incident Meteorologists (IMETs) are using the system to support wildfire and other HAZMAT forecasting tasks.
The workstation has been expanded to include special tools and scales specific to the needs of GACC meteorologists. Additional tools and products are being added to support the GACC meteorologists as well as forecasters from other agencies such as universities supporting Air Quality programs and the EPA.
Supplementary URL: http://www.fsl.noaa.gov
Session 2, Predictive Services and Operational Forecasting
Tuesday, 18 November 2003, 8:00 AM-10:30 AM
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