Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) in a National Center

After a demonstration at the Aviation Weather Center (AWC) in May 1998, the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) was seriously considered as a replacement for legacy systems in the national centers. By the fall of 1998, a mandate was set that stated the national centers would move to one system for all operations, and that system would be AWIPS. The AWC received its AWIPS systems in February, 1999. The configuration of the AWIPS systems deployed to the national centers is similar to co-located Weather Forecast Office (WFO)/River Forecast Center (RFC) offices. There are two separate AWIPS systems standing side-by-side. One is configured for a WFO and the other is configured for a RFC. At AWC, the satellite feed from the AWIPS antenna is shared with the NWS Training Center.

This paper discusses the experiences with AWIPS as it was deployed within a national center. After the delivery of AWIPS, several issues had to be addressed immediately, such as training. The forecasters were given training on the system capabilities so they could integrate it into their operational environment. Other issues became apparent as forecasters started experimenting with the system. The aspects that the forecasters liked and disliked about the system will be discussed. For example, one of the inadequacies of the deployed AWIPS was the inability to display high resolution Eta model data on the United States scale. With the help of the Forecast Systems Lab (FSL), modifications were made to table and netCDF files so the higher resolution Eta model grids could be displayed at all model run times over the entire United States instead of the local regional area. The volume browser was also modified to compute additional meteorological fields. Discussion on localization and other work done to make the AWIPS system better suited for operational use at the AWC will be given. Lastly, although localization can solve some problems, it cannot create new functionality. Therefore some comments will be made on the inability to do local development.