An interactive expert system for composition of meteorological forecast products from weather element matrices at an ensemble of stations or sample points is available to generate a full suite of products. The dynamic database includes a set of weather element matrices produced at approximately 600 points across Canada. These matrices include statistical and direct model output parameters at a 3-h time resolution. Upon reception of the matrices, the Knowledge Base System processes the data to extract the events or meteorological concepts that are the results of a semantic numerical analysis of the weather element matrices content. The concepts can be displayed on a graphical user interface for editing if needed and then the Knowledge Base System is called once more to generate the forecast products. It is possible to generate from the same data a multitude of products tailored to the needs of specific clients under a variety of formats including graphical packaging.
The system is file driven. A set of Product Description Files provide all needed instructions to generate the various products. The main component of the system is the Blackboard. Depending on the products to be generated, the Blackboard issues requests to the relational Database Management System that has been developed to manage the static data, and also issues objectives to the Knowledge Base System which works on the dynamic meteorological data in the concepts file. The objectives are the goals that the Knowledge Base System must achieve to generate a particular forecast product and the results of the Knowledge Base System’s work is returned to the Blackboard. The results of the objectives can be in textual and/or numerical formats. The system gives to the users the capabilities of defining the desired products, generating, managing and modifying them on site and as needed without relying on experts in development.
Efficiency is gained by working on a so called master product. After editing and quality controlling all needed weather elements of the master product, series of derived products can be generated as defined in the Product Description Files, from extracted weather elements. The master product can then be considered as the working meteorological table, from which all other products can be derived without extra work in a manual or automated mode. Consistency between different forecast products is also ensured.