Status Report: AWIPS and GEMPAK

September 2019 - February 2020

Shay Carter

Since the previous report Evan Polster was hired as a contractor to help work with Shay in an effort to continue providing the community with high-level support for the AWIPS package.  There has been an ongoing search to try and hire someone to help replace the position left vacant by Michael James.  As of early March Tiffany Meyer has accepted the position of Software Engineer IV at Unidata to work as the lead of the AWIPS team.  She will be working remotely for a year or so and will eventually be moving to Colorado.  She will join Unidata sometime in the May - June time frame.

Activities Since the Last Status Report

AWIPS

Unidata’s Jetstream EDEX server continues to serve real-time AWIPS data to CAVE clients and through the python-awips data access framework (API). By offloading the processing of one very large data feed (NEXRAD3) to a separate EDEX Ingest Node, the current implementation of edex-cloud is now capable of processing and serving more data than ever before. The distributed architectural concepts of AWIPS allow us to scale EDEX in the cloud to account for the size of incoming data feeds.

Since the last update two datasets were re-established in our EDEX.  Both NUCAPS and PIREP were not available through our EDEX when I arrived here.  NUCAPS data had a feed change which required a modification in the EDEX distribution file.  PIREP support was not included in the base install of EDEX and had to be manually added and have processing turned on afterwards.

An update to our installation page for CAVE was made that allows Windows users to download a Virtual Machine (VM) and run CAVE through a Linux environment.  This was added because several of our users have reported problems rendering certain datasets on their Windows version of CAVE.  This is believed to be because of a Python dependency within some of CAVES rendering methods, and trouble with getting it to install correctly when CAVE is installed.  The VM offers a quick workaround for this problem, but the Python issue is still being looked into.

Additionally, a brief user survey specifically for AWIPS use was sent out to the awips-users email list at Unidata.  This survey received a 33% response rate and helped describe a little more of where our user base is coming from and how they use AWIPS.  This was done in an attempt to better understand our user community to provide the best support and development of our AWIPS package possible.

Software Releases

No AWIPS software releases have been made since the last status update.  We’re hoping that it might be possible to have a software release by the end of 2020, to update to AWIPS version 20 and skip 19.  The timing of this release will depend on the ability to understand and persist the changes Michael had made to Unidata’s version of AWIPS compared to the baseline version developed by Raytheon.

GEMPAK/NAWIPS

GEMPAK 7.5.1, released in February 2019, is the most recent Unidata release.

https://github.com/Unidata/gempak/releases/tag/7.5.1

At this time, GEMPAK development has ceased, and support through Unidata is very limited.  

We are in contact with Unidata community GEMPAK experts who have volunteered to help with questions/problems as their time allows and hope that others in the community will be able to provide additional guidance to issues that arise.

Activities Ongoing/In-Progress

AWIPS and GEMPAK development activities are currently in a state of flux.  Currently the following activities are in progress:

• Shay is familiarizing herself with all Unidata publically available documentation and training materials related to AWIPS.
• Shay has established a back up EDEX system (with both a main EDEX machine and radar-specific machine) on the Jetstream cloud and is in the process of implementing measurable metric monitors.

• This will be used to help quantify improvement attempts for data latency issues.
• It can also be used to help prioritize support based on data use from our community.

• Shay is responding to all AWIPS support questions from the community and striving to provide realistic solutions in a timely manner.
• Shay is familiarizing herself with our AWIPS Github repository and starting to understand the differences of our distribution.

Future Activities

Future plans are currently in a state of flux. We expect the situation to begin to resolve as Shay comes up to speed and Tiffany Meyer joins the Unidata AWIPS team.

Metrics

Downloads September 2019 - February 2020

AWIPS downloads: 2,125

GEMPAK downloads: 4,928

Strategic Focus Areas

We support the following goals described in Unidata Strategic Plan:

1. Managing Geoscience Data
   The cloud-based EDEX data server continues to see widespread use and growing adoption. More and more datasets continue to be added to the server as Unidata deploys more decode/ingest nodes.
   
2. Providing Useful Tools
   Both AWIPS and GEMPAK are freely available, and both incorporate LDM/IDD technology for accessing geoscience data.
   
3. Supporting People
   At this juncture, we are providing a limited amount of technical support for the community, and encouraging community members to assist each other through Unidata-managed forums.

Prepared  March 2020