2012 NSF Radar Workshop

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During November 2012, NSF hosted a workshop in Boulder, Colorado to explore the 'next big ideas' for radar meteorological research.

During one of the workshop sessions the attendees (users) were asked to consider and prioritize their urgent software needs, both for their personal research and what they thought would be best for the broader community. Several breakout groups developed a number of high priority tasks, which were written up on paper and placed around the room. The participants were each given a few colored stickers, and were asked to place them on the items of their choice. The number of stickers on each item were then counted, to form a score. 

The table below summarizes the scores, ranked according to highest need.

 

Radar Software Needs Personal Needs Community Needs Total Score
NCAR-maintained centralized repository for radar software (esp. including wind synthesis) with data sets for software testing 55 41 96
Standardized software packages and toolkits (multi-platform, modular, menu-driven, easy for community to add to, ease of conversion among new and old radar data formats ) 30 53 83
Training (workshops/online tutorials) 48 15 63
Ability to integrate radar and non-radar data sets 25 32 57
Open source tools and software 30 16 46
3D/4D Visualization Software (with publication quality output) 24 21 45
Next generation wind synthesis software to replace the legacy (REORDER/CEDRIC) algorithms, while maintaining current functionality 15 27 42
Common radar data format standard and a common metadata standard (e.g. CfRadial) 19 15 34
64-bit compatible real-time display software tool 19 11 30
Improved radar data quality control (solo) (Oye et al., 1995) 12 30 32
Automated quality control software 14 13 27
Detailed documentation for data products, tools, and code 18 7 25
Improved dual-polarization processing 10 12 22
Accessible variational Doppler radar assimilation and thermodynamic retrieval 7 4 11
Totals 326 287 613



Similar topics among workshop group responses were consolidated.  Scores represent the number of votes for each topic. It was clear from this exercise that there is a strong need for improved software infrastructure in the radar and lidar community (Bluestein et al. 2014).

The LROSE project goals coalesced around these ideas - with the intention to meet the needs by (a) improving existing time-tested software and (b) developing new open-source infrastructure, data exchange formats, displays, and algorithm implementations.

The LROSE  team has used the priorities listed in the table above to help determine the priorities of the software development.