International Activities
Fall-Winter 2006/2007

Tom Yoksas
March 4, 2007

Vision

Efforts referenced within this report are based on five of the six endeavors articulated in the Unidata 2008 Proposal:

Endeavor 1: Responding to a broader and more diverse community
Endeavor 2: Comprehensive Support Services
Endeavor 4: Software to analyze and visualize geoscience data
Endeavor 5: Distributed, organized collections of digital material
Endeavor 6: Improved data access infrastructure

Background

International extension of Unidata packages and services began in earnest with the UOP Director-funded, joint Unidata/COMET MeteoForum pilot project. Unidata products (especially the netCDF) and services were used internationally before MeteoForum, but there was no concerted effort expended to advertise/promote our offerings.

The MeteoForum vision was originally articulated in the 2001 Fulker/Spangler proposal submitted in application for UCAR Director's Opportunity Funding (Jack Fellows):

MeteoForum - An International Network of Meteorological Training Centers for the 21^st Century

"The MeteoForum pilot project will include a small group of educational institutions (some universities and some WMO RMTCs) that are motivated to enhance the contributions of modern meteorology in their regions. Participants will be expected to have relatively fast Internet access, appropriate computers, and suitable personnel. Some of these personnel will be trained to run MeteoForum software on their computers so as to to access real-time data, training materials, and other resources. Where practical, participants in the MeteoForum pilot also will contribute real-time data and educational resources to the effort. By integrating these elements, the pilot project will serve as a model on which to build a full-scale international MeteoForum. Initially, the MeteoForum pilot project will build upon capabilities now offered in the U.S. by the government-sponsored COMET and Unidata programs"

NB: MeteoForum funding has long been exhausted.

The continuing international activities at the UPC are best characterized as a natural extension of our outreach activities for the higher education research and education communities.

Recent International Activities of Note

As a follow-on to the AGU 2006 Spring Joint Assembly (JA06) Cyberinfrastructure session (IN05) held in Baltimore, MD, an Earth and Space Science Informatics (ESSI) session was organized in conjunction with Elen Cutrim for the AGU 2007 Spring Joint Assembly (JA07) that will be held in Acapulco, Mexico on 22-25 May. The session title is the same as last year:
Earth and space science Cyberinfrastructures: Data, Tools, Distribution and Forecast Systems for International Collaboration
The goal of this year's session (IN03) is the same as last year's:
JA07/IN03 is the most popular of all ESSI sessions garnering 68% of abstracts submitted.
Since not all of the monies available in the travel grant awarded by NSF ATM/OISE for last year's Joint Assembly were spent, an extension was requested from NSF so that the remaining monies could be used to fund participation in this year's Joint Assembly by two Latin Americans.
Unidata is playing an active role in the joint UCAR - AAAS Africa Initiative that was inaugurated in Summer, 2006. Information on the Africa Initiative can be found in:
UCAR - AAAS Africa Initiative (http://www.africa.ucar.edu/)
As part of this initiative, a workshop is being convened in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on April 2-6, 2007. Details of the the conference can be found in:
Sahel Conference 2007: Improving Lives by Understanding Weather (http://www.africa.ucar.edu/sahelconference.html)
The conference website will be updated as planning activities evolve.
continuing participation by international universities (GEMPAK, IDV, McIDAS-X, LDM):
Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, Chile, China (Hong Kong), Cabo Verde, Costa Rica, Ecuador, France, Jamaica, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, United Kingdom, Venezuela.
As the UCAR-AAAS Africa initiative evolves, it is expected that interest in Unidata product offerings will grow throughout Africa.
The IDD-Brazil, inaugurated in December, 2003, continues to expand in South America AND has recently been extended into Africa.
Current Brazilian participants:
- INPE/CPTEC - top level relay and data injection node (INPE is the Brazilian equivalent of NASA; CPTEC runs models operationally for Brazil in a role that is similar to NCEP's role in the US)
- Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) - top level relay and data injection node
- Universidade de São Paulo - leaf node (will evolve into a data injection node)
- Universidade de Santa Catarina - leaf node
- Universidade Federal do Parã (UFPA) - leaf node (RMTC) (in progress to return to active status)
- Pontifica Universidade Catolica de Minas Gerais - leaf node
- Laboratorio Nacional de Computa�ao Cientifica (LNCC) - leaf node
- CEFET-RJ - Technical school of Meteorology in Rio de Janeiro - leaf node
- INMET - Brazilian National Weather Service - leaf node
Non-Brazilian participants:
- Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina) - leaf node (RMTC)
- Universidade de Aveiro (Portugal) - leaf node
- Colombian Air Force (Colombia) - leaf node
- Cabo Verde (Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa) - leaf node
Many of these institutions began participating as a result of the Unidata/CPTEC/UFRJ presence at the XIII Congresso Brasileiro de Meteorologia (CBMET, the 13th Brazilian Meteorological Congress) in September 2004. Presentations by active IDD-Brazil participants at the 2006 CBMET in Florianopolis, Brazil has continue to increase interest in Latin America.
As a result of attending the El Niño conference of the Red de Universidades del Pacifico Sur (RUPSUR) in Santiago, Chile in November, 2004 (a NSF-funded trip), the Universidad de Chile began participating in the IDD in September, 2005.
RUPSUR institution(s) scheduled to begin participating in the IDD:
- Universidad de Simon Bolivar (Venezuela) leaf node (in progress)
- FIMCM-ESPOL, Campus Gustavo Galindo V., Guayaquil (Ecuador) leaf node (on hold)
The Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) in Husbands, St. James Barbados had been receiving real time data feeds of global observational data, GOES-East satellite imagery, and NCEP and UKMT model output pertinent to the Caribbean since the Unidata site visit in November, 2004. Their feed was interrupted due to their ISP going out of business in May. This affected not only the CIMH IDD service, but also the delivery of email. In addition, three of the principal contacts at CIMH, Dr. Colin Depradine, Principal, Dr. Selvin Burton, Chief of Data and Information Services, and Dr. Horace Burton, Chief Meteorologist, have retired. A new connection with CIMH made during July's COMET Faculty Workshop and a communication with Dr. Selvin Burton lends hope of renewed interactions between the UPC and the CIMH sometime in the not too distant future.
Since joining the IDD/IDD-Brazil in summer, 2005, the Universidade de Buenos Aires (UBA) has been actively using real-time data visualized by GEMPAK in the classroom and for research.