ROC SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
TRANSFER OF NEW SCIENCE TO THE WSR-88D
Product improvement for the Next Generation
RADAR (NEXRAD), also called Weather Surveillance RADAR 1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) system,
includes development of software that implements new and/or improved science
applications for the RADAR Product Generation (RPG). Implementation of these
applications is typically performed by organizations from any of the three supporting
agencies: the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA); Department of Defense (DoD)/Air
Force Weather Agency (AFWA); and the National Weather Service (NWS). Implementing
organizations (IO) currently include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)/Lincoln
Lab (LL), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) for the FAA, and the
Office of Hydrologic Development (OHD)/Hydrologic Software Engineering Branch (HSEB) and
the Office of Science and Technology (OS&T)/Systems Engineering Center (SEC) for
the NWS. DoD/AFWA is currently sponsoring only Open Principal User Position (OPUP)
improvements. The RADAR Operations Center (ROC), as the tri-agency
representative, primarily implements improvements to the software infrastructure
and new science applications that are supported by all three NEXRAD agencies.
Science products begin with either
a new idea or a recognized customer need. Ideas which are shown to meet an
operational need are evaluated and prioritized by a NEXRAD group (typically
the NEXRAD Technical Advisory Committee (TAC)), target deployment schedules
are established, and requirements are captured. The requirements are
brought before the System Recommendation Evaluation Committee (SREC). The
SREC prioritizes requirements and decides when the requirements should be
incorporated into a build. If the requirements for a specific algorithm
are selected for inclusion in a future build, the algorithm requirements
specifications are delivered to an IO for development and testing of the
operational algorithm source code. As a member of the SREC, the ROC is
involved in build decisions relating to content and schedules.
Algorithms developed by or for the
IOs must follow the guidance provided in ROC Work Practice
Instruction (WPI) 0037, Transfer of New Science to the RADAR
Operations Center. All IOs are required to conduct a Design
Approach Review (DAR) and an Integration Readiness Review (IRR)
prior to the transfer of new RPG science to the ROC. Guidelines
for these reviews can be found in WPI 0037. (Links to DAR and
IRR checklists are found at the bottom of this page.) The IRR is
typically scheduled one month prior to the ROC starting Software
Integration Test. Formal source code delivery to the ROC for
integration into the software baseline usually follows the completion of the IRR.
Algorithms may be developed on a computer system under
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, using the Common Operations and
Development Environment (CODE). WSR-88D CODE contains the
software and guidance required to create a “clone” of a WSR-88D
RPG which can run existing and user-created algorithms by
ingesting WSR-88D Archive Level 2 data. WSR-88D CODE also
allows for studying past weather events by ingesting Level 2
data from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) web site
and creating products for analysis. WSR-88D CODE is maintained
by the Office of Science & Technology (OS&T). For more information
on CODE, click the link below.
