Developmental Testbed Center: Governance highlights NCEP Governance Working Group Teleconference April 01, 2017 Developmental Testbed Center: Governance highlights Ligia Bernardet www.dtcenter.org

DTC Governance and Operation Operation of DTC: Bill Kuo (Director), Louisa Nance (Assistant Director), Stan Benjamin (ESRL/GSD/EMB Branch Chief), Josh Hacker (NCAR/RAL/JNTP Director) Priorities set by funding agencies with guidance from Science Advisory Board Science Advisory Board (SAB) Members from operational and research communities Provide advice to DTC Director on strategic direction and objectives; Review DTC Visitor Program proposals; Recommend codes for DTC testing Management Board (MB) Director, deputy directors, members from funding organizations Work with DTC Director to prepare DTC AOP and budget; Assist DTC Director with the execution of DTC tasks Executive Committee Senior executives from funding agencies Appoint DTC director, and provide executive oversight; Approve DTC AOP and budget; Approve membership of MB and SAB Executive Committee (representatives from funding organizations): appoints DTC Director and performs executive oversight on policy and resource commitments. Management Board (MB - DTC Director, deputy directors, additional member from each chartering organization): assists Director in preparing Annual Operating Plan, annual budget, and selecting testing activities. Advisory Board (nominated by MB, members from both operational and research communities): assists the Director with strategic direction and objectives of DTC. Jointly sponsored by NOAA, NSF, NCAR, and Air Force

Overview of DTC Mission: Facilitate the interaction & transition of NWP technology between research & operations Community: Visitor Program, Workshops, Newsletter R2O: Perform T&E on promising NWP innovations for possible operational implementation, e.g. New vertical coordinate for ARW (RAP/HRRR) New partial cloudiness scheme for HWRF Alternate microphysics for NMMB (NAM) Additional synthetic satellite fields in UPP post-processor Auxiliary functions Verification software: MET development O2R: Support operational NWP systems to the community (tutorials, documentation, datasets for HWRF, UPP, GSI, EnKF) Infrastructure: Code Management, Change Review Boards

Example 1a: GSI/EnKF Governance and Infrastructure Data Assimilation Review Committee (DARC) Chaired by DTC Members from DTC, EMC, GMAO, MMM, NESDIS, JCSDA, Air Force, and U. Maryland Meets 2-3 times per year Responsibility: share scientific direction for GSI/EnKF development and maitain sanity of the code Code Repository (SVN) hosted at ECM Server Trunk and development branches Well defined coding standards, regression tests, issue tracking and review process Works well for those that have access to EMC server (not easy to get access)

Example 1b: GSI/EnKF code evolution Core partners development branches To NCO for operational applications EMC Trunk Community Trunk (Vlab) Public release and support DTC maintains a community SVN repository and manually synchronizes it with EMC trunk Disconnected repos leads increases labor and can lead to errors Developmental branches within EMC not available to community (deficient environment for distributed development)

Example 2a: HWRF Governance and Infrastructure HWRF Developers Committee Chaired by DTC Members from DTC and EMC Meetings open to all developers (ESRL, AOML, URI, CIMSS etc.) Meets biweekly Responsibility Share technical direction for GSI/EnKF development (science is decided mostly at NCEP and HFIP) Maintain mailing list to discuss development Code Repositories hosted by DTC All developers, including EMC, use the same repos HWRF top repo Contains build system Contains run scripts (co-developed by EMC and DTC, and finally unified between community, operations, and parallel runs) Externals to 8 repos (pre-proc, DA, atmosphere, ocean, post-proc, tracker, etc.) Must engage with governing bodies and procedures for each one

Example 2b: HWRF component evolution, such as WRF atmospheric model Development branches Component public release Authoritative Trunk HWRF Application branch HWRF Public release and support To NCO for operations HWRF-specific development branches Main difference between GSI and HWRF examples is that for HWRF all developers (EMC and elsewhere) work in a single community-accessible repository, which facilitates distributed development DTC responsible for integration between HWRF and general community

Example 3a: Common Community Physics Package (CCPP) – a new effort CCPP needed to Support implementation of advanced suite for NCEP operations Tap into intellectual capability outside of NOAA Support both operations and R&D with community involvement Interoperable Physics Driver (IPD) Integral part of CCPP Enables connection of community physics to various dycores (interface needed)

Example 3b: CCPP Governance The “Wild West” Repository access: 2-3 people with authority Review committee delegates gatekeeper for supported physics EMC pulls operational physics from repository Universities Allows a low bar to entry for first tests of new ideas and externally funded research Labs EMC Universities Facilitates interaction among “owners” of multiple schemes under mixed funding sources Labs EMC EMC Provides control and maintenance of supported suites DTC Others TBD

Example 3c: CCPP Governance Open community, play in local sandboxes (never commit) Open community, commit when collaborating Core partners (review committee) use testbed to determine elevation to supported suite EMC controls contents of operational physics suites Universities Allows a low bar to entry for first tests of new ideas and externally funded research Labs EMC Universities Facilitates interaction among “owners” of multiple schemes under mixed funding sources Labs EMC EMC Provides control and maintenance of supported suites DTC Others TBD