Evolution of Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS): AWIPS II Migration and Vision for the Next Decade 30th AMS Conference on Environmental Information Processing Technologies February 4, 2014 Ronla Henry, AWIPS Program Manager Dr. Mike Farrar, Chief, Program Management Branch NOAA/NWS, Office of Science and Technology

Outline AWIPS Overview AWIPS II Migration Vision for the future

AWIPS Overview What is AWIPS? Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) AWIPS is the NOAA/NWS cornerstone IT system used to ingest, analyze, forecast, & disseminate operational weather data, including time-sensitive, high-impact warnings to protect life and property ….. 24/7/365

AWIPS Overview AWIPS Locations 4 4

AWIPS Overview Scope & IT Footprint Network Control Facility (NCF) operations 24/7 Helpdesk, trouble shooting, repair, HW/SW installation support, continuous monitoring, and security patching AWIPS Communications Satellite Broadcasting Network (SBN): 30Mbps satellite broadcast network; primary and backup Master Ground Station plus 167 site ground stations LAN: IPv6 ready; Managed by AWIPS NCF WAN: Private VPN over NOAANet (not part of AWIPS contract) Hardware Maintenance & Refresh 172 systems at 150 sites; over 3500 servers and workstations; hundreds of routers, firewalls, storage arrays and network switches Software Maintenance and Support 8 million of lines of AWIPS I code under CM control 8 million lines of AWIPS II code under CM control Includes 2 million lines of code for legacy applications Configuration Management AWIPS Configuration Control Board reviews and authorizes all Requests for Change to the AWIPS IT enterprise 5

AWIPS Overview Evolution of AWIPS Late 80s - early 90s: AWIPS I developed to replace AFOS system AFOS = Automation of Field Operations and Services (AFOS) 1997: AWIPS I deployed 2004: NWS review identified AWIPS software as major obstacle to meeting future mission requirements Costly to maintain; Challenging to infuse new science and applications 2006: NWS executed contract option for AWIPS II-related projects 2011: AWIPS II Field OTE began 2012-2015: AWIPS II migration to National Centers and field offices Extend Unified Baseline & Continue Functional Improvement AWIPS AWIPS II Migration Extended and S&T Infusion Port Functionality to Flexible Architecture 6 6

AWIPS II Migration Objectives Objectives: Migrate existing AWIPS capabilities to a modern, robust Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) in order to: Unify stove piped applications into single framework Improve maintainability & stability via streamlined, extensible software Reduce maintenance costs Speed infusion of research to operations Improve public weather forecast accuracy and timeliness Metrics for success: Migration of legacy to SOA expected to bring measureable benefits: Reduce time to transition from 18 months to 9 months Reduce software development time for new products by 50% Increase software release frequency from 2 to 4 per year 7 7

AWIPS II Migration AWIPS II Software Re-Architecture Approach Perform “black-box” conversion of AWIPS I functions to AWIPS II Preserve existing functionality, “look and feel” on top of new Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) infrastructure Thorough field validation and acceptance before deployment Forecaster initial testing sessions; continuing/expanding in next phase No loss of functionality Deployed system current with deployed AWIPS capability Use open source projects - No proprietary code JAVA, PostGres, Qpid, Pypyies, Eclipse devel. environment, etc. Objective is to make AWIPS II the platform for collaborative development with public, private, academic and international weather communities Added useful functionality Portable code base No license fees; No copyright Source code available to collaborators Common development environment available to collaborators

AWIPS II Migration Current Deployment Status (as of Jan 2014) AWIPS II currently supporting operations at: 16 (of 122) local Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) 13 (of 13) regional River Forecast Centers (RFCs) 6 (of 6) national-level NCEP center sites 6 (of 6) NWS Regional Headquarters WFO deployment timeline Group 1 complete; exited 30-day stability test on Nov 7, 2013 Group 2 operational, now undergoing testing Under the schedule in the current Activation Agreement, remaining WFO deployments will continue in groups of 8-10 WFOs Last group scheduled to be completed by 4Q FY2015

AWIPS II Migration Incremental Tech Infusion Approach AWIPS II Extended Projects are implemented as on-going, pre-planned, major infrastructure enhancements Each project provides an incremental technology infusion to be built on the foundation of the AWIPS II infrastructure Major AWIPS II Extended projects include: Thin Client capability to enable AWIPS remote access from any location, critical for support to CWSUs at FAA sites, Decision Support Services [such as Incident Meteorologists (IMETs)], Continuity of Ops (COOP), etc. Final Operational Capability achieved in 2013 Smart Push/Pull technologies to enable AWIPS to handle increased data volumes assoc. with major new initiatives (e.g., GOES-R, higher res. models) Real-time collaboration among NWS operators and with NWS partners Streamlined hazards services information generation dissemination and access for partners to support Impact-based Decision Support Services (IDSS) Transition of NCEP-AWIPS (N-AWIPS) into AWIPS II to integrate capabilities between field and national offices leading to more efficient services and consolidation of hardware and software baselines

Vision for Future Continuations from current Contract Basic contract structure: O&M contract to operate/maintain system across National enterprise; continue approach of building towards stable and predictable O&M costs Product Improvement contract to provide upgrades (e.g., Extended Projects) Continued focus on operational reliability/performance, security, cost effectiveness, customer support Continued system evolution to meet evolving requirements, as well as to meet Dept. Commerce, NOAA and NWS Strategic Objectives: DOC: http://www.osec.doc.gov/bmi/budget/DOCFY11-16StrategicPlan%20_508version.pdf NOAA: http://www.ppi.noaa.gov NWS: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/com/weatherreadynation

Vision for Future *Potential Changes with New Contract In addition to O&M of current WFOs, RFC, NCEP and HQs, may potentially add O&M for new AWIPS II systems at: Tsunami Warning Centers (2) in Alaska and Hawaii Central Weather Service Units (CWSUs) located at 21 FAA sites Implement and maintain a distributed Configuration Management (CM) environment that supports “collaborative” and agile software development between the Contractor, NWS, and other development partners The Offeror may propose their own solution, or implement/adapt an existing collaborative environment, such as the NWS Virtual Lab (for more detail, see the following URL: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/vlab/) Architecture change that maximizes efficiencies, improves data latency, and minimizes communications bandwidth requirements for using and manipulating large 4-dimensional datasets within the AWIPS system, such as gridded model data and the National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD) Changes to AWIPS hardware architecture (plus required software changes) to maximize efficiencies and create long-term O&M savings, while minimizing operational risks and required up-front investment * This subset of potential changes are under consideration only. NO final decisions have been made

AWIPS Points of Contact NWS Office of Science & Technology Mike Farrar (Chief, Program Management Branch) Michael.Farrar@noaa.gov Ronla Henry (AWIPS Program Manager) Ronla.Henry@noaa.gov Mark Miller (Acquisition Lead for new AWIPS contract) Mark.B.Miller@noaa.gov Website to download AWIPS II code + technical library for new contract https://collaborate2.nws.noaa.gov/partners/

Back-up slides AWIPS Hardware/Network diagrams

Current AWIPS Hardware Footprint at WFO

Current AWIPS Hardware Architecture CONUS WFO configuration

Current AWIPS Hardware Architecture OCONUS WFO configuration

Current AWIPS Hardware Architecture RFC configuration

Current AWIPS Hardware Architecture National Center configuration