User Preferences for Weather Data Dissemination Standards on the Web 1 23rd Conference on Interactive Information Processing Systems for Meteorology, Oceanography, and Hydrology January 13, 2009 John Schattel, Meteorological Development Laboratory Paul Hershberg, Meteorological Development Laboratory Robert Bunge, Office of Chief Information Officer

User Preferences for Weather Data Dissemination Standards on the Web 2 Background/Overview National Research Council (NRC) 2003 Fair Weather Report recommendation Acting on NRC recommendation requires digital database and services –Implies choosing formats and protocols –Involves considering user preferences NWS now operates four internet services to disseminate National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD) data “The National Weather Service (NWS) should make its data and products available in Internet-accessible digital forms.”

User Preferences for Weather Data Dissemination Standards on the Web 3 NWS Digital Database NDFD –NWS official 7-day human prepared forecast –Grids for over 40 sensible weather elements Weather for CONUS grid Highs for Alaska Grid Wind for Hawaii Grid Wave Height for Puerto Rico Grid

User Preferences for Weather Data Dissemination Standards on the Web 4 NDFD Services XML Services GRIB2 Services NDFD (GRIB2) NWS Web Site Gateway HTTP/FTP Server Interne t Users GRIB2 Download Service SOAP Service REST Service WFS Service WFO Grids Center Grids

User Preferences for Weather Data Dissemination Standards on the Web 5 NDFD Services Service Comm. Protocol Messaging Format Data Encoding Standard Data Volume SOAPHTTPSOAP DWML dwGML Multiple Points WFSHTTPWFSdwGML Multiple Points RESTHTTP---- DWML dwGML Multiple Points GRIB2HTTP/FTP---GRIB2Grids

User Preferences for Weather Data Dissemination Standards on the Web 6 Service Users Many Users Familiar With SOAP Fewer Users Employ WX/GIS Standards Relatively New Standard

User Preferences for Weather Data Dissemination Standards on the Web 7 Service Downloads

User Preferences for Weather Data Dissemination Standards on the Web 8 User Access Frequency  Approximately 25% SOAP/REST users access service daily while 6% WFS users access service daily  Approximately 75% WFS users access service infrequently compared to 42% and 26% for SOAP and REST Daily Users (>90%) Regular Users (51 – 90%) Occasional Users (11 – 50%) Infrequent Users (≤10%)

User Preferences for Weather Data Dissemination Standards on the Web 9 User Download Frequency Individual Users (<25 Downloads) Small Application Users (25 – 500 Downloads) Industrial Users (501 – 12,000 Downloads) Policy Violator Users (>12,000 Downloads)

User Preferences for Weather Data Dissemination Standards on the Web 10 Summary Multiple protocols and formats needed to serve different user communities –Web Applications users with small data needs prefer SOAP and simple XML dialect –Users with larger data volume requirements prefer GRIB2 encoded files User preferences likely driven by familiarity and development tools support for standards

User Preferences for Weather Data Dissemination Standards on the Web 11 Extended Abstract:

User Preferences for Weather Data Dissemination Standards on the Web 12 Acronyms DwGML – Digital Weather Geography Markup Language DWML – Digital Weather Markup Language FTP – File Transfer Protocol GRIB2 – General Regularly-distributed Information in Binary Version 2 HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol REST – Representational State Transfer WFO – Weather Forecast Office WFS – Web Feature Service

User Preferences for Weather Data Dissemination Standards on the Web 13 Standard Stability SOAP1.1SOAP1.2 GML1 GML2 GML3 GML3.1.1 WFS1.0WFS1.1 NDFD GRIB2 NDFD SOAP NDFD REST NDFD WFS GML2.1.2 GRIB2