Delivering Digital Services US Weather Standards and Codes Presented By: Matt Peroutka Aaron Braeckel Steve Olson Date:August 28, 2014

Concise History July 2011: WMO’s Commission for Basic Systems authorized a task team to create “XML representation of weather data” November 2013: AvXML version 1.0 posted to January 2014: IWXXM-US version 1.0 posted to 2 2

Motivation Unique regional requirements in US Requirements fulfilled and documented in Traditional Alphanumeric Codes (TAC) via filed differences 3 3

Guiding Principles for IWXXM-US Support all filed differences maintained by the US for METAR, SPECI, TAF, and SIGMET Enable the development of straightforward techniques that convert products from US- specific formats to formats that comply with international standards 4 4

Implementation of IWXXM-US Extensions to IWXXM Regional namespace Three data models/schemas – usMetarSpeci.xsd – usSigmet.xsd – usTaf.xsd 5 5

IWXXM-US Schemas and Code Tables

IWXXM-US Re-use of IWXXM constructs and style, where possible Use of appinfo and quantity attribute, as in IWXXM Use of code lists and vocabulary attribute, as in IWXXM 7 7

Sea Level Pressure in usMetar.xsd 8 8

Pressure Tendency Characteristic in usMetar.xsd none

Sea Level Pressure in Example US METAR

US Codes 11 US Codes needed for IWXXM-US and other US products (MDCRS, PIREP, etc.) Codes so far taken from: Federal Meteorological Handbook National Weather Service Instruction (NWSI) publications

WMO Codes Registry 12 Authoritative, publicly-accessible definitions Relationships between concepts (links, sub-types, etc.) Semantics (Skos - TTL, RDF) Code management policies (defined lifecycle, deprecated concepts, etc.) Allows for distributed management and/or authorities

Status 13 Textual codes available at Registry prototyping also underway

Codes Encoding 14 US Codes populated on an as-needed basis so far Analyze documentsDistill specific list of codesReview with US weather agenciesEncode in some technical form (e.g., semantic triples)Make available through web pages or a codes registry A single sustained effort to fully encode each document would probably save effort

Guiding Principles for creating Metadata records for NOAA wx Data Strong Governance – NAO and procedural directives Adherence to ISO and OGC standards – Best way to ensure compatibility between difference types of web services supporting metadata records – Enables flexibility in data discovery methodologies (CSW, Reg/Rep, CKAN, etc.) Providing the proper set of tools and training resources – Enable creation, maintenance, conformance, and transformation of records. 15

Strong Governance The role of NOAA Administrative Order (NAO) NOAA Administrative Order (NAO) , Management of Environment Data and Information, states environmental data be managed based upon a lifecycle that includes a data management plan. It also helped establish the Department of Commerce (DOC) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Environmental Data Management Policy. NOAA has approved procedural directives for: – Data Documentation ( – Data Management ( – Data Sharing for NOAA Grants ( – Data Archival ( pdf) – Data Access and Data Citation are in development 16

Strong Governance (Cont’d) NOAA Data Documentation Procedural Directive established the ISO parts 1 and 2 and as the recommended standards for data and information Approved by NOAA’s Environmental Data Management Committee in Oct 2011 Recommends development of common metadata management tools including mechanisms for evaluating the completeness and quality of data documentation Weekly and monthly collaboration activities across the various NOAA line offices 17

Adherence to standards ISO Technical Committee 211 Geographic information/Geomatics (TC211) is responsible for the ISO geographic information series of standards.TC StandardTopic ISO 19115Geographic information – metadata ISO Geographic information — Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for imagery and gridded data ISO 19119Metadata for services ISO 19139Metadata - XML schema implementation

Upcoming changes to standards ISO * XML Schema/Transform Status XML schemas implementation of , and related standards. ISO and will be the conceptual models Transform – 19115/ / to is done and validates against schema. It’s available on public github. Future revised version of ISO will contain only encoding rules, no UML Expected to be a International Standard by May Data Quality XML encoding Transform done – included in 19115/ / to One Key to transition is XSLT stylesheet transforms19

NOAA Metadata Training and Tool Resources Training – NCDDC Metadata Training Webinars – ( Tools – EMMA webpage – ( Has links to all metadata tools (guidance, authorship, component management, translation, validation, and metrics and reporting) – EDM Dashboard -- ( dashboard/home) Show the status and progress of activities guided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Environmental Data Management Committee (EDMC). – NGDC Metadata Wiki webpage Goto guide for metadata management – ISO Explorer Goto guide for ISO Metadata – Rubric Scoring for metadata completeness and compliance 20

Questions 21

Contact Information Matt Peroutka National Weather Service Office of Science and Technology x144 Aaron Braeckel National Center for Atmospheric Research Steve Olson National Weather Service Office of Science and Technology x190 22