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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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)

5. 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)

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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)

9. 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

10. 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