Demonstrate the Feabibility of Building an AWIPS-Based System Grid with Weather Ontonology Capabilities

The AWIPS (Advanced Weather Information Processing System) program is a cornerstone element supporting NWS' mission to protect life and property and enhance the national economy. The challenge of this project is to help NWS harness large amounts of unused computer resources and underutilized data, improve collaboration and cooperation to solve complex problems not currently addressable, to increase budget efficiencies, and improve disaster preparedness and homeland security. Fairfield Technologies Inc. (FTI) will design and build an AWIPS-based grid, and related weather data management ontology, so NWS local and regional offices and national centers can pool systems resources to address large computational problems relating to NWS' mission, provide greater access to local data, utilize existing system resources to the greatest extent possible, providing more results from the same budget, and provide NOAA with greatly expanded options for business continuity planning, supporting improved recovery from natural disasters or national security threats. FTI will iteratively specify, architect, design, build, and test AWIPS grid and ontology prototypes. Taking maximum advantage of current, worldwide state-of-the-art grid architecture research efforts, open-source software projects, and its own AWIPS data knowledge, FTI will provide NOAA a fast, reliable, robust processing capability compatible with rapidly advancing technology and still-evolving standards.