Re: Fwd: netCDF and IDV for the Deepwater Horizon

Hi CJ:

We are recommending that new netCDF data follow the CF "discrete sampling" data proposal at:

  https://cf-pcmdi.llnl.gov/trac/wiki/PointObservationConventions

Unfortunately, it is not a final standard yet, and has changed a bit in the last week. However, Im hopeful its very close. See section 9.4 for trajectory data. Any comments on that proposal would be appreciated, in particular if it meets your needs.  If you'd like to try putting it into that format and sending us a sample file, we may be able to the process .

You can use any software to write netCDF, Java is not needed. The IDV will be able to read that format (not the current release, but soon after).

Regards,
John

Hello Ben,

I've been talking with Tiffany Vance and Steve Hankin about our data and visualization needs for the incident.  I'm one of the trajectory modelers with NOAA Office of Response and Restoration / Emergency Response Division, and working on making new kinds of displays for information.  We have the lead for modeling for the incident, and are putting out the daily trajectory forecasts.  We are moving quickly to 3D forecasting. I have questions along two lines.

netCDF - we are pushing for using netCDF for all the information management for the modeling team.  The two data streams are to move things into GIS for the spatial folks, and netCDF for those of us doing modeling and obs analysis.  We have some issues that Unidata may be able to help with.  For example,
-we use the C libraries that always seem to be behind the java libraries in development
-are their standards now for trajectory, cruise profiles, glider data, etc?  We will have a large number of observational platforms, and want to be able to leverage all the data in modeling and forecasting.
Visualization - IDV.  I'm an IDV novice, but a big fan.  Working on the HabitatSpace project with Tiffany, we ran into some little bugs that caused headaches.  In looking at how to do 4D visualization for obs and models, I'd really like to use IDV.  Is there help available to make sure that it works for what we need?

If you need more background on our needs, or what we do, let me know.

Best regards,
CJ