WDSS integration into AWIPS
will bring some changes

by J. T. Johnson

The National Weather Service and NSSL have agreed to incorporate unique components of the Warning Decision Support System (WDSS) into the Automated Weather Information Processing System (AWIPS).

One component to be integrated will be the severe weather table, used by forecasters to support their decision making. The table information in the prototype WDSS consists of severe weather prediction and detection algorithm information from a single radar that is sorted and color-coded by severity. During the integration into AWIPS, the tabular information will be transformed into a County Warning Area, or CWA-centric rather than a radar-centric set of information. The reason for this change is that most NWS Forecast Offices have an area of responsibility for issuing warnings- their CWA- that is covered by more than one radar. Therefore, the warning guidance information should include information from all relevant WSR-88D's, not just the primary one. The new CWA-centric information will take into account such things as the range a storm is from a radar, the viewing angle the radars have of the storm, and the scanning strategy the radars are in. Given this new set of information, the forecaster will be able to determine quickly the most significant storms, knowing that the WDSS components have examined them from all possible data sources. Then, a forecaster wishing to have more information, can examine data and algorithm products using data and products from all individual radars that scan the storm. We term this approach to information presentation as selective disclosure.

In addition to the new CWA-centric warning guidance information, the WDSS integration into AWIPS will include trend displays of new variables not currently available in the operational WSR-88D displays. Over the past several years, NSSL has demonstrated the utility of using time series of variables or trends of certain phenomenon-specific parameters for making warnings. Some of these trends have been incorporated into the WSR-88D system. However, it is possible to display many more useful parameters as trends. These additional trends will be added during the WDSS integration into AWIPS.

Initial integration activities are expected to begin in early 1998 and be completed by the end of 1998, resulting in a limited WDSS functionality as part of AWIPS Build 6.0 (Build 3.0 was released to the field in August, 1997). Build 6.0 is expected to be released to the field in mid-1999. Plans are to continue to add more WDSS functionality to AWIPS beyond Build 6.