The Office of Climate Water, and Weather Services (OCWWS) IT Staff used to manage its shared computer equipment via e-mail, verbal requests, calendars and hand-written notes. Keeping track of requests and equipment availability turned into a logistical nightmare. The members of OCWWS had frequent complaints about the system, because equipment was not always delivered on a timely basis. The new Equipment Reservation System on the OCWWS Intranet changed everything around, eliminating complaints by providing an easy-to-use, on-line application. The system allows users to see what equipment is available, reserve equipment themselves, automatically generate and send out property passes, and deliver automatic notifications via e-mail to the appropriate staff, ensuring that equipment is delivered and turned back in on time.

For the past several years, NWS has outsourced web content delivery for specific websites during critical weather. Changes in technology and an increase in vendor options have opened new terrority for how NOAA can use this technology to ensure delivery of our critical data during times of highest needs.

NOAA ENCdirect to GIS web portal NOAA Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs) have been developed to support safe navigation in U.S. waters and are available for free download at NOAA ENC. The NOAA ENCs are in International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) S-57 format, which is the data standard developed by the IHO to be used for the exchange of digital hydrographic data. NOAA ENCs can also be used for non-navigational purposes in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In order for NOAA ENCs to be used in GIS, the data must be translated from S-57 to a GIS-friendly format. The resulting data can be used for a variety of non-navigational purposes that involve geospatial analyses. Purpose The NOAA ENC Direct to GIS web portal provides comprehensive access to display, query, and download all available large-scale NOAA ENC data in a variety of GIS/CAD formats for non-navigational purposes using Internet mapping service technology. Nautical chart features contained within a NOAA ENC provide a detailed representation of the U.S. coastal and marine environment. These data include coastal topography, bathymetry, landmarks, geographic place names, and marine boundaries. Features in a single NOAA ENC are limited in that they only represent the geographic region that is depicted in that particular NOAA ENC cell. By aggregating nautical features from all NOAA ENCs in the creation of GIS data, a continuous depiction of the U.S coastal and marine environment is achieved. Basic structure of NOAA ENC data An ENC contains attributed vector spatial data of nautical chart features. Nautical chart features are organized in S-57 object classes. Attributes in an ENC further describe each nautical feature. Each ENC object class has predefined geometry types associated with it (e.g., point, line, area (polygon in NOAA ENC Direct to GIS)). For example, the land area object class has both point and polygon geometry. An ENC can contain any of the predefined IHO object classes and attributes. NOAA ENC® Direct to GIS Download All object classes (layers in the Internet mapping service) that are visible in your browser's view frame can be extracted and downloaded in a variety of GIS/CAD formats. For improved download speed, NOAA ENC Direct to GIS is designed to provide data in the geographic region of your view frame. If a feature extends beyond the view frame, the feature is clipped and exported to reflect what is in the view. This clipping function limits the extent of the data that can be extracted. Users can also retrieve features that are outside of the view frame by specifying the coverage area they are interested in through latitude and longitude key ins.

Far too many site administrators, Web content editors, and project managers overlook the wealth of information that can be derived from Web log files. Not only can you determine the usual hits, runs and errors, but you can also check your site for "leaks" -- files that are being skipped, or that are requested and not present. A wealth of demographic information is also available -- but only if you look.

AJAX (or Asynchronous Javascript and XML) is a set of technologies for developing JavaScript based Web clients that are much more interactive than traditional Web clients. In a traditional Web client, every user action that is sent to a Web server returns a HTML page to the client. This page must be redrawn by the client and the user experiences a sluggish interface. In an AJAX application, the browser communicates asynchronously with the server and only redraws the parts of the user interface that require refreshing. The end result is a much more responsive Web client. The EPIC group at PMEL has developed an AJAX user interface for Dapper, an OPeNDAP enabled Web server that provides access to millions of in-situ oceanographic observations. This talk discusses our experiences in applying this technology as well as random philosophical musings about the future of highly interactive Web applications in the geosciences community.

National Severe Storms Laboratory holds historical weather data archives including in-situ surface meteorological and radiosonde data sets (1933 to present), which encompass thousands of atmospheric time series at thousands of locations throughout the world. The Interactive Web Access system provides convenient access to these historical surface and upper-air weather data. The metadata of the archives are managed using mySQL database. The backend data files are stored in GEMPAK file format and GEMPAK package is used as analysis, display and listing tools. The Dynamic HTML is implemented to create interactive effects with the data selection process. User can specify datasets, date/time, location area/stations, variables, etc. for various data display, listing and downloading. The features provided include making station location plot, viewing station information, making data plot on map, listing/downloading data, making time series plot for both surface data and upper-air data, and making profile plots for upper-air datasets.

NWS is responsible to make its weather, water and climate information widely available to taxpayers using commonly accepted standards and technologies. Currently, the NWS provides weather radar information for all Weather Service Doppler Radars (WSR 88-D) in the United States on the NWS Internet page. The National Weather Service Southern Region, working in cooperation with North Central Texas Council of Governments, has developed a method to display radar images more efficiently than the previous method. These radar images, call RIDGE (Radar Integrated Display with Geospatial Elements), allows the radar image to be combined with geospatial elements such as topography maps, highways, and county boundaries. This not only produces a better image, but provides additional reference information for users to understand where they are located. RIDGE also adds the ability to overlay polygon warnings issued by the National Weather Service Forecast Offices.