“Build to Share”

1. Data Dictionary for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Information System (WIS) November 2008 “Build to Share”

2. What is the WMO?(World Meteorological System) • A specialized agency of the United Nations • The UN system's authoritative voice on the state and behavior of the Earth's atmosphere, its interaction with the oceans, the climate it produces and the resulting distribution of water resources • 188 Member States • NWS is the U.S. representative to the WMO

3. What is the WIS?(WMO Information System) • An overarching approach to meet information exchange requirements of all WMO Programmes • Data centric vs communications centric (legacy approach) • Provides WMO (United States) an opportunity to address data incompatibilities & problems in sharing valuable data across various programmes • Ensure interoperability of Information Systems between WMO Programmes and those outside of the WMO community

4. What is the WIS?(WMO Information System) • WMO Data Representation Systems (DRS) were historically developed with an inward looking approach to meet Member needs for utilization and exchange of information • Besides legacy exchange systems the WIS will offer a Data Discovery, Access & Retrieval (DAR) service • The WIS DAR will open WMO Member data services and stores up to a wider Community of Interest (COI) • The WIS DAR will expose data services and stores of the wider COI across the environmental data sharing community

5. WIS Standards • WMO has been developing DRSs for many decades • Work precedes ISO and many other standards bodies • Over 50 legacy DRS • Tremendous “richness” of capability already existing • WMO has captured this “richness” in its Binary Uniform Format for Representation (BUFR)

6. WIS Data Reference Model (DRM) • BUFR was developed with an inherent data model • From this data model all other DRS needs will be driven by: • ISO compatible feature catalogues • Legacy formats • Data standards: • Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) • Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), • Joint Metoc Broker Language (JMBL) • Openly considering other standards

7. Full BUFR Model Aviation Other Needs ? Hydrology Public Weather Service Other Catalogues ? Aviation Feature Catalogue Public Weather Service Feature Catalogue Hydrological Feature Catalogue ISO 19000 Modelling process for BUFR BUFR is too big to be represented in a single ISO Feature Catalogue, which should be small enough to be useable by external communities. No external community uses the full BUFR model, and most communities use a small subset, augmented with extractions, aggregations, and compounds of this subset. The ISO standard is intended to further delineate how the community is using BUFR. Aviation Feature Catalogue Aviation community names linked to (one or more) BUFR table elements Hydrological Feature Catalogue Hydrological community names and common aliases Public Weather Service Feature Catalogue Common names, aliases and language variants linked to relevant BUFR table elements

8. WIS DRS Development • WMO has the following five Expert Teams working directly on DRS standards for: • Maintaining and updating existing DRS including BUFR • Developing and maintaining WMO metadata standards • Migrating legacy systems to new standards • Addressing the DRS requirements for aviation meteorology • Assessing all DRS requirements for the wider WMO COI and developing policy recommendations regarding how to meet those needs.

9. WIS Data Dictionary • The WIS Data Dictionary is bounded by definitions from: • BUFR • WMO Core Metadata Profile • Services metadata • BUFR as the parent data model is the primary component • BUFR contains: • Over 450 Code tables • Over 370 flag tables • Over 7,000 total features, elements, codes and flags

10. WIS Tie in to Other Standards • WMO identified Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), OASIS, as a standard for dissemination of warning messages • Development underway through Members • WMO will host a CAP Implementers Workshop December 9-10, 2008 in Geneva • WMO is assessing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) such as those based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards • A workshop on the use of GIS systems will be held at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) in Reading, UK from 24-26 November 2008 • This workshop will review the use of OGC standards and aims to promote collaboration to define a set of common standards to enhance interoperability • WMO and International Standards Organization (ISO) have developed an agreement on recognition of each other’s standards and are developing the administrative protocols

11. WIS Tie in to Other Standards • The WMO expert team for assessing DRS is reviewing other standards requirements some of which are already in use in the COI • Network Common Data Form (NetCDF) ,University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) • Hierarchical Data Format (HDF), National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) • eXtensible Markup Language (XML), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (CAP is based on XML) • Abstract Syntax NotationOne (ANS.1), joint ISO/IEC and ITU-T • Joint METOC Broker Language (JMBL), DoD • Usage recommendations are underway • Semantic interoperability being pursued with DRS “owners” • Syntactic interoperability being reviewed for development where needed

12. WIS Tie in to Other Organizations • The climate community is a very important part of the COI. • Climate forms a key part of the WMO mission • The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is jointly “parented” by WMO and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) • Interoperability between the wider climate community and WMO’s systems is essential

13. WIS Tie in to Other Organizations • By agreement the WIS provides basic infrastructure for the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) System of Systems (GEOSS) • WMO hosts the GEO Secretariat within its headquarters • US GEO coordinates and represents the U.S. • Reports to the National Science and Technology Council's Committee on Environment and Natural Resources • The US GEO is comprised of representatives from 15 member agencies and three White House offices including the EPA, USGS, NASA and NOAA • Interoperability between these communities’ and WMO’s systems is a critical requirement

14. WIS Tie in to Other Organizations • The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is also working in the DRS area • For example, EXPRESS is a NIST developed data modeling language a for use in engineering data exchange standards and has become an international standard (ISO 10303-11) • Much of NIST’s work finds its way into ISO/IEC and International Telecommunications Union (ITU-T) standards and those of other standards bodies as well. • And thus also into WIS DRS developments

15. BUFR Table Descriptors Services Metadata WMO Core Metadata Profile Summary - WIS DRM based on: Full BUFR Model Aviation Other Needs ? Hydrology Other Catalogues ? Public Weather Service WIS Data Dictionary Aviation Feature Catalogue Hydrological Feature Catalogue Public Weather Service Feature Catalogue WMO Commission for Basic Systems (CBS) is the official steward for these standards

16. Summary • WMO has a long history of DRS development • WMO is committed to interoperability with the wider COI at semantic and syntactic levels • WMO will leverage its existing data model (BUFR) including an extensive data dictionary to implement ISO, OGC, OASIS and other standards as needed to support requirements • WMO & the NWS is interested in continuing standards development opportunities and relationships with other agencies

17. Questions Contact info: Adrian Gardner: U.S. National Weather Service Chief Information Officer Co-Chair Federal Data Architecture Subcommittee E-mail:adrian.gardner@noaa.gov Fred Branski: U.S. National Weather Service Office of the CIO International Data Exchange and Requirements Liaison E-mail:fred.branski@noaa.gov