21st May 2019 - Washington, USA - meeting minutes

  1. Subject - Outcomes of the WMO Future Technology Workshop March 2019

Attendees - SO - Steve Olson, National Weather Service, USA [NWS] - KS - Kari Sheets, National Weather Service, USA [NWS] - Fred Branski, National Weather Service, USA [NWS] - BS - Benjamin Saclier, Météo-France, France [MF] - RGr - Remy Giraud, Météo-France, France [MF] - DP - David Podeur, Météo-France, France [MF] - MV - Mikko Visa, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Finland [FMI] - MP - Mikko Partio, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Finland [FMI] - SD - Sungsoo Do, Korea Meteorological Administration, Republic of Korea [KMA] - KL - Kwangjae Lee, Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) - LG - Loïc Le Gallou, Météo France International (MFI) - SS - Stephan Siemen, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) - JT - Jeremy Tandy, Met Office, UK [UKMO] - JA - Jude Anthonisz, OpenWIS Association Secretariat

  1. History Formation of WMO (IMO) in 1873 – 1963 World Weather Watch – 1970s GTS established (pre-IP technology) – good as decentralised. From 2013 WIS - Only make regulation when needed as it makes a burden to comply. WIS enhances GTS.

  2. Today Currently GTS is used for operational work and WIS is used supplement ally. Three reasons for change to WIS2:
    • UN goals - Sustainable development and Climate change
    • To achieve these, Met. organisations support these on its own – need to collaborate with private sector, academia, and other government departments.
    • Technological change - new advances, exploding data volumes, and new operating concepts (cloud, data analytics, and machine learning).
    • Control over who can use our data. At present, in the GTS everyone can access data, and use is based on trust (a big issue for small countries and developing states). Need to respect different data models.
    • 2017 – WMO approved WIS2. WIS2 vision. 2018 – WMO EC-70 agreed to recommend to WMO Congress, so will be discussed at Congress in 2019. Implementation approach being co-ordinated by CBS.
    • WIS2.0 is heavily dependent on industry. So WMO seeking assurance that WIS2 is aligned with industry (which led to this workshop).
  3. WIS 2.0 Overview Data sharing infrastructure for all of WMO – authoritative set of data from a diverse set of sources. Not regulating to use of WIS2.0 but like to see widespread adoption the technologies.
    • Time-line for WIS2 implementation
    • Believe that bulk implementation will be 2026.
    • WIS2.0- prioritises use of public telecoms network
    • Relates to parallel UN Sustainable Development target for widespread internet access.
    • Adopts web technologies (W3C IETF).
    • Uses web services for publishing data (access control and security built into web technology) – In this context ‘web services’ is a broad definition (that includes, for example, HTTP download),
    • WIS 2.0 adds open standard message protocols to the GTS = No need to route via intermediate nodes (i.e. creation and maintenance of routing tables not needed – reducing operational costs), so direct transfer of data.
    • BS - need to add to existing GISCs to give options and flexibility.
    • Big data - cloud hosted platforms enable scalability (i.e. in terms of processing power, storage, and ‘bandwidth’) Don’t download, use data in-situ. This doesn’t mean that it is a must to adopt cloud, it’s an option.
    • BS - If data is in more than one cloud (I,e. mixing data) then data cannot be in situ, so who will this work?
    • JT - industry looking at this (funded by Pangio) ‘DASC’? scheduler enables federating across multiple platforms.
  4. Questions
    • SS - What can OpenWIS do to enable WIS 2.0?
    • JT - We will discuss this in the SC
    • LG - A lot this is conceptual, so will cost analysis be possible?
    • JT - this is to be done working with GISCs.
  5. Information sources and references
    • Link for further information – http://meetings.wmo.int/Cg-18/SitePages/Session%20Information.aspx
    • https://public.wmo.int/en/resources/bulletin Page 16 has useful information which could be used for awareness, discussion, dissemination in each partner organisation.
    • WMO Cg-18/INF. 6.2(3) – look at the 11 principles. Also, other sections on implementation and governance. The Annex shows the activity plan