article on HRD HAPS developers

[Recurve]

Located a story I wrote a few years back on the HAPS system for processing dropsonde data on the G-IV. Though it was written for an IT audience, I figure Storm2k folks might be interested in the developers and the award they received. Too bad the "costly evacuation" scenario it mentions did happen in Houston with Rita, but anyway, here's the article:


A View from the Trenches FEATURE
Government Computer News

Collaborators honored for high-flying systems work
By David Hawkins

MIAMI--Joe Griffin and James Franklin do not work with big systems, big budgets or big computer issues in the federal government. But they are responsible for a computer system that is expected to have a big scientific and economic impact.

For their collaboration on development of a new data gathering and analysis system, the duo were last year awarded the Bronze Medal by the Commerce Department.

Griffin, a computer scientist, and Franklin, a meteorologist, work in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hurricane Research Division on their brainchild, the Hurricane Analysis Processing System (HAPS). NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory is housed in a five-story building with thick concrete walls on Virginia Key, an island linked by causeway to Miami.

The system they developed is small by any standards, comprising just two Unix workstations running HP-UX. One sits on a table in a dark and narrow computer room in the lab.

But the key part of the system is a second Unix workstation. Rack-mountable and ruggedized to withstand extreme vibration, that workstation flies on a NOAA research jet where it gathers and processes data from enormous tropical storms in the Atlantic Ocean.

HAPS provides data for long-term research and also transmits storm data to forecasters at the National Hurricane Center. The Hurricane Research Division and the Air Force Reserve's Hurricane Hunter squadron both run missions into storms for research and storm forecasting. Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center enter the data into computer models, which they use to help predict the track of an advancing storm.

Both Griffin and Franklin have written software for HAPS. Griffin, 44, handles all the HAPS system chores. His work on the project includes everything from the initial proposal through acquisition, installation, maintenance, backups and, "When there's time, programming,'' he says.

Franklin relies on Griffin's software expertise to accomplish his daily task: researching ways to improve storm track forecasts. During the hurricane season--June through November--he designs hurricane research flights. The day before each mission he spends plotting where to fly and gather data.

"This is a research place," Griffin says. "We focus on trying to understand things in general. Part of our function here is to develop things that get used eventually by the hurricane center" to improve the accuracy of hurricane forecasts.

HAPS data is doing just that, but more significantly, it is giving researchers new data and analysis tools that could lead to breakthroughs in hurricane understanding.

Researchers are looking forward to "a revolution in understanding hurricane motion," Franklin says. Already, the data has helped improve the accuracy of computer models from 16 percent to 30 percent--as much as "the accumulated improvement in operational forecasts attained over the last 20-25 years," he says.

Most days Griffin works regular daytime hours, but calls come in the middle of the night, summoning him to come solve a problem with HAPS or one of the other systems in the lab. "When they're out flying and there's a problem, they call and I try to debug it or make suggestions to fix things," he says.

Working in computer systems development in a small group--the Hurricane Research Center's staff numbers about 35--"makes my job hard, and it makes it interesting too," Griffin says.

He spends about 25 percent of his day developing programs; the rest is spent on system planning, operation, integration and troubleshooting. During this hurricane season he expects to fly a couple of missions with HAPS. The missions can be difficult because they take him away from his wife and two small children for as long as a week. "My boss is encouraging me to let other people run the stuff" now that HAPS is operational, he says.

The missions can consume 17-hour days. The excitement of planning the missions and flying them "continues up to about the half-way point of the mission," Franklin says, "and then I get really tired and I'm ready to go home."

The missions they speak of are flown aboard the $46 million NOAA Gulfstream IV research jet. The HAPS workstation, mounted in the fuselage of the jet, gathers data from several sources, but the most important input comes from remote sensors that the crew drops overboard and that parachute through the storm. Software that Griffin wrote ingests data from the remote devices, called drop windsondes.

Each windsonde is a 3-inch diameter tube about 2 feet long. The instrument packages fall at 33.3 feet per second through the atmosphere to the ocean surface while beaming pressure, humidity and temperature data back to HAPS at half-second intervals. Using Global Positioning System circuits, the windsondes provide the most accurate wind speed
readings yet gathered from hurricanes.

Doppler radar on the jet can give an overall view of a storm as the jet flies at safe altitudes, Franklin explains, but the view doesn't reach the ocean surface. The windsondes "work all the way down to the surface, which is not something we've been able to do before," he says. "We just don't have direct measurements of surface wind." Before windsondes, the data came from trained observers who estimated wind speed by looking down at the effects on the ocean.

Aboard the jet, the scientists run quality control on the HAPS data using software that Franklin wrote. Then HAPS formats a data message and Griffin's programming takes over again to send the processed data by modem to a satellite.

Before the windsonde data systems, forecasters "weren't able to see, except on satellite pictures, what the structure of the storm looked like," Franklin says.

The duo recall the first data gathered with HAPS on the Gulfstream jet in November 1996. Claudette, a hurricane that threatened the coast in July 1997, provided the first test under storm conditions. After that first run, Claudette, which had been headed for Cape Cod, veered. "We scared it away," Franklin jokes.

Franklin and Griffin share more than a sense of humor, however. Both have experienced hurricanes as researchers and as natives of South Florida, where powerful storms often struck without much warning.

Griffin grew up in the Redlands area south of Miami where his grandfather homesteaded in the 1800s. Griffin was there when much of southern Dade County was devastated by Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Franklin, 40, was born and grew up in Miami. His interest in a career studying storms was sparked by seeing them as a youngster. In 1964, "Hurricane Cleo passed directly over Miami, and as a 6-year-old I was suitably impressed," he remembers.

During the last 20 years, research has annually reduced forecast error by 1 percent. The two scientists estimate that they can improve it by 20 percent with data gathered by HAPS. Reducing a typical warning area by just 10 percent, about 34 miles, could save more than $45 million in five years.

Reports on the system say the windsondes and HAPS system could help spark a "technical and scientific revolution in hurricane forecasting," Griffin says.

At any time this summer, as in any other, a hurricane could be heading for a major coastal city. If improved forecasting keeps a city out of the warning zone and avoids an enormous, costly evacuation, the country could save in one summer the entire cost of NOAA's research jet, the HAPS system -- and a couple of bronze medals.

[artist]

interesting - thanks for posting.

[mike815]

Yeah very interesting thank u!