The STIWG meeting was called to order at 9:00 a.m. by the chairperson. Mark Bushnell of the National Ocean Service ( NOS ),who hosted the meeting, welcomed the participants and invited the attendees to sign up for a tour of the NOS facility at Chesapeake, Va.
The chairperson then introduced the new officers for year 2003. The new officers are:
| STIWG Officers for 2003 | |
|---|---|
| Chairperson | Jim Doty, Bureau of Reclamation, Department of Interior |
| Secretary | Ernest Dreyer, United Stated Geological Survey(USGS), Department of Interior |
Jim Doty supplied the secretary with the schedule for the rotation of officers to be placed on the Web. It can be viewed at this URL:
The agenda was reviewed and one topic concerning the continuing support of the LRGS at Wallops Island was added. The approved agenda can be viewed at the URL:
Steve Pritchett of the NWS discussed the changes that are being proposed by the working group tasked to review and update the Terms of Reference. Steve provided the group with a draft copy of the proposed Terms of Reference.
The main changes are as follows:
The group discussed the following topics related to the Terms of Reference:<
The main issue was whether or not the Terms of Reference should defiine a standard procedure, i.e. a Memorandum of Agreement(MOA), for transferring funds from a member agency to the STIWG account maintained by the Office of the Federal Coordinator of Meteorolgy (OFCM). After much discussion, it was decided that it should not. A suggestion was made to at least include a template for a standard agreement that could be used by contributing agencies. This suggestion was deferred and no action item was generated.
This discussion related to the use of STIWG funding. It was noted that the STIWG has funded studies and development projects to improve the GOES DCS for the user community. The STIWG has resisted funding operational and maintenance activities which it considers the responsibility of NESDIS. The funding of the DOMSAT contract was mentioned as an exception to this rule. However, it was pointed out that DOMSAT was originally thought of as a temporary service that was needed until it could be replaced by NOAAPORT. Changes to NOAAPORT made this transition more difficult than originally anticipated; hence the continuation of the DOMSAT services became necessary. It was pointed out that it would be hard for member agencies to justify funding operational and maintenance activites managed by NESDIS, at least, by means of the STIWG. It was suggested that there may be other mechanisms for obtaining multi-agency funding for activities such as the operations of a Wallops backup. No action item resulted from this discussion.
The discussion concerned the requirement in the Terms of Reference that NOAA agencies could not chair the STIWG. A suggestion was made to exclude only NOAA/NESDIS from chairing the STIWG. Steve reported that the work group had discussed this requirement and decided that a NOAA chair might compromise the independence of the STIWG. The requirement was not altered.
The discussion centered on the requirements for voting members and the status of other attendees.
The Terms of Reference stated that a federal entity was entitled to a voting member on the STIWG if
A discussion ensued to clarify what was meant by "significant user." It was finally decided that any federal entity desiring voting membership should petition the STIWG which would determine whether or not the petitioner should be granted voting privileges.
It was agreed that all users of the GOES DCS were welcome at STIWG meetings and encouraged to participate in all open discussions.
The current and proposed Terms of Reference can be viewed at these URLs:
| Current Terms of Reference: | http://water.usgs.gov/datarelay/StiwgTor-orig.html |
|---|---|
| Proposed Terms of Reference: | http://water.usgs.gov/datarelay/StiwgTor-new.html |
ACTION ITEMS:
All STIWG members are to review the proposed Terms of Reference and send any other comments to Steve Prichart. The goal is to approve the new Terms of Reference at the next meeting.
Kay Metcalf reported on a study that has been initiated by NESDIS to recommend a plan for establishing a backup site for GOES DCS. The study has been funded and a contract awarded. It will last for approximately 3 months and will attempt to identify
Several locations have been mentioned as potential backup sites:
Because the STIWG has also been investigating a backup method using a distributed DRGS network, it was suggested that the study group also look into the alternate methods that might be used to achieve a working backup and to include the use of a distributed DRGS network in its study. It was agreed that information about the use of a distributed DRGS network would be passed to the study group. Many attendess stressed the need for the study group to acquire information from the various agencies using the GOES DCS.
ACTION ITEM:
Kay Metcalf will facilitate establishing communications channels between the study group and STIWG members. The first step will be to send email to all STIWG members introducing the study group team and asking for participation in the study.
Al McMath provided a status report on the implementation of the Data Acquisition and Processing System II ( DAPS II ). The implementation schedule has slipped. The in-plant testing which had been scheduled to occur in January 2003 has now been tentatively rescheduled for May/June 2003. If the in-plant testing follows this schedule, the acceptance testing and the operational phase-over will be scheduled for sometime in September/October 2003. However, there is a complication that could add further delays. A decision has been made to replace all the old demodulators ( 100, 300, and 1200 baud ) with new DSP-based demodulators. This adds another level of complexity and more risk to the development process and could cause more implementation delays.
Several members expressed concern about the lack of user interface and system documentation for the DAPS II system at this late date in its implementation and questioned whether or not any thorough testing could be done without it. It was pointed out that additional information will be needed by DAPS II for each DCP, and users must know what this new information is so that they can update any local databases that are maintained to supply this information. A request was made from the STIWG to NESDIS to have the COTR on the DAPS II contract insist on making user and system documentation available to GOES DCS users as soon as possible.
ACTION ITEM:
Al McMath reported on some security issues that have necessitated changes to the internet access to Wallops computers. The modified LRGS system that was receiving data at Wallops Island was compromised by hackers. A vulnerbility in the Apache webserver allowed access to hackers who used the LRGS to make several denial-of-service attacks on other NOAA computers. The vulnerability has been closed by a software patch to Apache, and a system has been set up to provide automatic notifications and patches for security vulnerabilities that have been discovered and closed in Linux.
However, the security problems necessitated changing the internet connection used by Wallops from a connection maintained by NASA to one at the NWS switch in Silver Spring, Md. This required a change in the ip address of the DAPS machine. The new address is
Users were reminded to modify any scripts that are connecting to the DAPS computer over the internet to use the new ip address.
It was also noted that because of security concerns, DAPS II will not permit telnet connections and will use secure ftp ( sftp ) for file transfers.
Al McMath provided a status of the progress on implementing HDR demodulators. The following table shows the demodulators installed at Wallops:
| Satellite | Number of HDR Demodulators Installed | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 300 Baud | 1200 Baud | ||
| East | 6 | 3 | |
| West | 9 | 2 | |
17 more demods need to be retrofitted with new firmware. That process has started.
Kay Metcalf asked the group to report on any remaining problems that have been observed in the HDR DCPs. The following problems were reported:
When a DCP transmits redundant data, i.e. a DCP transmits the last 2 hours of data every hour, sometimes the redundant data does not match the same data in the previous transmission. It sometimes seems to be sequenced differently. This may be a problem with the mutiplexor interface. ( Kay Metcalf as reported to her from Brian McCallum of the USGS)
The number of parity errors in the HDR transmissions is excessive. Much more than what is observed in the 100 baud DCPs.( Paul Tippett ). Larry Cedrone reported a large increase in parity errors that coincided with the deployment of HDR DCPS.
All agreed that these problems are significant, effect the implementation schedule for the use of HDR dcps, and need to be addressed in a systematic way. Members were requested to provide as much information as possible about the nature of these problems. Paul Tippett of the USGS volunteered to compare systematically data received from DAPS with the same data received over a DRGS to explore whether the problem is in the DCPs or demodulators. He will also try to characterize the transmissions with parity errors if possible. He will communicate any results to Phil Whaley. Other members agreed to do some similar things.
ACTION ITEMS:
Ernest Dreyer of the USGS asked about continuing support of the LRGS at Wallops Island. The LRGS at Wallops receives data from the data stream that is transmitted to DOMSAT intead of from DOMSAT. This makes it a good backup of DOMSAT, and it is used by other LRGS that are receiving data from DOMSAT as a backup. The LRGS systems support a peer backup system that allows them to make backup requests to other LRGS systems that have been defined as peers and are reachable over the network. Having the Wallops Island LRGS operational allows each LRGS to fill in any missing "gaps" that may have resulted from problems receiving transmissions from DOMSAT.
NESDIS stated that the support of the LRGS at Wallops Island would terminate after the implemenation of DAPS-II
Ernest Dreyer made a request to NESDIS that they consider how this capablility could be included in DAPS-II
Kolleen Shelley of the Forest Service provided a progress report of the STIWG work group that is preparing a HDR transition plan. Kolleen handed out a working draft of the plan for review. The draft plan can be viewed at this URL:
Kolleen noted that the GOES DCS Planning Survey needs to be completed before the transition plan can be completed. A request was made to STIWG members to try to complete this survey by March 15, 2003.
She also pointed out that the plan has called for NESDIS to modify the start of the 10-year period that NESDIS has allocated for the transition to HDR DCPs to May of 2003 because of all the problems in getting the HDR system operational.
There ensued a discussion of some of the elements in transition plan. A few of the salient comments about them are:
Kolleen requested that STIWG members continue to review the plan and send any comments to her or any member of the work group.
( URL of Work Group: http://water.usgs.gov/stiwg/workgroups/hdr/stiwg_hdrtrans.html.)
ACTION ITEMS:
Charles Kazimir of BLM outlined a concept for using DRGSs owned and operated by individual agencies to backup the Wallops DCS. The main idea is to develop intermediate computer systems that would merge the data from multiple DRGSs, which receive subsets of the GOES data stream, to form a complete copy of the GOES DCS data stream. The intermediate systems would be called DWBs and would have the same user interface as that currently supported on LRGSs. A paper describing this concept can be viewed here: Distributed Wallaps Backup(DWB) Concept Paper
Several members recommended that an analysis of this concept be made a part of the backup study being conducted by NESDIS.
ACTION ITEM:
Kay Metcalf will make the backup study group aware of this concept paper and have them consider it in their study.
The next STIWG meeting was tentatively scheduled for June 24, 2003 in Denver, Colorado. The chair adjourned the 99th meeting of the STIWG.