Polar Pathfinder Sampler

An Assessmentby Mark Parsons

8 February 2000

History

Told PoDAG we had plenty of money for Pathfinders (~$60,000 extra)

An idea was born:– Special session at AMS– 2 years P-Cube – NCEP CD as model

DSRB considered Siri Jodha presented plan (~10 months work) DSRB cautioned, but product went ahead

Goals from DSRB (13 Apr 98)

Advertise the Products to expand the audience. Include the P-Cube for a reasonable time period. Product should be scientifically useful or relevant in its

own right. Demonstrate HDF-EOS and associated access tools. Gain experience with HDF-EOS. Accommodate many researchers, especially the

attendees of AMS and IUGG meetings. Include distribution plan and method for assessment

Product overview Overviews of cryosphere, Pathfinder Program, and

instruments Sampler:

– AVHRR 5km: Browse and animations of albedo, temp., and brightness temp.; HDF data composites

– AVHRR 1.25km: Browse and animations of albedo, skin temperature, and ice motion

– Passive Microwave: Browse of TBs and snow cover, extent, and depth; flat binary data of TBs

– TOVS: Movies and browse of temperature and water vapor; HDF data of select days for full data set

Product overview (cont.)

P-Cube: – Browse and animations of various data combinations– Two years data in HDF

Tools:– IDL routines to browse and visualize the P-Cube data– ENVI Freelook for basic viewing, data selection, and

data quality assessment– HDF Fortran wrapper routines– Links to NCSA and other free tools for HDF

New or different aspects of this product Multiple PIs and data providers Multiple audiences Combination of promotion and data Multi-media

What it cost

>25 person-months ~$250,000 Heavy emotional toll inside and outside the

data center

Major products and projects delayed EASE Grid Land

Classification Various DEMs IPA Permafrost Map in

EASE grid Snowmelt Onset Using

SMM/I Data SMMR Pathfinder Various Info Products

ARCSS DIFs December 98 issue of

NSIDC Notes Report on the Impacts

Assessment Project General Web

maintenance Web Overhaul

Requests for Pathfinder products

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Dec-98

Jan-99

Feb-99

Mar-99

Apr-99

May-99

Jun-99

Jul-99

Aug-99

Sep-99

Oct-99

Nov-99

Dec-99

Jan-00

SSM/I Tbs (EASE)Pathfinder SamplerTOVS

AMS Meeting

AGU Meeting

TOVS DataAnnouncement

NSIDC Notes Article

Totals:•TBs66•Sampler186•TOVS33

16 users of Sampler subsequently ordered other Pathfinder Products

Achievement of Goals

Advertise the Products to expand the audience.– Products advertised, but audience not significantly

increased

Include the P-cube for a reasonable time period. – P-Cube distributed

Product should be scientifically useful or relevant in its own right.– I think so

Achievement of Goals

Demonstrate HDF-EOS and tools. – Current state of tools demonstrated

Gain experience with HDF-EOS. – Gained some good experience

Accommodate many researchers– Unclear

Include distribution plan and method for assessment– Sacrificed in the interest of a timely release

Lessons learned

Multiple external PIs can complicate matters– Make sure everyone agrees to goals and schedule– Clearly define roles and decision points– Recognize that editing and review will take much longer– Recognize and accommodate different communication

methods

Scale project to time/resources available– Product “packaging” took more than we anticipated– Flexibility on the nature of the product helps

More lessons

Be sure of your data (and tools) and it’s availability (don’t promote what you don’t have)

Be sure of your distribution forum and track it. Inform the client (PoDAG) when project exceeds

original scope

My personal assessment We developed a sophisticated, complex, quality product

very quickly. It’s more than a sampler. Interfaces are important, complex, and time consuming,

especially with multi-media We learned a lot about data formats, tools, data provider

relations, and project management We introduced our users to HDF-EOS We’ll do much better on future multi-provider, multi-

audience products (e.g., EWG Met Atlas) Samplers are rarely worth it