Submitted August 29, 2005

********************************************
Task Description: (AR Request):  Routine products (non-VTEC enabled) headline preservation.  (See original request below).

The only way to determine what was previously issued would be to go to the AWIPS text database and pull out the previous product, attempt to match UGC codes (which would have to be decoded), then attempt to match headlines.  This will not be foolproof since we can't rely on VTEC for matching.  The requestor says to check the associated hazards products -- but the architecture doesn?t necessarily connect the hazard product with the routine product -- which may or may not be possible.  Also the active hazard products may not have been updated yet even though the grids have been updated with newer information, thus it might be error prone to rely on the captured hazard products.

It is possible to do this task, but the effort is not small, and cannot guarantee 100% success all of the time.  Nevertheless, this is a good enhancement, one that was mentioned in the TTR OT&E database, and one that can help forecaster efficiency.

Change Request Number: 4516

Amount of effort: 4 person weeks

Status: New request

Impact on Regions:  Improved forecaster efficiency.

******************************************************************************************************************

GFE Enhancement Request

Propagate User Headline Modifications


from

WFO Fairbanks, AK

POC: Jay Smith, jay.smith@noaa.gov, 907-458-3721


DESCRIPTION: National policy allows forecasters to provide geographic descriptor information to GFE generated headlines. This is an important capability in Alaska and the Western Region where zones are large and terrain is quite variable. Unfortunately, any additional information provided by a forecaster in a headline is lost on subsequent generation of the warning product. This requires the forecaster to add the additional information for each and every product run. To us, this seems woefully inefficient. Further, it can quite easily lead to inter-product inconsistency as the additional information can quite easily appear and disappear. This makes the products confusing to the customer, which is not good service. While it can be argued that the forecaster should never forget to propagate additional headline information manually, high operational tempo and information overload on the forecast floor often results in critical details like this being overlooked.


REQUESTED ENHANCEMENTS:

  1. Hazards formatters should check to see if the previous hazard product had any forecaster additions for each headline and put any additions found in the appropriate headline for the current product. However, we do not feel that “cancel” or “expire” headlines need any of the additional information from the previous hazard product.

  2. Non hazards formatters which display hazards headlines, e.g., ZFP product, should check the associated hazards product for any forecaster added headline information and put any additional information in its headline.

--