RDFS Rapid Deployment Forecast System
Visit at:http://rdfs.stccmop.org
Registration required
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RDFS – Currently 22 forecasts 24/7
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RDFS - Goals
• Generate operational forecast of sufficient quality providing results within 24 hours of receipt of a computational grid
• Foster a community of interested parties empowered to maintain and improve each forecast
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RDFS – Infrastructure
The central RDFS host is a repository for model results and a provider of some model inputs such as atmospheric forecasts. Products both static and dynamic are delivered via a locally hosted web server.
Compute servers execute one or more forecasts. Presently RDFS has 9 multi-CPU compute servers. Generally, one CPU is dedicated for each forecast.
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RDFS - Grids
• Grid Generation– Requires bathymetry– Imagery, coastal outlines– Requirements, particular features
represented in the domain– Determine open, land boundaries– Grid creation using SMS, ACE/gredit, or
other provider, e.g. use of an existing grid
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RDFS – Boundary Conditions
• Open boundary conditions– Ocean
• Tidal model for elevation BCs• Regional model forcings for flux, salinity,
temperature, elevations• Fresh water inputs
– Streams, rivers» Real time data source – e.g. USGS stream flow
network» climatology for river flux and temperature so
always have data for inputs.
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RDFS – Atmospheric forcings
• Atmospheric forecasts
– NCEP North American Mesoscale (NAM)• 3 day forecast 12km grid resolution• Use for most coastal US forecasts
– NCEP Global Forecast System (GFS)• 10 day forecast 75km resolution but covers the
entire globe.
Both forecast are downloaded daily and converted to file formats understood by the models
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RDFS - Models
• ELCIRC – 3D baroclinic circulation across river-to-
ocean scales implemented using a finite-volume/finite-difference Eulerian-Lagrangian algorithm
• SELFE– (Semi-implicit Eulerian-Lagrangian Finite
Elements) a 3D baroclinic circulation model.
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RDFS - Execution
• Execution of daily forecast– Crontab entries on compute nodes for
each forecast• Simlink.pl
– Creates directory structure for the day’s forecast
• Prep.pl– Gathers inputs for the model run
• Check.pl– Verifies inputs are correct
• Start.pl– Executes forecast
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RDFS – Monitoring and alerting
• 24/7 on a budget• Systems monitored by Big Brother,
disk free, CPU state, uptime• E-mail alerts on success or failure• Critical fault alerts passed to pagers
carried by forecast team members
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RDFS – Pre-generated Products
• Processing and product generation– Master_process.pl
• Runs as a daemon on compute nodes• In a loop executes scripts to:
– Extract model data at stations– Extract realtime data from a relational database
store– Create model and model/data comparison plots at
stations– Create isoline plots of variables over the domain
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RDFS – Pre-generated Products
• Model/data comparisons
• Isolines
• Transects
• Many other types
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RDFS - Mapserver
• Mapserver– Web application for rendering spatial
data home at http://ms.gis.umn.edu/– Model output data for each forecast can
be viewed with the RDFS mapserver deployment
– Additional layers from navigation charts, USGS topo maps, USGS ortho-photos, shapefiles
– Can generate animations
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RDFS - Mapserver
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RDFS - Drupal
• Drupal is an open source web site content management system used as an application framework in support of RDFS.– http://www.drupal.org– Provides user management functions– Menus, forums, blogs and other useful
content types
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RDFS - Drupal
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RDFS – Going Forward
• Upcoming parallel version of SELFE changes infrastructure– Computes nodes become compute
cluster– Larger domains possible– Smaller time steps possible– Need more disk to store results
• Challenges building a community of interested parties