NCDC’s Data Mining and Visualization Tools

Abstract Only - NCDC is involved in several data mining and visualization projects. NCDC will discuss appropriate examples of completed work and work in progress.
The Severe Weather Data Inventory (SWDI) at NCDC provides user access to archives of several datasets critical to the detection and evaluation of severe weather. These datasets include: NEXRAD Level-III point features describing general storm structure, hail, mesocyclone and tornado signatures,; National Weather Service Storm Events Database; National Weather Service Local Storm Reports collected from storm spotters; National Weather Service Warnings, and Lightning strikes from Vaisala's National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN).
SWDI archives all of these datasets in a spatial database that allows for convenient searching and subsetting. These data are accessible via the NCDC web site, Web Feature Services (WFS) or automated web services. The results of interactive web page queries may be saved in a variety of formats, including plain text, XML, Google Earth’s KMZ, standards-based NetCDF and Shapefile.
NCDC's Storm Risk Assessment Project (SRAP) uses data from the SWDI database to derive gridded climatology products that show the spatial distributions of the frequency of various events. SRAP also relates SWDI events to other spatial data such as roads, population, watersheds, and other geographic, sociological, or economic data to derive products that are useful in municipal planning, emergency management, the insurance industry, and other areas where there is a need to quantify and qualify how severe weather patterns affect people and property.
In support of U.S. and international goals, NCDC developed radar visualization and data exporter tools using Open Source software libraries. The NCDC Interactive Radar Viewer and Data Exporter Toolkit load, Weather Surveillance Radar 1988, Doppler (WSR-88D) volume scan data, and derived products, into an OPEN Geographical Information System (GIS)-compliant environment. The application is launched via Java Web Start and runs on the client machine while accessing these data remotely from the NCDC archive or in near real time from other NOAA servers. The Radar Interactive Viewer Toolkit provides custom data overlays, animations and basic queries. The export of images and movies is provided in multiple formats that support the “blending” of radar data with other types of data. NCDC hopes to establish collaboration with international scientists to leverage these tools for interoperable use with other global distributed radar networks.