OHD/HL/CHPS - CAT News

Latest CAT news and activities

CHPS Acceleration Team (CAT) NEWS AND ACTIVITIES (in reverse chronological order)

January 2009

The CAT continued their weekly conference calls (captured as minutes, and available at https://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hrl/chps/meeting_minutes.html). Of particular note was an agreement to provide monthly status briefings to the follow-on RFCs (HICs, DOHs, SCHs) and their respective regions as the first step towards kicking off CHPS implementation for the non-CAT (often referred to as "follow-on") RFCs. The first briefing will be given by Jon Roe on January 8.

The start of migration for the CAT RFCs has been delayed by one month to February 2009. The main reason for the delay stems from a desire on the part of Deltares to ensure the quality of the conversion scripts, which depend heavily on an understanding of the nature of NWSRFS operations and basin connectivity. These concerns were validated during software testing at OHD in December, where the end-to-end testing did indeed reveal a few issues.

Deltares will provide migration training for the CAT RFCs during the week of February 9 at the NWS Training Center (NWSTC) in Kansas City, MO. This will be followed by a week of Deltares on-site support at each CAT RFC to ensure that everything is in place for migration to begin, and that there are no remaining unforeseen problems.

July 2008

The CAT met in Portland on May 1-2 to clarify and identify responsibilities among all parties. The CHPS project is unique in the sense that its leaders (the CAT) are also future users and visionaries for the operational use of the system. Project planning is thus accomplished from two perspectives: from the system implementers’ perspective (OHD and Deltares); and from the operational users’ perspective. The CAT meeting yielded the first draft of an RFC deployment plan which will dovetail into a master project plan.

As of mid-June Rob Shedd, the Development and Operations Hydrologist (DOH) at Northeast RFC (NERFC), became a CAT member. Deltares will visit NERFC at the end of July to provide a combined Delft-FEWS overview and training session to NERFC staff; OCWWS HSD and an OHD system administrator will visit NERFC at the end of July to configure the NERFC with a sample ("pilot") basin. Rob attended the recent CHPS workshop in Silver Spring but unsuccessfully managed to escape the huge task coming his way.

The NCRFC will no longer participate in the early path-finding transition to CHPS but will be migrated as part of the second phase along with the other non-CAT RFCs. The Pilot installation will remain at NCRFC but no further upgrades are planned. John Halquist will remain a CAT member, representing NOHRSC interests instead of NCRFC’s. John can, of course, provide insight into NCRFC operations when appropriate.

[Back To Top]

[Back to the CHPS Implementation Partners page]