The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC), in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Unified Forecast System’s Verification and Validation Cross-Cutting Team (UFS-V&V), a three-day workshop to identify key verification and validation metrics for UFS applications. The workshop was held remotely 22-24 February, 2021. Approximately 300 participants registered for this event from across the research and operational community.
The goal of this workshop was to identify and prioritize key metrics to apply during the evaluation of UFS research products and guiding their transition from research-to-operations (R2O). Because all UFS evaluation decisions affect a diverse set of users, workshop organizers encouraged members from government, academic, and private-sector organizations to participate in the workshop. The organizing committee used the outcome of the 2018 DTC Community Unified Forecast System Test Plan and Metrics Workshop to form the foundation of the workshop and to prepare and disseminate a series of three pre-workshop surveys to interested parties. The results of the surveys were used to prepare the discussion points of the breakout groups to streamline the metrics prioritization process.
During the workshop, the opening plenary was focused on providing background information to the participants. The participants then joined breakout groups to discuss how to apply the prioritized metrics to the full R2O development stages and gates. The breakout groups were stratified by time scales (Short Range, Medium Range, Sub-Seasonal and Seasonal). There was also a break-out group focused on how to define the research-to-operation gates and assign metrics to them.
This presentation will provide a preliminary report out of the findings from the workshop and discuss what the committee perceives are the next steps.
