Process for Developing and Sharing RFC Applications

26 October 2001

Process Outline

1. Determine if any other office has already created or is interested in an application.

2. Determine if local, regional, or national interest/priority.

3. Get approval for project.

4. Coordinate the requirements, development, testing, and support of the application.

5. Register, document, and disseminate the application.

6. Facilitate updates of local and regional applications.

7. Facilitate updates of national applications.

1. Before developing a new application, offices will examine the AWIPS Local Applications Database and use the "rfcawips" listserver to inquire about existing applications that would fulfill the requirement and/or to gauge interest among other offices for developing a new application. Interested offices will use the listserver, phones, and e-mail to discuss requirements, priorities, time-lines, resources, etc. to further define the project.

2. An application will be categorized as local, regional, or national depending on how many offices are involved and the overall scope of the project in terms of importance and resource requirements. This category will be decided by the interested offices. Local projects will be those in which a single office is involved and further coordination is left to the discretion of that office. Regional projects will be those in which several offices commit resources to plan, develop, and implement an application cooperatively. The term "regional" does not imply that all offices involved in the project must be from the same NWS Region. National projects will be those which require resources beyond the those of local offices or have AWIPS baseline implications.

3. The approval for the proposed project will depend on its scope. Local projects may be proposed to and approved by the local Hydrologist-in-Charge (HIC). A written description that outlines the purpose and estimates required resources must be prepared for all regional and national projects. This description will be submitted to the appropriate Regional Hydrologic Service Division(s) (HSD) for action. Regional projects will be approved by the HSDs of all the cooperating offices. For national projects, the Region HSDs will work with the RFC Development Manager on actions and may offer the RFC resources to fulfill requirements according to the Hydrology Requirements Process.

4. All regional and national projects will be handled by the RFC Development Management (RDM) process. In that process, a team is formed to coordinate requirements, development, testing, and support of the application. Information on all regional and national projects will be available on the RDM website. Local projects will be managed by the HIC or their designate.

5. The AWIPS Local Applications Database (LAD) will be used for registration, documentation, and distribution of regional and local RFC applications. The LAD will be evaluated for it's usefulness for RFC applications and suggestions for updates will be submitted to the Local Applications Working Group. RFCs will register their use of applications with the LAD to facilitate being able to contact all users of an application for input on updates, notification of new versions or bugs, etc.. Applications will be submitted to the LAD in the form of binaries. Source code will be available from the supporting office upon request.

6. RFCs registered as application users will be polled whenever changes to an existing local or regional application are requested or planned to insure all users are aware of updates. Polling will take place through email to the rfcawips listserver. The supporting office may make the requested or planned updates or provide the source code to another office to make the changes. After changes are made, the updated source code will be submitted back to the supporting office, the application will be updated on the LAD, and all registered users will be notified.

7. National programs may also be updated by a cooperating RFC following the procedures outlined in step 3 (above). The requirement for the program update will come from the NWS Hydrologic Requirements Process. OHD will provide the source code to the cooperating office and the updated source code will be delivered to OHD at the end of the project. OHD will update the source code baseline and deliver the application to AWIPS. The updated application may also be made available on the OHD ftp site prior to the AWIPS release.