RAL Organizational Structure
In the fall of 2004, the Research Applications Laboratory was formed from two previous groups: the Research Applications Program (RAP), and the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC). Given the very aggressive growth history of RAP over the previous 15 years, the senior managers determined it was time to reorganize around a number of central themes and in management units of appropriate size to efficiently carry on the activity of the laboratory into the future. The resulting organization chart was shown earlier in Section 1, and is amplified below to highlight the principal directions of each group. The first four programs evolved from the previous RAP. The fifth, the Joint Numerical Testbed, includes the DTC, and includes a concept for expanding the role of that group to include other kinds of model testing and other sponsors as discussed in the previous section.
- The Aviation Applications Program (AAP) plans, develops, and transfers advanced weather technologies to support current and future aviation operations anywhere in the world.
- The National Security Applications Program (NSAP) makes breakthrough advances in range- and urban-scale meteorology and plume transport modeling to give operational forecasters, decision makers and emergency planners accurate, timely guidance and support.
- The Hydrometeorological Applications Program (HAP) works to understand how water vapor, precipitation, and land surface hydrology interact across scales to define the hydrological cycle.
- The Weather Systems and Assessment Program (WSAP) is designed to understand society's need for and economic benefits of improved weather information and incubate new programs to address those needs.
- The Joint Numerical Testbed (JNT) serves as both a facility and a national distributive network of collaborators for testing, validating, and comparing numerical techniques for analyses and forecasts of atmospheric parameters important to operational decision makers.
RAL Advisory Committee
The RAL Advisory Committee consists of members of the academic and operational sectors who are nationally or internationally recognized as leaders in their respective fields of expertise. In general the committee members cut across all aspects of the RAL programs. The committee meets once per year to provide advice regarding the status and future directions of RAL programs, thus their input is heavily weighted in the formulation of this strategic plan. Current members of the RAL Advisory Committee are listed below.
- Mr. Mark Andrews – Next Generation Air Transport System, JPDO – Washington, DC
- Mr. Joe Burns – United Airlines – Denver, CO
- Dr. Michael Carter – Department of Homeland Security – Washington, DC
- Ms. Pamela Clark – U.S. Army Research Laboratory – Adelphi, MD
- Dr. Efi Foufoula-Georgiou – University of Minnesota – Minneapolis, MN
- Ms. Jeanne Foust – ESRI – Eau Claire, WI
- Dr. Paul Houser – George Mason University – Fairfax, VA
- Dr. Richard Johnson – Colorado State University – Ft. Collins, CO
- Mr. Carl McCullough – FAA/DOD (retired) – SC
- Dr. Ron McPherson – American Meteorological Society – Boston, MA
- Ms. Shelley Row – Institute of Transportation Engineers – Washington, DC
- Dr. Donald Veal – Academia, private industry (retired) – Boulder, CO
Assumptions for this strategic plan based on our look at a changing world
- Global Seamless Communication – The internet will continue to be reinvented to provide more security and capacity. It will continue to be the normalizing technology that allows individuals or organizations of any size to have a voice in political advocacy and provision of services. Within ten years this technology, along with portable computational systems and powerful algorithms, will represent the seedling of future generations of communication and information systems that will connect every individual (those who choose to, but the cost of not connecting will gradually increase to encourage more individual participation) to other people, their workplace, their homes, their transportation devices, and the general infrastructure in which they live. This capability will just be entering into fully translational capability across the major languages of the world by 2015.
- Computational Capability – Moore’s Law for doubling computational power roughly every 18 months will hold through the next decade.
- Changing Workplace – The workplace as we know it today will gradually evolve toward a “virtual workplace” allowing an employee to access needed information and communicate effectively with work colleagues from most locations outside of the physical workspace. To date, the use of teleconferencing technologies has been problematic in that they require specific locations or training on special equipment. Over the next decade the use of remote, collaborative communication across small work groups will gradually increase as technological barriers for their use and costs are reduced.
- Location, location, location – Geo-location of moving or dynamic objects (people, vehicles, weather hazards, work zones, contaminated areas, changing evacuation routes, congestion zones, etc.) will become ubiquitous except for individuals or vehicles that “opt out” of the system because of privacy concerns. At least two global positioning systems will operate through the decade allowing most receivers to utilize both a modest cost resulting in locations within 2-3 meters. The use of GIS to integrate fields of data will continue to expand at all levels of government and across most operational sectors.
- A Digital World – Stakeholders in most industrial and public service sectors will continue to become more computer literate as processing and computational systems become more user friendly. This combination will work in favor of making the delivery of relevant decision-making information more efficient.
- Pace of Technological Advances – The pace of technological evolution will continue to accelerate. Within a decade the job of systems administrator will gradually change into a fully integrated Information Technologist position that will require these highly-valued ITs to advise and manage all systems including databases, communications devices, computational devices, controlling devices, and interconnecting networks in fixed and mobile locations. Within five years universities offering degrees in IT management will be backlogged. Hiring and holding on to highly-rated ITs will become a challenge in that demand will be greater than the supply. Update training to keep up with the pace of technological change will become a funding issue.
- Global Powers – China will continue to emerge as a world power throughout the next decade. This will increase the dichotomous tension in the U.S which will continue to be torn between responding to China as an emerging military threat, an emerging economic gold mine for U.S. businesses, or a major economic threat because innovation and research in the U.S. fall far behind that of China, and the U.S. could lose its economic leadership in the world. Both the Administration and the Congress will respond with research and innovative technology funding to try to keep the U.S. competitive both economically and militarily. India will continue to emerge as an economic power but will struggle internally to achieve some level of national homogeneity across its many diverse sub-populations. Africa will continue to be racked by national rivalries, poverty and disease; however, by the end of the decade noticeable progress will be made in stabilizing and growing the economy of several nation states. The European Union will continue to add members, will struggle mightily to achieve a homogeneous body of law to govern, and will become steadily stronger and more cohesive by the end of the decade. RAL will continue to pursue work in Asia and Africa.
- Guns and Butter – Finding a peaceful solution in the Middle East will continue to dominate U.S. and other countries’ resources for most of the decade. Political decisions will be made that keep tensions and instability in the region high. There will be no easy solutions and costs for the U.S. efforts in this regard will continue to be high. This will be the major factor in balancing U.S. budgets, and in a trickle down sense, in determining how much flexibility exists for R&D. Some components of RAL research (national defense and security) will benefit from this as in the past, but overall it will put severe negative pressure on the budgets of NSF and other federal agencies.
- Political Policy – Elections in 2006 and 2008 will likely set the stage for our budget climate for most of the decade in that the outcomes will dictate shifts (if any) in international policy and domestic policy with regard to environmental concerns (global climate, air quality, water quality, hurricane mitigation, general weather hazard mitigation, etc), military solutions versus diplomatic solutions, and world trade.
- Global Climate Change – Concerns about global warming interestingly will begin to shift to the general public via the media. In the political arena we will see a continuation of a shift of these concerns to the state level and an increase in the number of states setting more stringent mitigation strategies in place (via state law) than at the federal level. Within five years a tipping point will be reached when public opinion, state legislative pressure, continuing international pressure, and scientific evidence will combine to make it politically expedient for most politicians to get behind “green” laws at the federal level and begin to figure out how to reengage in effective international mitigation strategies.
- Population Shifts – Demographic shifts in the U.S. will continue to see population densities increasing in the coastal zones, mountain west and southwest putting still more emphasis on effective hurricane evacuation strategies and pressure on western U.S. water supplies.
- National Fire Plan – Land management agencies will continue to try to figure out how to implement the National Fire Plan that shifts emphasis to reducing the number of Class-II and Class-III acres of forest and rangeland to reduce fire danger. Weather technologies will be required to implement this plan effectively over the next two decades.
- NGATS – Defining the Next Generation Air Transport System will dominate the next decade in the field of aviation. Introduction of Very Small Jets (less than ten passengers) and Un-manned Arial Systems (UAS) in large numbers, a redistribution of flight corridors as a result of VSJs and alterations in the old hub and spoke system, increasing passenger loads and the lack of new runways or airports to keep pace will put considerable pressure on NGATS to become much more efficient in terms of increasing system capacity without degrading safety. Ergo, the system will become much more sensitive to weather hazards than today.
- Data Assimilation – Burgeoning satellite and ground-based sensor systems in combination with almost unlimited bandwidth availability will result in efficient assimilation of data of all types becoming the most difficult challenge for numerical modeling over the next decade. With regard to ground-based sensors, mobile sensors will outnumber fixed sensors by the end of the decade.
- Scales of Opportunity – After decades of R&D re-focus from synoptic meteorology to meso-meteorology changes reflected in the items above will result in a paradigm shift of R&D towards the extremes of the spatial/temporal scales; in other words towards two distinct tracks: 1) micro-meteorology with emphasis on urban areas and the boundary layer, and 2) global weather and climate models.
- Energy – Cost for producing and distributing oil, natural gas and coal will continue to rise faster than the general inflation rate during the decade. Although coal and natural gas (if liquid natural gas is factored in) will continue to be abundant, oil supplies will continue to be scarcer. These factors will combine to push energy companies toward more efficiency in their operations and to pursue energy sources such as solar, wind, hydrated sulfates and oil extraction techniques that previously have not been cost effective. All of these new areas are weather and climate sensitive and represent new opportunities for developing and deploying advanced weather and climate systems.
- Commercial Space Initiative – During the next decade commercial passenger-carrying spacecraft will gain a footing as a business enterprise. This initiative began with commercial rocket launches several years ago, followed by the competition for the X-Prize in 2005. The FAA and NASA have now embraced the idea of allowing commercial entities to begin competing for space business including tourism, space repair and salvage, freight hauling, and space burials of human remains. Tourism will begin in earnest in 2007 with the New Mexico space port and gradually expand after that. All launches and recoveries are highly sensitive to weather at all levels of the atmosphere and will require advanced systems for support.
Acronym dictionary
4DVar – Four Dimensional Variation data assimilation technique
ACD – Atmospheric Chemistry Division
ATM – Air Traffic Management or Atmospheric Transport Model
ALERT – Automated Local Evaluation in Real Time
CAM – Community Atmosphere Model
CCSM – Community Climate System Model
CIP – Current Icing Product
Class-II – Range and forestland that has been moderately altered by poor land management practices (over-grazing, too much fire control, etc.) over many decades.
Class-III – Range and forestland that has been severely altered by poor land management practices (over-grazing, too much fire control, etc.) over many decades.
COMET – Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education, and Training
DARPA – Defense Applied Research Program Administration
DESWHT – Romanian Destructive Waters Abatement Program
DICast – Dynamic Integrated Forecast system
DOT – U.S. Department of Transportation
DTC – WRF Developmental Testbed Center
FAA – DOT Federal Aviation Administration
FHWA – Federal Highways Administration
FIP – Forecast Icing Product
GTG – Graphical Turbulence Guidance
GSFC – NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center
IPT – Integrated Product Team
ISSE – Institute for the Study of Society and Environment
JNT – Joint Numerical Testbed
JPDO – Joint Program Development Office for NGATS
MMM – Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division
NAME – North American Monsoon Experiment
NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NCWF – National Convective Weather Forecast
NGATS – Next Generation Air Transport System
NWP – Numerical Weather Prediction
PBL – Planetary Boundary Layer
QPF – Quantitative Precipitation Forecasting
RAL – Research Applications Laboratory
REFRACTT – Refractivity Experiment For H2O Research And Collaborative operational Technology Transfer
SERE – Societal-Environmental Research and Education Laboratory
SIP – Societal Impacts Program
S-PolKa – Combined S and Ka band radar with polarization capability
TAMDAR – Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Data Report
UCM – Urban Canopy Model
VDRAS – Variational Doppler Radar Assimilation System
VLAS – Variational Lidar Assimilation System
WSAP – RAL Weather Systems and Assessment Program
WSDDM – Weather Support for De-icing Decision Making
WRF – Weather and Research Forecast model
WRF-Chem – Physics package in WRF that links model to many chemical species
WRF-Fire – Physics package in WRF that links model to fuel inventory and fire behavior
VII – Vehicle Infrastructure Integration
VLJ – Very Light Jet