AAIR Project No PL 94-2392


Decisions to be made in Umeå


I think that there are, essentially, two levels of issues that need to be addressed. There are the overall issues about how the demonstrator should be set up, and the detailed issues about exactly what should go in the general structure, how it should be presented, how much information should go in the interface etc. Both levels are discussed simultaneously in the sections above in order to give participants the complete picture. However, I suggest that in order to come to some concrete decisions in the short time we have at Umea, we should just discuss the top level issues, and incorporate these in a timetable of events to be completed before March next year when we will all be more familiar with the concepts and in a better position to argue the details. These two levels, or development phases are outlined below:

PHASE 1 - Development of a Prototype Web Interface by March 1997

This phase should involve developing the hierarchy of pages required with representative pieces of information and data incorporated at each level. For example the demonstrator might consist of some of the maps that Erik has already completed to calculate damage risk,. The models might consist of one example model like HWIND for which some metamodel information and metadata links are available. Some of the error/accuracy might consist of some examples of output from NRS's wind flow model with different DEM sampling resolutions provided by MLURI. The Silvicultural advice box might contain some advice relating to fire spread and fuel hazard limitation. These components may be altered, but they should probably be fairly close to what will exist in the final version.

Therefore I propose that this meeting should be used to achieve the following:
1 Agreement with all participants of the structure and intentions of the interface
2 Identification of the small parts of the structure which will hold information by March 1997
3 Development and agreement of a timetable of actions and responsibilities which would ensue to ensure that the right people are provided with the right information at the right time to achieve a working prototype by March 1997
4 Some thoughts and feelings from participants as to the content and development of Phase 2, particularly with respect to the models that might be represented and the results that might be included. However this discussion should be left until last, and should not change the conclusions of items 1,2 and 3 unless they reveal some fundamental flaw in phase 1. These issues can be left for decision until the Meeting in March and the implementation of Phase 2.

PHASE 2 - Development of a Fully Functioning Web Interface by February 1998

This phase will involve all the detailed things which it is difficult to foresee, and therefore discuss, before this stage. These will be things like:

1 How to communicate the information effectively with the user
2 How much detail to include in the metamodel information
3 How exactly to link in the silvicultural advice to make our models look desireable
4 How many models and sets of results to include in the Demonstrator. Whether to run a selection of models for the same dataset but with different climate regimes, whether to run the models only on data for which they were developed (ie Finnish models on a Finnish example).
5 How to present the climate models integrated with the damage models.
6 How to decide which models to direct the user to depending on their circumstances. For example if they select Scots Pine in Sweden, do we just send them to Erik's model details, or do we give them the choice of Erik V Heli V Barry?


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Alistair Law - a.law@macaulay.ac.uk

Last modified: Mon Oct 14 16:00:22 BST 1996