The Asheville Chapter of the American Meteorological Society
held its sixth meeting for 2005-2006 in the Meteorology Lab, Robinson Hall,
Old
Business
The Vice President of the Chapter, Mike Cuevas presided at the meeting. The treasurer’s report was read and approved. The balance as of May 2, 2006 is $687.42. The March meeting minutes were read and approved.
Susan Tarbell, Secretary of the Chapter, discussed the next
meeting to be held at the Colburn Earth and
Mike Cuevas introduced the speaker for the evening: Mr.
Bruce Burleson, GIS Manager, at the Air Force Combat Climatology Center, in
Mr. Burleson started off with a quote from Dr. Roger Tomlinson, considered the “Father of GIS.” “A Geographic Information System stores spatial data with logically linked attribute information in a GIS storage database where analytical functions are controlled interactively by a human operator to generate the needed information products.” Spatial is a position on the earth’s surface. Geospatial Information and Services (GI&S) is the broad reference to all disciplines related to spatial information to include GIS, photogrammetry, remote sensing, multispectral imagery, cartography, mapping, charting, geodesy, surveying, terrain analysis, etc.
At the Air Force Combat Climatology Center, GIS is used to visualize, manage, and analyze data; to display data from disparate sources; as a link between map features and tabular data; and for internet applications. The data is received from multiple sources such as: tornadoes from National Climatic Data Center; roads, counties, and towns from ESRI (industry leader of GIS modeling and mapping software and technology); and digital terrain elevation data from the NGA. Maps can be made by using GIS.
Bruce then showed various slides of analyzed data. A tracking analyst is designed to load, display, and analyze temporal event data. Temporal event data can be either real-time or fixed-time (historic, planned, modeled data). Tracking temporal data is divided into four segments: dynamic, discrete, stationary, and change. Dynamic data is something that moves such as planes, vehicles, animals, satellites, and storms. Discrete data is something that “just happens” such as crimes, lightning, accidents, or winning a NC lottery. Stationary data stands still but records changes such as weather stations or traffic sensors. Change is population growth for instance. Even while data “ages,” it is possible to symbolize the data to see how old it is while replaying the data, and/or viewing real-time data.
Replay looks at temporal data in a straight line, which
starts at time A and ends at time B.
However, you can then use the “temporal offset” function to move data in
time so it overlaps each other and can be viewed at the same time. Mr. Burleson gave an example of hurricanes in
three years, 1994-1996. The analyst can
then symbolize each event or multiple events.
For instance, the Air Force uses “Operational Climatic Data Summary”
(OCDS) data quite frequently. This
product is put out by the
After questions from the audience, the meeting was adjourned by Mike Cuevas.
Thursday, June 29, 2006.
The last meeting of the Asheville AMS Chapter, 2005-2006
year was held on Thursday, June 29, 2006 at the Colburn Earth and
The meeting was then adjourned by Susan Tarbell.
Respectfully submitted,
Susan A. Tarbell