MDL Adapts to Pandemic Work Paradigm; Marks Successful Remote Year - MDL

Apr 28, 2021

The worldwide outbreak of COVID-19 in mid-March of last year brought about sudden and dramatic changes to the way businesses and governmental agencies conduct their daily operations.  Not only has this included the need to develop new strategies for remote engagement with customers and partners, but also the need to improvise new ways for employers and managers to interact with employees and facilitate collaboration among staff.  Likewise, the pandemic brought about an unforeseen opportunity for MDL to test its own “continuity of operations readiness,” so to speak, and the evidence is in:  By and large, MDL hardly has skipped a beat while adapting to the conduct of day-to-day operations with nearly 100% of its workforce reliant on remote connections.  This includes our regular Federal employees and affiliates, as well the group of MDL students hired at the onset of the outbreak.  (See here for more info about the activities of our first-ever crop of remote student hires in 2020.)

At the time of writing, we have just marked the passage of a full year in what essentially has been a “maximum telework” posture.  Nevertheless, MDL finished 2020 in strong fashion, bringing a number of major efforts to completion, and progress on many others continues into 2021.  MDL’s extensive array of collaborative tools, such as the Virtual Laboratory (VLab), Google suite, and expanding efforts in cloud computing have enabled critical work to continue despite the lockdowns and the reality of having staff scattered about in various locations away from our SSMC home base.

As detailed in a previous MDL news article, among the year’s successes was the implementation of version 4.0 of the National Blend of Models by the Statistical Modeling Division (SMD).  This version brought several new Blend products and technical upgrades, particularly in the realm of probabilistic information.  “Veterans” of MDL projects which require implementation into the NWS operational product stream will attest that such work always involves close coordination with NCEP Central Operations (NCO) staff.  This time, however, the code handoff, debugging, and integration into the central computing jobstream needed to be done entirely with both units under maximum telework.  MDL’s collaborative tools enabled this preparation and checkout to proceed almost as if everyone were still in the office.  Scott Scallion, the SMD Operations Team Lead, cited the MDL VLab and our video conferencing capabilities as being instrumental in this process: “The work was tracked via Redmine tickets on NBM v4.0 Issue Tracking in VLab.  Multiple extended video conference calls were utilized to share information, including . . . the process for managing the NBM development ecFlow [operational job control] suite.  The handoff documentation was compiled via VLab Redmine wiki, which was a collaborative effort of the entire team.”

Meanwhile, in MDL’s Digital Forecast Services Division (DFSD), two major upgrades to the Whole Story Uncertainty and Probabilities (WSUP) viewer were completed under similar conditions.  WSUP v2.2 and v3.0 are designed to enhance users’ ability to manage and manipulate complex probabilistic forecast information from the NBM and other sources.  They also are intended to investigate the feasibility of using the public cloud to convey visual representations of these large probabilistic datasets to NWS forecast offices nationwide, providing an alternative to accessing the raw data directly from NCEP supercomputers.  With the recent introduction of WSUP v3.0, visualization of NBM and NCEP global ensemble (GEFS) members is now possible at user-defined gridpoints.  The same is true for new WSUP features such as wind barbs and the popular “dProg/dt” mode, which allows users to see how each forecast component has evolved leading up to a given valid time.  All are now available at any desired point on the map, not just at pre-defined locations as in earlier releases.

The rapidly-maturing NBM 1D Viewer, which drives easy access and display of this wealth of information, is a notable feature of v3.0 that has involved collaboration between the WSUP team, the NWS Western Region Science and Operations Officers (SOOs) who developed the initial prototype, and data modeling experts in MDL’s Weather Information Applications Division (WIAD).  Like Scott, Dana Strom, the DFSD Visualization Task Lead, also cited MDL’s collaborative tools as important contributors to his team’s success: “The remote aspect of this work has not caused any delay in development. The tools at our disposal (VLab, Google Suite, cloud services, Slack) have made our transition from in the office to remote work seamless. . . . To cloud services in particular, the ability to stand up necessary hardware in a matter of minutes has led to fewer project delays and quicker development and deployment of technology.”

Ken Sperow, MDL’s WIAD Chief, also counted work to integrate the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) Environmental Data Retrieval API into WSUP as among the Division’s successes of the past year.  Use of the EDR API in the NBM 1D Viewer enables the fast and easy retrieval of user-specified information from the cloud that the application requires.  WIAD is spearheading efforts to move WSUP and other MDL computing services to the cloud, and also is responsible for managing and maintaining the MDL VLab.  Among other noteworthy achievements in these areas, Ken points out that the MDLNet Cloud “has enabled the [NWS/OCLO] Warning Decision Training Division (WDTD) and [STI] Operations Proving Ground (OPG) to go completely virtual and meet their mission critical functions in a cost effective manner” during the pandemic.  “NWS forecast offices have leveraged VLab to work from home, the office, and within AWIPS,” says Ken, enabling vital functions to be carried out irrespective of their work location.  “An example of this is the North Central River Forecast Center transitioning from a locally-hosted Wordpress site to VLab to capture shift logs.”

Not to be outdone, MDL’s Decision Support Division (DSD) also has thrived under the past year’s remote work conditions.  DSD Chief Judy Ghirardelli pointed to the v2.3 upgrade to Localized Aviation MOS Program (LAMP) guidance and major enhancements to MDL storm surge models as projects which have spotlighted the group’s collaboration, both internally and with organizations outside of the Lab.  The LAMP upgrade carries forward work supported by the NOAA Joint Technology Transfer Initiative (JTTI) in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).  Like NBM v4.0, operational implementation of LAMP v2.3 and the recent storm surge model upgrades also required close  coordination with NCO staff.  The storm surge work further demonstrated DSD’s ability to continue collaboration with core partners in NWS Eastern and Alaska region forecast offices as well as NCEP’s Ocean Prediction Center (OPC) and National Hurricane Center (NHC).

Upgrades to the extratropical storm surge models were implemented by DSD in February and featured in a recent NWS Insider article.  In other “breaking” surge news, work on two new versions of the Probabilistic Tropical Storm Surge Model (P-Surge) also has made waves.  This work mainly centered on how a storm’s Radius of Maximum Wind (RMW) is handled in the model.   P-Surge v2.8, implemented last September, began using an initial estimate of RMW from guidance which is held constant while the storm’s central pressure is estimated in the resultant forecasts.  V2.9, scheduled for implementation in May, introduces a new RMW forecast generated by NHC.  The new method of utilizing explicit forecasts of RMW (rather than holding it constant) should help to reduce the tendency for unrealistically tight storms at landfall, when decay and expansion occurs due to interaction with terrain.

Arthur Taylor, leader of DSD’s Storm Surge Team, described how remote collaboration with NHC has contributed to this effort: “COVID caused NHC's Storm Surge Unit to do weekly online tag-ups, and [they] invited MDL to attend.  Thus, MDL and NHC have had virtual face-to-face meetings once a week for the last year or so. . . . NHC hired a P-Surge wind developer, which was the primary driving force behind v2.8 and v2.9.  In addition, NHC hired a validation person to provide metrics to show that the new track generation methods were improvements over v2.7.  [Because of the coordination facilitated by these calls], MDL was able to take the maintenance/implementer role for P-Surge while NHC took the acceleration/researcher role.”

In the midst of all this success, there undoubtedly have been challenges for MDL employees thrust into situations where work duties must be juggled simultaneously with child care and other at-home family responsibilities.  Nevertheless, many have come to appreciate the flexibility and freedom from office distractions and commuting provided by an enhanced telework posture.  Dave Ruth, our DFSD Chief, recently observed that: “Ad-hoc interactions with other employees there [SSMC] are more often distracting than helpful.  The percentage of work hours I am productive is higher at home than in the office.  The benefit to being in the office a few days a week do not justify the cost of maintaining the office space.”  In reply to Dave, Mark Antolik agreed: “I certainly can say from personal experience teleworking 2 days/week prior to the pandemic that those days were frequently my most productive as well.  No distractions.  Meetings seem to be working quite well with Google Meet, perhaps preferable to everyone cramming into a room, even without considering whatever germs they might be carrying.”  As for the commutes, Mark somewhat humorously added that “it’s difficult to get many parking tickets when the car is still in your own garage!”

So what’s in store for later in 2021 and beyond?  Once COVID vaccines are widely available and the pandemic has waned, many of the recent changes in the workplace—especially with regard to remote work—are likely to remain, at least to a greater extent than before the outbreak. Many Federal agencies and lawmakers have begun to realize that increased use of telework could help government agencies reduce their office footprint and save considerably on related operations and maintenance. Among the studies cited in a July 2020 Federal News Network (FNN) article, it was estimated that the Federal government could reduce its office space by as much as 25% and save $1.7 billion a year in real estate costs. Other, more recent FNN articles have described how the Treasury Department and NASA are exploring the benefits and logistics of instituting a hybrid workforce and plans to expand telework at USDA.

Similar changes to the “normal” work environment are at least possible for employees at NOAA as well.  Over the past year, MDL staff has demonstrated the ability to remain productive and engaged during times of disruption and crisis.  Whatever the future holds, MDL has the intellectual, technical, and virtual resources to carry on with its core activities and mission should further challenges lie ahead.