UFS Workflows Workshop and CROW review

• HWRF HAFS Community Survey 
• Crow Community Review Report
• UFS Workflows Workshop Report

A Unified Forecast System (UFS) Workflows Workshop and review of the Configuration manager for Research and Operational Workflows (CROW) software was held April 28–30, 2020. These events were organized by George Mason University, the Developmental Testbed Center, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The first day was dedicated to the CROW review, followed by the two-day UFS Workflows Workshop.

At the CROW review participants heard lectures about the design and capabilities of CROW and its implementation in the Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS). A demo of the CROW software in HAFS was conducted and participants had the opportunity to share feedback on whether CROW should be permanently included within the HAFS workflow. 

The UFS Workflows Workshop allowed participants to learn about the capabilities and design of various workflows that drive different UFS applications, including the UFS Medium-Range Weather, UFS Short-Range Weather and UFS Hurricane applications. The term “workflow” refers to a variety of components that are critical to automating the task of running a modeling system. These components include a configuration manager that sets up and defines experiments (e.g. CROW), a workflow manager (e.g., Rocoto, Cylc, ecFlow), scripts (e.g., the global workflow script) and a data management system (e.g., the SQL database in HWRF). Discussions focused on fostering collaboration between different groups who are using and/or developing these various components of UFS workflows and on potential opportunities to reduce duplication across them and included breakout group discussions on specific topics listed in the agenda.

UFS Workflows workshop follow-up meeting (June 2021)