IWICOS - Integrated Weather, Sea Ice and Ocean Service System. Extended system report

The overall objective of IWICOS is to develop a prototype marine information system that will provide a single-entry access to integrated meteorological, sea ice and oceanographic (met-ice-ocean) products in electronic form, and to demonstrate this prototype for a group of users working in fisheries, sea transport, exploitation of marine resources in Northern European waters, or whose work is related to sea ice monitoring on a scientific or pre-operational basis.
A general system architecture with three main subsystems - Production, Brokering and Presentation - has been defined. Multiple producers can deliver data and information products through a common broker. Each producer can maintain separate (legacy) production systems, which can run on various computer platforms.
The IWICOS metadata specification ensures that all products are described in a consistent and self-describing manner, which can be queried and processed by computer algorithms.
A number of new product types have been generated for the Extended System, e.g. augmented sea ice thickness maps, multi-prognosis of numerical predictions and products based on new sensors like QuickSCAT and NOAA AMSU.
The Broker lies at the core of the IWICOS system, holding the central repository of metadata for all products. It provides facilities for receiving metadata from Producer Systems, and for maintaining these metadata in a database. It also provides query facilities that enable End-User Systems to retrieve metadata for all products that satisfy given criteria. The Broker is developed using freely available
software and runs on Linux OS and the service programs are written in Java. The communication is secured using SSL encrypted HTTP protocol (HTTPS).
Different End-User Systems provide customised display and analysis facilities for target end-user groups, and consist of a Client and Façade subsystem. Some of these are thin clients that rely on having a server generating all data and information in a form ready for presentation. Others are thick clients, which download full (or partial) data sets and products, and contain tools for both analysis and
presentation. A third category is a so-called balanced client, which include some analysis and presentation tools, but still uses a server for certain types of processing such as map drawing. The Façade may be used to tailor data to a specific client, e.g. by reducing its size by compression before transmitting it via a low-bandwidth connection, or to perform format conversion before transmission.
Compared to the first (baseline) version of the IWICOS System, the Extended System has advanced the solution by: (1) upgrading to the latest version of standards and protocols used in software development, (2) revising the IWICOS metadata standard to cater for new product types, (3) implementing secure data transfer to the Broker by means of standard encryption techniques, (4) enhancing the functionality of the End-Users Systems, and (5) making more and new types of met-ice-ocean products available. By means of the
Extended System, four full-scale demonstrations have been carried out for different end-user groups in different geographical regions, yielding valuable experience and feedback for future development.