NOAA Observing System Architecture

NOAA Observing System Architecture (NOSA)

About NOSA

• NOAA Administrator's Direction
  • During 2002 Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., USN (Ret.) called for a fundamental review of NOAA's strengths and opportunities for improvement. A Program Review Team reviewed and debated issues and developed suggestions for building a better NOAA. These suggestions led to 68 specific recommendations. Recommendation 32 addressed centrally planning and integrating NOAA observing systems and indicated a clear need for a NOAA-wide observing system architecture.

The NOAA Administrator responded:I concur with the PRT recommendation that NOAA centrally plan and integrate all observing systems. I will assign this responsibility to a matrix management team, with NESDIS providing the program manager. I do not currently endorse the PRT recommendation to assign acquisition authority for all observing systems to NESDIS. NESDIS should lead a cross-cut team to develop an observational architecture commencing immediately. This should capitalize on on-going efforts (e.g., coastal observations). This architecture should capture the state today as well as the future state (e.g., 10 to 20 years). With this architecture, NOAA would be able to assess current capabilities and identify short-term actions. A cross-cutting team led by NESDIS should conduct a systemic review of all other observing systems. The following factors should be considered for observing systems to determine the desirability of consolidating them:

• • • The required characteristics of the system (i.e., reliability, performance, maintainability)
    • The number of and types of users of the system
    • The estimated value of the capital asset and its recurring maintenance cost