Geoscience Reference
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ever, the TWCs are able to perform federally mandated back-up activities for each other and
are able to issue each other's messages.
The TWCs' technology products and processes can beneit from the experiences and les-
sons learned from other distributed, safety-critical, large-scale systems with signiicant data
and communication requirements, including aviation, medicine, transportation, chemical pro-
cesses, offshore oil and gas, and, within NOAA, the NCEP, as well as the NEIC and the NWS' Hur-
ricane Center and Severe Storm Center (see Box 5.1). The TWCs' software and hardware tech-
nology planning, development, operations, and maintenance processes and products should
be aligned with those of other safety-critical systems and NOAA departments in order to (1)
enhance compatibility, modeling, and analysis with other large-scale environmental systems;
(2) improve data and analysis sharing to enhance lessons learned; (3) increase compliance with
international standards; (4) reduce hardware and software vulnerability and dependence; and
(5) decrease training and maintenance costs.
Given their shared mission, TWC functions (including but not limited to tsunami detection)
could be supported by a common technology suite having common operational requirements,
processes, training, policies, and procedures. The committee notes that a number of highly
reliable, mission-critical, large-scale systems currently support real-time distributed operations
across a broad geographic area, including, within NOAA, the NWS with global telecommunica-
tions service (GTS), the NCEP, and the Hurricane and Severe Storm labs; and outside NOAA, the
medical (Physicians On-Line/Medscape, 2006), geophysical (Gulbrandsøy et al., 2002; Herring,
2002), inancial (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, 2009), and
energy distribution systems (Andersen and Drejer, 2005). These systems provide examples of
how to operate and maintain a distributed, complex operational system. Technology industry
best practices adopted by these organizations include (1) adherence to platform-independent
hardware and software architectures, applications, and interfaces; (2) the use of international
hardware, software planning, development, operations, and maintenance product and pro-
cess standards, including the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model and
the software development life cycle (Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, 2010);
(3) regular and systematic use of continuing process and product improvement models for
hardware, software, personnel and organizational planning, development, operations, and
maintenance; and (4) evaluation and assessment of technology and organizational processes
and products as part of a continuous process improvement and learning organizational culture
(Senge, 1990).
Conclusion: The two TWC technology suites differ considerably from each other, with
different hardware platforms, software suites, products, processes, and interfaces to the
public and their users. Differences in TWC technologies, processes, products, and interfaces
lead to technological incompatibilities and limited capabilities for back-up, redundancy,
and checks and balances, which are important mission capabilities for the tsunami
warning system.
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