Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
or products, leading to nonstandard hardware and software that does not represent current
development practices. In addition, some of the TWC software is aging, was developed using
inappropriate or aging programming languages, was developed using nonstandard single per-
son coding models, and is dificult to support and maintain. Failure risks have been mitigated
by both relatively infrequent signiicant tsunami events and a small legacy TWC staff who
maintain the aging systems as needed.
NOAA has developed an IT Convergence Plan to harmonize software and hardware suites
between the TWCs for FY2009-2012. The goal is to create a single, platform-independent
technology architecture to be deployed at each TWC and to develop a shared tsunami portal
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2009). This plan, which would be funded
by telecommunications surplus funds, was cited several times by TWC management and staff
as a future source of IT planning and direction. Upon review of the Concept of Operations and
Operational Requirements for the IT Convergence Program (National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, 2009), the committee believes that although the IT Convergence plan offers
the possibility of streamlined and state-of-the-art knowledge transfer for software develop-
ment, it will not address the need for an enterprise-wide technology architecture and process
planning effort. Additionally, plan requirements were developed without consultation of TWC
users, emergency managers, academia, the public, or other tsunami program stakeholders.
The current software suites are tightly linked to their hardware platforms; migration to
platform-independent architectures could offer the beneit of reduced system maintenance
requirements and could enhance information sharing among the TWCs, universities, watch-
standers, and the real-time software development community. A long-range technology plan-
ning effort for the TWCs that is consistent with international technology process and product
standards (U.S. Navy Space and Aviation Warfare Command, 1998; International Standards
Organization, 2009; Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, 2010; Institute of Electrical
and Electronic Engineers, 2010) could effectively develop an enterprise-wide technology archi-
tecture that supports tsunami warning system missions and its accompanying development,
deployment, support, and maintenance operations. The committee learned that no metrics for
system up-time or program faults are collected, resulting in a lack of necessary benchmarks
for system performance evaluation and improvement. Senior IT leadership and adequate multi-
year funding are required to support this long-range effort. It should also entail:
•
Adopting process, documentation, hardware, and software standards;
•
Modernizing the current software system so that a single common extensible core
runs at both centers (IEEE Std 610.12-1990);
•
Creating development and planning processes that allow both the TWCs to perform
joint planning and execution, including better transparency and communication; and
•
Providing better oversight to ensure that the centers are adhering to standards and
minimizing duplication of effort.
