CodeFest June 2023: Unit Testing Framework for the UFS
Monday, June 19, 2023 – Friday, June 23, 2023
Hosted on Google Meet with breakout rooms
The Data, Testing, and Optimization (DTO) Team has built a framework using CTest to enable unit testing in the UFS Weather Model and its associated applications. Using CTest will allow users to test functional code quickly and provide a sanity check that new user-implemented features work as intended. The EPIC Team is hosting a week-long virtual CodeFest open to participants of all experience levels. Join up with folks from around the country, work together to fix theoretical vulnerabilities and issues in the unit testing framework, and get feedback from EPIC’s subject matter experts.
A robust unit testing framework will provide the UFS community the ability to speed up development and quickly test innovative ideas. The EPIC Team will host a community event that shows users how to create and understand the unit testing framework that the applications will utilize. This will allow users of all skill levels the ability to make sure that their ideas work at a fundamental level without the need for longer regression, dependency, and integration testing. The community will engage together to add as many unit tests as possible after developing an understanding of the provided framework. As a community, we can improve the level of unit testing to where ideas can become innovations significantly faster.
Unit Testing Benefits:- Test new functional code
- Make sure code additions do not break existing functionality
- Allow a compilation of high-quality unit tests to show the overall health of an application
- Increase the speed of development by having a quick and efficient testing capability for the overall application
An impromptu video teleconferencing link will be provided and monitored over the course of the event for assistance or questions to help participants be successful.
Workshop Schedule
Schedule subject to updates. Additional information will be added as we plan each session.
All times are in Mountain Daylight Time (MDT).
July 24, 2023
8:00 am - 10:00 am | Contributing to UFS/EPIC GitHub Repositories
Description | Community members will learn to contribute to the UFS weather model and applications. We will show you how easy it is to start building, running, innovating, and contributing to the repositories in a small or large way.
1:00 pm | Welcome & Kickoff
1:30 pm | Opening Remarks by Dr. Michael Morgan, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction
1:45 pm | Overview: State of the Science of UFS
Description | This session provides an overview of the state of UFS science.
2:30 pm | Why UFS? Using UFS as a Teaching Tool in Academia
Description | This session will focus on UFS as a teaching tool, including use cases and needs.
3:00 pm | Partnerships: How to Expand Our Community
Description | This session will discuss the need for partnerships, strategies to create partnerships, and expanding the community.
3:30 pm | BREAK
4:00 pm | Inclusion in Community Modeling Followed by a Panel Discussion on the Importance and Need for Diversity & Inclusion
Description | Leaders from EPIC, the UFS, and UFS-R2O will give a talk on community modeling followed by a panel discussion on the importance and need for diversity and inclusion in community modeling.
5:30 pm | Conclude and Look Ahead
6:00 pm | Welcome Event for New WINGS Dissertation Fellows
Description | A welcome session for all new WINGS Dissertation Fellows. During this time, WINGS fellows will present their projects and network to find mentors.
7:00 pm | Dinner/Mixer
July 25, 2023
9:00 am | Welcome and Kickoff
9:05 am | Parallel Sessions with Updates on & Challenges of UFS Applications
Description | We will hold three concurrent sessions that will highlight updates on the Short-Range Weather Application/Rapid Refresh Forecast System, Medium-Range/Sub-Seasonal Weather Application, and Hurricane Application. Each presenter will have 15 minutes to present their research on their respective subject. If you are interested in submitting your work, please see our submission guidelines.
Short-Range Weather Application and Rapid Refresh Forecast System
Short-range weather includes atmospheric behavior from less than an hour to several days. See more information on the UFS Configuration and current developments.
Medium-Range Weather and Sub-seasonal to Seasonal Applications
Medium-range weather includes atmospheric behavior out to about two weeks, while sub-seasonal to seasonal includes atmospheric and ocean behavior from about two weeks to about one year. See more information about the UFS Configuration and current developments.
Hurricanes
The Hurricane Application forecasts hurricane track, intensity, and related effects out to about one week. See more information about the UFS Configuration and current development.
10:30 am | BREAK
11:35 am | Q & A for Parallel Sessions with Updates on UFS Applications
12:00 pm | LUNCH
1:00 pm | Community Discussion: Insights from Industry and Academia
Description | Professors and industry professionals will present on the area(s) in which they encountered the greatest barriers to success using different UFS applications.
2:00 pm | Panel Discussion on Use Cases & Needs of UFS Applications by New Professionals, Professors & Industry
Description | Experts will respond to each use case presentation and develop solutions for how the presenters can overcome their barriers.
3:00 pm | BREAK
3:15 pm | Parallel Sessions with Cross-Cutting Concepts
Description |
Cross-Cutting Concepts #1 - Physics, Verification, and Validation
Presentations will feature cutting-edge research on topics such as scale-aware physics, land physics, verification, and validation, which impact multiple applications.
Cross-Cutting Concepts #2 - System Architecture
Presentations will feature cutting-edge research on system architecture-related topics that impact multiple applications.
Cross-Cutting Concepts #3 - Dynamics and Nesting
Presentations will feature cutting-edge research on topics such as dynamics and nesting, which impact multiple applications.
4:45 pm | BREAK
5:00 pm | Joint Q & A for Parallel Sessions with Cross-Cutting Concepts
5:30 pm | Conclude and Look Ahead
July 26, 2023
9:00 am | Welcome and Kickoff
9:30 am | Roundtable Discussion on Community Modeling
Description |
A roundtable discussion where participants will split into tables of 8 and discuss barriers to entry into community modeling and challenges surrounding community modeling; groups will then brainstorm ideas to best solve these challenges.
This roundtable session provides the opportunity for an interactive discussion between all stakeholder groups interested in community modeling. During the event, groups rotate through tables to discuss a variety of challenges/barriers for entry into community modeling and brainstorm ideas on how to address these challenges. The tables will include a range of topics such as:
- lack of compute (HPC) resources
- access to funding
- rapid code changes/coding barriers
- how to diversify participation across sectors and disciplines
- incentives/motivation to participate in UFS/run UFS code
- how to best show the value of code contributions/innovations
- how to enhance knowledge transfer and collaboration among contributors
- how to support low readiness level (RL) research/contributions to code
- training resources for anyone interested in modeling
The goal: To build and develop new relationships that span beyond key stakeholders based on shared interests in community modeling. The session will have multiple tables (one topic per table) that participants will rotate through to share ideas during three separate interactive discussion periods over a 90-minute period.
11:00 am | BREAK
11:30 am | Open Discussion: Roadblocks
Description | Contributors to the UFS will identify and discuss what they see as roadblocks to the UFS. Debrief findings of the roundtable discussion on community modeling and highlight how these findings will be addressed in the future.
12:00 pm | LUNCH
1:00 pm | Social & Behavioral Science Professional Talk
Description | A social and behavioral sciences professional will speak about integrating these fields into the greater Weather Enterprise.
1:30 pm | EPIC Support for the UFS
Description | An EPIC team member will demonstrate how EPIC supports the UFS.
2:15 pm | EPIC Infrastructure Update
Description | An EPIC team member will provide an EPIC infrastructure update.
3:00 pm | BREAK
3:30 pm | Panel Discussion on JCSDA, EPIC, and Community DA Development
Description | Each collaborating data assimilation (DA) institution (i.e., JCSDA, EPIC, PSL, and EMC) will summarize their role in the development of DA; presentations will touch on infrastructure, science, and community support and will be followed by a Q&A.
4:15 pm | Data Management, Optimization, Compression
Description | The scientific community targets the data assimilation of petabytes of observations for the development of machine learning models or model components, thereby transforming weather and climate prediction from a physics problem into a data problem. In this session, we welcome a presentation on the infrastructure necessary for improved data management, optimization, compression, versioning, licensing, and seamless access, which will enable scientific innovation.
5:00 pm | Poster Session
Description | Posters and their authors will be arranged in a gallery style walk-through in the main lobby. Conference participants are invited to meet and discuss science topics at length with authors.
July 27, 2023
9:00 am | Welcome and Kickoff
9:15 am | Unified Model Practices
Description | This talk provides an overview of the model development process used for Unified Modeling. This information can inform our own UFS model development process and contribute to establishing best practices for UFS development.
9:45 am | Research to Operations (R2O) and Operations to Research (O2R) Process With Q&A
Description | This presentation will discuss the R2O2R process with a particular focus on stages and gates and perspectives from testbeds. A Q & A will follow the presentation.
11:00 am | BREAK
11:30 am | Keynote: Seeking Portability and Productivity for Numerical Weather Prediction Model Code
Description | Achieving hardware-specific implementation and optimization while maintaining productivity in an increasingly diverse environment of supercomputing architectures is challenging and requires rethinking traditional numerical weather prediction model programming designs. We provide insights into the ongoing porting and development of ECMWF’s non-hydrostatic FVM atmospheric dynamical core option in Python with the domain-specific library GT4Py. The presentation highlights the GT4Py approach for implementing weather and climate models, shows preliminary high-performance computing results on CPUs and GPUs for FVM and other ECMWF relevant codes, and outlines the roadmap for the overall model porting project with partners at CSCS and ETH Zurich.
12:00 pm | LUNCH
1:00 pm | Panel Discussion on Open Computing & Shaping the Future of Computing for Modeling
Description | The idea of open modeling requires open computing—which spans sectors including the silicon industry, computing providers, and ecosystem developers—to thrive.
2:00 pm | BREAK
2:15 pm | Parallel Sessions with Emerging Applications
Description | With an eye towards the future, this session will feature presentations about cutting-edge research towards the development, testing, and evaluation of upcoming UFS applications, including coastal, marine, space weather, and air quality applications.
3:15 pm | BREAK
3:30 pm | UFS as a Decision Tool: A Private Industry Perspective
Description | This session will showcase perspectives of private industry professionals who use the UFS as a decision tool for their business objectives.
4:00 pm | Emerging Technologies: AI
Description | Science community members will present on emerging technologies in artificial intelligence.
4:30 pm | Emerging Technologies: Cloud Computing
Description | Science community members will present on emerging technologies in cloud computing.
5:00 pm | Science Spotlight on Hierarchical System Development
Description | The Hierarchical System Development (HSD) approach captures steps for contributing innovations to the UFS from WPO-funded projects, NOAA labs, and the community in general.
5:30 pm | Conclude and Look Ahead
July 28, 2023
9:00 am | Welcome and Kickoff
9:30 am | Community Modeling Board
Description | The UFS Chief Science Advisor and members of the newly established Community Modeling Board will discuss their plans to engage with the community, UFS governance process and roles, and future plans.
10:30 am | Coffee Break / Live Demo Running the UFS SRW Application in the Cloud
Description | Participants can watch a live demonstration of running the UFS SRW Application in the cloud.
11:00 am | Making the Unified Forecast System Cool
Description | The community will discuss strategies for entry into UFS and how to draw in the next generation and the existing community. Current Lapenta Interns will discuss their findings.
12:00 pm | Debrief: Findings, Recommendations & Closing Statements
Description | For our final session, three panelists from EPIC, the UFS, and UFS-R2O will come together for a look back at our key findings and takeaways from the workshop.
Abstract Details
Abstract Submissions are due by Wednesday, May 31st, 2023.
UFS Application | Short Range Weather (SRW) Application and Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS)
This session will highlight the scientific updates, achievements, and challenges of the UFS SRW Application, including research, development, testing, and evaluation of the 3D Real-Time Mesoscale Analysis System (3DRTMA) and Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS).
UFS Application | Medium Range Weather (MRW) and Sub seasonal to Seasonal (S2S) Applications
This session will feature cutting-edge research toward scientific updates, development, testing, and evaluation of the next-generation Global Forecast System (GFS) for medium-range weather out to 16 days and the Global Ensemble Forecast system (GEFS) for sub-seasonal ensemble forecasts out to 45 days based on the global coupled UFS MRW and S2S Applications.
UFS Application | Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS)
This session will feature cutting-edge research towards scientific updates, development, testing, and evaluation of the next-generation Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS).
Cross-Cutting #1 | Physics, Land, Verification & Validation
In this session featuring cross-cutting components of the UFS, presentations will feature cutting-edge research on topics such as scale-aware physics, land physics, verification, and validation, which impact multiple applications.
Cross-Cutting #2 | System Architecture
In this session featuring cross-cutting components of the UFS, presentations will feature cutting-edge research on system architecture-related topics that impact multiple applications.
Cross-Cutting #3 | Dynamics and Nesting
In this session featuring cross-cutting components of the UFS, presentations will feature cutting-edge research on topics such as dynamics and nesting, which impact multiple applications.
Emerging Applications | Coastal, Marine, Space Weather, and Air Quality
With an eye towards the future, this session will feature presentations about cutting-edge research towards the development, testing, and evaluation of upcoming UFS applications, including but not limited to, coastal, marine, space weather, and air quality.
Emerging Technologies | AI & Cloud Computing
This session will feature presentations from science community members on emerging technologies in artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
Poster Session
Share your research, use case, or innovation with other community members during our poster session and networking mixer! Abstract submissions to the poster session are encouraged.
Hotel Reservations
We have reserved a block of rooms at the Hampton Inn for attendees who need hotel accommodations.
Hampton Inn & Suites Boulder-North
6333 Lookout Road
Boulder, Colorado, 80301, USA
(303) 530-3300
Lunches are available to purchase and will be provided by UCAR catering during the scheduled 1-hour lunch break each full day of the workshop (Tuesday – Thursday, 3 meals for $60). Lunches must be purchased for all 3 days and in advance by Tuesday, July 11, 2023. No payments will be accepted after Tuesday, July 11th or on-site. If you are interested in purchasing catered lunches, please click here, and select Unifying Innovations in Forecasting Capabilities Workshop from the drop-down menu.
Please note that if you opt in for the catered lunches, you must pay for all three days. Therefore, in the “Amount to Pay” field, please type $60 ($20/day for 3 days).
Note: The nearest restaurants are over 1 mile from the venue and time is limited for lunch – 1 hour.
Important Dates for UIFCW 2023
February 2023
- Registration Opens
March 2023
- Workshop Agenda Announced
- Call for Abstracts and Abstract Submission Opens
May 2023
- 31st: Abstract Submission Closes
June 2023
- 23rd: Last Day to Book a Room via the Hampton Inn & Suites Room Block
July 2023
- 11th: Lunch Meal Payment Closes
- 17th: Registration Closes
- 24th – 28th: UIFCW 2023
Workshop Schedule
Schedule subject to updates. Additional information will be added as we plan each session
All times Eastern
Abstract Details
This session will highlight the scientific achievements of the Unified Forecast System (UFS) Short-Range Weather Application including research, development, testing, and evaluation of the 3D Real Time Mesoscale Analysis system (3DRTMA) and Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS).
This session will feature cutting-edge research toward the development, testing, and evaluation of the next generation Global Forecast System (GFS) for medium range weather out to 16 days and the Global Ensemble Forecast system (GEFS) for sub-seasonal ensemble forecasts out to 45 days based on the global coupled Unified Forecast System (UFS) Medium Range Weather (MRW) and Sub-seasonal to Seasonal (S2S) applications.
This session will feature cutting-edge research towards the development, testing, and evaluation of the next generation hurricane forecast system: the Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS).
With an eye towards the future, this session will feature presentations about cutting-edge research towards the development, testing, and evaluation of upcoming UFS applications, including but not limited to, coastal, space weather, fire weather, and hydrology.
In this session featuring cross-cutting components of the Unified Forecast System (UFS), presentations will feature cutting-edge research that will impact multiple applications, including scale-aware physics, data assimilation, coupled data assimilation, coupling processes, and component models.
In this session featuring cross-cutting components of the Unified Forecast System, presentations will feature cutting-edge research that will impact multiple applications, including modeling architecture and infrastructure, verification and validation, and postprocessing.
We invite community members to submit abstracts that highlight their successes and challenges working with research to operations to research (R2O2R) to get their innovations into operations. Abstracts highlighting successes and challenges with research to commercialization or product application are encouraged to highlight how UFS applications have been used in your context.
Share your research, use case, or innovation with other community members during our poster session and networking mixer! Abstract submissions to the poster session are encouraged.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many people will be
attending the workshop
in-person?
How many people will be attending the workshop in-person?
Due to venue limitations, attendance for in-person portions of the workshop will be limited to 200 people. Online attendance is unlimited.
What COVID precautions will be in place?
What COVID precautions will be in place?
The planning committee is taking steps to protect the health and safety of all of our participants. Here’s what we’re doing:
Monitoring community levels: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updates their community levels indicator weekly on Thursday’s at 8:00 pm ET. A member of our staff checks the community levels for College Park in Prince George’s County, MD every Friday morning to ensure the COVID community level remains LOW. Here’s our plan if the community levels change:
- MEDIUM: If the community level in Prince George’s County, MD changes to MEDIUM community transmission within two weeks of the workshop, the planning committee will take the following steps:
- Require that all attendees wear masks that comply with CDC guidelines (here)
- Require that all attendees show proof of vaccination OR provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test within three days of attending the workshop.
- All of the health information that you provide to us will follow health data management best practices.
- Limit in-person registration to 100 attendees to allow for social distancing.
- HIGH: If the community level in Prince George’s County, MD changes to HIGH community transmission within two weeks of the workshop, the planning committee will take the following steps:
- Require that all attendees wear masks that comply with CDC guidelines (here)
- Require that all attendees show proof of vaccination OR provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test within three days of attending the workshop.
- All of the health information that you provide to us will follow health data management best practices.
- Limit in-person registration to 75 attendees to allow for social distancing.
- At this point, the planning committee will strongly consider moving the event to fully virtual.
Venue Information
Venue Information
- Hotel staff will be required to wear masks until December 2022. This means that everyone serving food, providing maintenance, and helping you during your stay will be masked.
- Rooms and frequently touched surfaces are cleaned daily.
- The main workshop room does not have windows.
- Based on the number of people who attend the workshop, there will be 6-7 people seated at each table.
- Booking for Holiday in College Park: Group rate is $119/night plus 13% taxes and includes 1 voucher for a hot breakfast buffet.
Raytheon NOAA Program Room Block
