Tim Owen, National Climatic Data Center

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National Integrated Drought Information
System U.S. Drought Portal
Tim Owen, National Climatic Data Center Jon
Burroughs, STG Contractor - National Climatic
Data Center
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NIDIS U.S. Drought Portaldrought.gov A
Window on Drought Information
Portal Timeline May 06 - Began educating the
NIDIS Community about what a Portal is, and is
not. June 06 NIDIS WebIT Team was chartered
to Develop list of various options for portal
software technology with a focus on security
concerns, costs, required resources for initial
start-up and long-term maintenance
requirements. Committee members Wendy Gross1,
Steve Ansari 1, Jon Burroughs1, Ian
Cottingham2, Anju Shah1, Jason Symonds1.
Steering Committee participants Tim Owen1,
Mark Svoboda2, Jay Lawrimore1, David
Wertz3. 1NCDC, 2NDMC, 3ESIP June 06
December 06 - Assessed requirements for the
Portal. Participated in Longmont NIDIS Workshop.
Evaluated Portal Implementation Strategies
Interviewed organizations that had implemented
Portals NBII, FRAMES, Geospatial One Stop, ESIP,
NASA Prototype portal, C-Side, NOAA Fisheries,
NOAA C-Side, EPA. Researched vendor options
Commercial and open source. December 06
January 07 Conducted in-house Proof of Concept
evaluations of the two top commercial portal
vendors. Rated vendors against predetermined
evaluation criteria. Made final recommendations.
Spring 07 Purchased BEA/Aqualogic Portal
software, and hardware. Began training and
implementation. November 1, 2007 New Online
Drought Information Portal Makes its Debut !

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NIDIS U.S. Drought Portaldrought.gov A
Window on Drought Information
What is a Portal? Think of a Portal as a hub from
which users (NIDIS users!) can access all of the
content that they will commonly need. It is a Web
site and services that improve the access,
processing, and sharing of structured and
unstructured information within and across a
given enterprise through Portlets - A portal
page is displayed as a collection of
non-overlapping portlet windows, where each
portlet window displays a portlet. They provide
aggregated, reusable access to specific
information sources or applications (e.g., web
services, mapping applications, search engines).
Web Services - Applications and utilities that
allow data exchange in a highly interoperable,
standardized language/vendor/platform-neutral
manner. Crawlers and other content aggregation
are supported. Communities - A virtual workspace
of a portal for collaboration, communication, and
information dissemination/collection. Communities
contain portlets and projects. Collaboration
through Projects - Workspaces within a community
that involves subsets of Portal membership.
Projects contain portlets and can be part of one
or more communities, facilitating collaboration
via overviews, discussions, and document/project
management.

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NIDIS U.S. Drought Portaldrought.gov A
Window on Drought Information
What else makes a Portal Powerful? Customization
Ability to customize the portal page for
different user groups and individuals. Security
Incorporation of security through roles and a
fine granularity of privileges. As guest users,
the public can access non-proprietary
enterprise-wide information and web sites well as
selected web sites as appropriate. Crawlers and
Search Engines Bringing in content from
elsewhere on the web. Search content of the
portal contained in the pages of the Portal and
the Knowledge Directory. Designing a Portal is
a Complex Process To be successful a portal
needs lots of planning and the cooperation of all
partners of the project.

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U.S. Drought Portal Showcase
Three Showcase Portlets 1.) U.S. Drought Monitor
(NOAA, USDA, NDMC) 2.) Drought Impacts Reporter
(NDMC) 3.) Climate Prediction Center Seasonal
Forecast (NOAA)
Seven Theme Areas 1.) What is NIDIS? 2.) Current
Drought 3.) Forecasting 4.) Impacts 5.)
Planning 6.) Education 7.) Research
1.
2.
3.
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NIDIS Portal Phase 2 Work and Beyond

• GIS Features
• Enhanced content and linkages
• Community collaboration tools and features
• Links to emerging early warning networks and
  products (soil moisture, satellite, etc.)
• Link to GEOSS/GIDIS
• Links to pilot studies
• Potential for data and information
  management/sharing cross-agency and at all
  levels

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Summary

• NIDIS U.S. Drought Portal Provides a Window
  for Interagency Data Collaboration and
  Dissemination
• The initial phase of the USDP (November 2007) is
  allowing drought experts and general users to
  answer key questions about drought on an
  end-to-end basis.