SBIR Phase I: Virtual Atmospheric Laboratory

MESO公司的小企业创新研究第一阶段项目旨在利用先进的大气模拟技术在大学、高中和初中的大气和相关地球科学教学中，以及在天气预报培训中心和公众中使用。总体目标是为不同教育程度和经验水平的学生提供一种机制，使他们在学习地球-大气系统的过程中培养解决问题的能力。这将通过开发一个名为虚拟大气实验室（VAL）的软件系统来完成，该系统将允许学生轻松地进行和分析涉及复杂的太阳、陆地和大气动力学相互作用的现实大气实验。第二个目标是演示在低成本台式计算机上运行实验的可行性，使每个学生都可以使用这种教育工具。VAL将是几个技术组件的集成，包括：(1)复杂的基于物理的大气数值模型；(2)可视化工具，允许用户交互式地检查和动画复杂的多维数据集；(3)图形用户界面，使用户可以方便地浏览和控制复杂的计算机程序；(4)超文本教学数据库，它允许用户通过使用与教学数据库的其他部分甚至其他数据库相链接的单词和短语来追求知识线索。第一阶段的研究将(1)在实际的大学水平教学环境中评估概念价值原型；(2)为广泛的教育水平，制订功能齐全的增值课程的教育目标和功能设计；(3)确定在低成本计算平台上托管VAL的计算可行性。第一阶段研究的成功完成将在UNIX工作站上开发一个工作原型，演示基于Windows和macintosh平台的计算可行性，并说明VAL概念的教学效用，以便为第二阶段开发更复杂的全功能VAL提供基础。虚拟大气实验室的主要商业应用将是作为中学、高中、学院、大学、政府天气预报培训中心以及政府和商业“现场”天气预报员使用的教育工具。其他有可能产生商业收入的VAL应用包括：(1)作为气象学家和非气象学家调查大气相关问题的低成本研究工具和数据生成器；(2)为气象爱好者和一般科学爱好者提供家庭大气实验室；(3)实时高分辨率局地天气预报系统。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project from MESO, Inc. addresses the opportunity to utilize advanced atmospheric simulation technology for teaching atmospheric and related earth sciences at the university, high school and middle school levels and for use at weather forecasting training centers and by the general public. The overall objective is to provide students at various educational and experience levels with a mechanism to develop problem solving skills as they learn about the earth-atmosphere system. This will be accomplished by developing a software system, termed the Virtual Atmospheric Laboratory (VAL), that will allow students to easily conduct and analyze realistic atmospheric experiments involving complex solar, terrestrial and atmospheric dynamical interactions. The secondary objective is demonstrate feasibility of running the experiments on a low-cost desktop computer making this educational tool available to every student The VAL will be an integration of several technological components, including: (1) sophisticated physics-based atmospheric numerical models; (2) visualization tools which permit the user to interactively examine and animate complex multidimensional datasets; (3) graphical user interfaces which allow the user to easily navigate through and control complex computer programs; and (4) hypertext instructional databases which permit the user to pursue threads of knowledge through the use of words and phrases which are linked to other parts of an instructional database or even other databases. The Phase I research will (1) evaluate a conceptual VAL prototype in an actual university-level instructional setting; (2) establish the educational objectives and functional design for the fully-functional VAL for a broad range of educational levels; and (3) determine the computational feasibility of hosting the VAL on a low-cost computational platform. A successful completion of the Phase I research will develop a working prototype on a UNIX workstation, demonstrate the computational feasibility on Windows- and Macintosh-based platforms and illustrate the instructional utility of the VAL concept in order to provide the foundation for the development of the a more sophisticated fully-functional VAL in Phase II. The primary commercial application for the Virtual Atmospheric Laboratory will be as an educational tool used by middle schools, high schools, colleges, universities, government weather forecasting training centers, and government and commercial `field` weather forecasters. Other VAL applications which have potential to generate commercial revenue include use as: (1) a low-cost research tool and data generator for meteorologists and non-meteorologists investigating atmosphere-related problems; (2) a home atmospheric laboratory for weather hobbyists and general science enthusiasts; and (3) a real-time high resolution local weather forecast system.