MIAMI — With the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season officially underway, the National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is once again relying on Vista Systems’ Spyder for processing, formatting and displaying high-resolution meteorological data for media briefings and internal presentations. “The Vista Spyder gives us the ability to take different wide-aspect video resolutions, format them to a common high-fidelity video output and easily configure them via a Graphical User Interface (GUI),” said Salim Leyva, supervisory IT specialist for NOAA’s National Hurricane Center (NHC) at Florida International University.
Leyva also works as an engineer, designing and implementing different types of systems from video, EMF satellite/radar ingest to networking, security and communications. “The Spyder allows us to display wide-aspect resolutions, in the range of 1920×1200 to professional-style displays, all the while maintaining video fidelity for viewing the fine details.”
That level of functionality can make a difference when analyzing and communicating the impact a storm can have on a region, and for the last eight years, the NHC has used Vista Systems’ Flat Panel Interactive Display System (FIDS) to display 1280×1024 4:3 meteorological data for media briefings and internal presentations.
“This model has worked very well from both a systems and user perspective, so I wanted to maintain the same type of paradigm for our next-generation system,” said Leyva. “When I was doing research for the centerpiece video formatter that would become part of the new system, I kept coming back to the Spyder because of its technological abilities, ratings and reputation.
“I liked the Spyder so much that it became the building block for a new system of my design at the University of Maryland,” Leyva added. “This new system has been implemented at two media briefing areas of the new NOAA/National Weather Service/National Centers for Weather Prediction building at the university campus. The Spyder is also being used in a new A/V system for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Hurricane Liaison Team.”
The Spyder, Leyva added, “provides us with a great amount of video processing and user flexibility and has enabled us to accomplish the NHC’s imaging goals for this hurricane season.”
For more information, please visit www.vistasystems.net.
