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What is WIS

The WMO Information system (WIS) is the single coordinated global infrastructure responsible for the telecommunications and data management functions in context of the WMO. It is the pillar of the WMO for managing and moving weather, climate and water information around the globe.

WIS is designed to collect and disseminate data and products from National Meteorological Services. It is being built upon the Global Telecommunication System of WMO's World Weather Watch.

WIS is an enhanced information system capable of exchanging large data volumes, such as new ground- and satellite based systems, finer resolutions in numerical weather prediction and hydrological models and their applications.

WIS encompasses three types of centres and a communications network. For regional and global connectivity, Global Information System Centres (GISCs) are connected by high speed dedicated networks allowing the rapid dissemination of information between GISCs so they can collect and distribute the information available for global dissemination.

WIS will provide three fundamental types of services:

Routine collection and dissemination service for time-critical and operation-critical data and products
Data Discovery, Access and Retrieval service
Timely delivery service for data and products

Evolution to WIS 2.0

The switch from WIS to WIS 2.0 will be evolutionary. New techniques are introduced in parallel keeping the majority of current WIS functions largely unchanged. Especially the roles of WIS centers will not change. WIS 2.0 rather changes how data moves around the globe and reaches the end users.

In WIS 2.0, participating centres will provide Web services that enable users to access and interact with data. Whereas the current WIS focused on operational data, the services which can be made available in WIS 2.0 also enable centres to share historical data and offer access to archives where appropriate.

One aim of WIS 2.0 is to replace the existing data exchange mechanisms used on the Global Telecommunication System with modern, Web-based messaging protocols such as those that underpin social media platforms like WhatsApp and Twitter.

With WIS 2.0 WMO aims to offer meteorological and climatological data via state-of-the-art technologies and ease the access to this data for a wide and diverse user group.

Features

WIS 2.0 adopts Web technologies and leverages industry best practices and open standards.
WIS 2.0 uses Uniform Resource Locators (URL) to identify resources (i.e. Web pages, data, metadata, APIs).
WIS 2.0 prioritizes use of public telecommunications networks (i.e. Internet) when publishing digital resources.
WIS 2.0 requires provision of Web service(s) to access or interact with digital resources (e.g. data, information, products) published using WIS.
WIS 2.0 encourages National Centres and Data Collection or Production Centres to provide 'data reduction' services via WIS that process 'big data' to create results or products that are small enough to be conveniently downloaded and used by those with minimal technical infrastructure.
WIS 2.0 will add open standard messaging protocols that use the publish-subscribe message pattern to the list of data exchange mechanisms approved for use within WIS and GTS.
WIS 2.0 will require all services that provide real-time distribution of messages (containing data or notifications about data availability) to cache/store the messages for a minimum of 24-hours, and allow users to request cached messages for download.
WIS 2.0 will adopt direct data-exchange between provider and consumer.
WIS 2.0 will phase out use of routeing tables and bulletin headers.
WIS 2.0 will provide a Catalogue containing metadata that describes both data and the service(s) provided to access that data.
WIS 2.0 encourages data providers to publish metadata describing their data and Web services in a way that can be indexed by commercial search engines.

Questions?

If you have any question regarding WIS, WIS 2.0 or DWD's service portfolio please have a look at DWD's Homepage, visit our current WIS portal or contact us directly.

References