The Technology Outreach Division's mission is to establish for FSL a resource to develop new project opportunities, to promote emerging FSL technologies to NOAA and other government agencies, organizations and the private sector and to facilitate international cooperative agreements and technology transfer programs. Support is also provided for the following major activities:
- Science On a Sphere TM - SOS, a new concept by FSL Director Dr. Sandy MacDonald, is a NOAA program to develop a revolutionary system for educating the public on the holistic nature of Earth's ever-changing oceans, atmosphere, and land. SOS presents NOAA's global science in a new and exciting way by providing an engaging three-dimensional representation of our planet as if the viewer were looking at the Earth from outer space.
- The CWB Technology Transfer Project - FSL's longest standing cooperative project is the Technology Transfer Project at the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) of Taiwan. Since 1990, CWB-FSL activities have created joint mutual benefits, especially cooperation in the areas of information systems, data assimilation and modeling, high-performance computing, and observing systems.
- The Korea Meteorological Administration Project - The Technology Outreach Division is under agreement with the Meteorological Research Institute (METRI) of the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) to design a nowcasting system based on FSL's WFO-Advanced meteorological system, support startup and operation, and implement a training program for forecaster systems and operations staff.
- The FX-Net Program - FX-Net is designed as an inexpensive, PC workstation system for use in a variety of forecast, training, education, and research applications not requiring the full capabilities of a WFO-Advanced type system. FX-Net makes AWIPS products accessible over the Internet via high and low bandwidth communication lines. Integral to the FX-Net technology is a wavelet compression technique that can reduce and transmit product file sizes with a minimal loss of resolution.