Samson 95-54211 Operating from within the Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Sciences Department at the University of Michigan, The Weather Underground has been supplying the Internet community near real-time meteorological conditions and National Weather Service forecasts for 3 years. The Weather Underground has developed a technology which brings user interactivity to imagery. Growing from the desire to provide an intuitive interface for exploring complex data (all current weather conditions, and forecasts for every airport in the United States), a client-server technology has been developed which provides a framework where information can be 'attached' to imagery. Information can be as simple as text (caption), or as complex as motion video(CUSee-Me session). The Weather Underground's inspired vision is carried to completion by a team of dedicated individuals in multiple disciplines. The cross pollination between the humanities and the science communities has created a collaborative working environment extending between universities. Through NSF support, this funding cycle will bring the complexity of the Weather Underground systems into the hands of teachers and students throughout the Internet community. It is proposed to build software systems where participants can easily create interactive imagery, and create server based survey systems. The creation of such systems will allow participants to create domain specific interviews, carried out over the Internet. The content domain in which this proposal sits is the hydrology cycle, including water quality. This is the second of a series of content components, which will link the weather, air quality, the hydrology cycle, water quality, land use, and agriculture. This iteration of research and development will refine current intuitive interfaces for entering and browsing complex data sets. Additionally, the data collection methods will be used, when appropriate, to gather large samples of educational research data and process this data automatically. The Interactive Image Format (.iif) is a language which defines regions and actions, allowing authors to create networked imagery. Regions include: points/pixels, polygons, rectangles, colors, pop-menus, help bubbles. Actions include: warm (mouseOver), hot (mouseClick). Actions effect properties, including: show, hide, URL(ftp, gopher, http). Paralleling .html, the .iif language is platform and server independent, insuring browsing and authoring to occur from multiple hardware platforms, and allowing .iif files to be incorporated into existing Internet browsers. This round of funding will produce intuitive IlFConstructors for both the Macintosh and X-Windows platforms. These editors will be graphically oriented and very easy to use. Their products will be interactive images which utilize networked resources. It is the goal of The Weather Underground to put the power of this editor into the hands of K12 students. The Weather Underground's experience with real-time data streams has produced a very intricate series of interconnected software programs capable of ingesting, processing, and displaying large volumes of data. This system has come from the current NSF-MT funding. This proposal is an attempt to link our multi-bandwidth user interfaces with our sophisticated data processing engines. The Weather Underground has teamed with educational, and scientific partners capable of creating a testbed involving large numbers of participants. This proposal is an attempt to put our 'raw-computation' into the hands of worldwide participants through intuitive ,"cool" interfaces.
