Our "case study" shows that community benefits of model access
depend critically on the user INTERFACE to the model results.
CCMC will draw
more users and improve their outputs if more investment is made in website
accessibility and user options e.g.:
·
A menu of available cases that provides a clickable
summary containing a few paragraphs, and key figures that summarize what the
run shows (the run requester can even be asked to do this as payback!)
·
A fast, easy run results "browser", offering
stored thumbnail sets for a limited set of standard plot types (e.g. meridional
views of field lines and density contours for magnetosphere, or polar cap
convection plots for ionosphere) with a toggle for quickly stepping through
time.
·
A menu of sophisticated model visualization tools which
can be contributed from outside CCMC in the same spirit as the models are
contributed (with proper tailoring to work on specific model output formats,
and output options for quality plots in standard formats and maybe even movies)
·
A way to link to (HDF?) files for the full model run
database (time snapshots at least), together with file reader/translaters and
grid interpolators that give an MHD quantity at user specified position x,y,z.
(To allow customized analysis of model run results on the part of users with
their own favorite tools.)