Most employees rarely consider network infrastructure during their average workday. But for scientists and forecasters at the National Weather Service, maintaining communications infrastructure in the wake of a disaster or severe weather event is key.
To ensure limited downtime during emergencies, the NWS took advantage of an agency reorganization earlier this year and stood up the Office of Dissemination in April to fix and maintain the agency’s infrastructure, ensure resilience during weather events and plan for the future.
“The Weather Service has done a tremendous job. The people on the front lines are highly dedicated people but sometimes the infrastructure fails them,” said Luis Cano, director of the Office of Dissemination. “It’s very important to ensure they have the infrastructure they need — they deserve — to do their job.”
Cano’s office uses a broad acquisition strategy to find the right commercial partners to provide the best possible connections for satellite offices, as well as assurances that NWS’s systems will have priority in the event of significant downtime.
“During severe weather events we work with FEMA and local law enforcement,” Cano said. “From a communications point of view, they need the infrastructure not only to acquire data but also to support the dissemination of weather products and mission support services.”
Particularly at sites that are prone to hurricanes, tornados or severe flooding, NWS uses a mix of broadband infrastructure (copper and fiber optics), satellites and radio frequencies to weave together a robust communications network. If one system fails, there is often a backup in place to take over.
The Office of Dissemination then works closely with the carriers to manage communications when the primary network is down.
“We buy services so that we have priority in restoration but we also maintain a strong relationship with our partners and they understand the criticality of our mission,” Cano said. “Those partners rely on our mission just like everybody else does.”
While creating this robust network can be complicated work, there’s no “secret sauce” for NWS. The agency uses commercially available infrastructure and develops detailed action plans to be prepared for any eventuality.
“Most of our work is understanding what’s available, dealing with acquisitions that provide an alternate path to a location … it’s more of an engineering process,” Cano said, pointing out that these are services anyone can buy. “And that’s really what we want and need … We have to have the right balance of bandwidth and resiliency.”
