Intelligent Retrieval of Archived Meteorological Data

Effective exploitation of meteorological archives has long been impeded by an inability to rapidly identify relevant data, and by the difficulties of managing the large volume of data involved. We present a new approach to archiving meteorological data that addresses these problems. Our approach is implemented in MetVUW Workbench, a case-based system for intelligent retrieval and display of historical meteorological data. The system is intended to serve as a “memory amplifier” for meteorologists that allows them to rapidly locate historical situations of interest. In developing MetVUW Workbench, we have addressed challenging issues of representation and retrieval of spatial information. This paper outlines our approach to some of these issues.