Developer's Committee meeting Tuesday 27 June 2017

Last edition: Wikinfo(changed_ts)? by Wikinfo(changed_by)?

Proposed agenda

After the sucessful meeting of « Enlarged Developer’s Committee » in Barcelona in April, The usual mid-year videoconference meeting of Developer's Committee will take place on June 27th.

The expected participants to this meeting are the members of Developer’s Committee, including the leader of each NEMO Working Group, and the NEMO System Team members as permanent invitees. For this meeting, all members of Writing Group of NEMO Development Strategy update will also be invited (see below) Taking in account the discussions in Barcelona, please find below a preliminary agenda (for which all suggestions welcome):

Meeting Minutes

Introduction, agenda

3. Lévy presents the objectives and agenda of the meeting, presentation available here​

The proposed agenda covers usual items so as discussion on the draft of Development Strategy document Draft available here​, and some discussions on possible improvement of NEMO organisation as discussed in Barcelona. AS introduction to these discussions, two descriptions of NEMO organisation, teams and groups are presented to illustrate the organisation today and the important contribution of NEMO System Team experts today:

NEMO community and consortium organisation	NEMO development groups and teams

The proposed agenda is approved.

1) NEMO System Team brief report on the status of 2017 workplan actions at this date

The 2017 workplan as approved at the beginning of the year is available here. C Lévy presents the status of work today as described by the Six NEMO officers, see presentation here​. The 2017 development work is going on in time to reach the expected objectives by the end of the year.

2) Exchange of information on the existing Working Groups

For each Working Group, its leader to briefly present: a slide on the work done during the past 6 months, a slide on the open issues, i.e. the list of questions to be answered before end of 2017, and a slide on the perspectives for 2018.

AGRIF (J. Chanut)

See presentation here​.

The list of needed developments and their priority has been build by the working group. The development work now needs to be done (and has been delayed due to lack of resources and H2020 COPPER project not funded). Still the working group's view on the future is to take the needed time to validate and publish the existing and announced features. Open questions on update of Nesting tools versus Configuration Manager developments.

Configuration Manager (S. Ciliberti)

See presentation here​

Robustness and test cases (S. Flavoni)

All the development and simplification is now done inside NEMO First test cases available in NEMOGCM, so as associated tools to build and use them. Now need to define the location of all test cases (existing ones build build consortium members, so as future ones coming from the community), so as the acceptable procedure for all to ensure sufficient quality control (including the responsibilities of System Team on one side, and of the developer on the other). Very good job done on this major task. Interest expressed (by D. Marshall) to start using test cases for students.

Presentation of S. Flavoni here​

Data assimilation and interface

Some inputs have been included in the strategy document, but role and perspectives of this working group are unclear for now, after the decision made concerning TAM, so as the leave of Pierre-Antoine Bouttier from his position. For now this WG has no leader anymore, nor clear perspectives for now.

Parametrisation of mesoscale eddies (M. Bell)

A lot of discussions took place within the group, especially to elaborate important tasks and priorities. Within the GEOMETRIC project now funded, the developments are identified and will start within the next year. Le Working Group proposes to be disbanded.

Mike Bell's presentation​

HPC (S. Mocavero & T. Graham)

See presentation here​

TOP (C. Ethé, O. Aumont)

Up to now, only a discussion group. No new developments for now, but focus on consolidation of modularity with regards to the different BGC models (PISCES, BFM, MEDUSA...) A meeting on PISCES development, with representatives of BFM and MEDUSA will take place in Paris beginning of July. Scope of WG may be updated afterwards, so as the corresponding section of NEMO Development Strategy document

Sea-ice (M. Vancoppennolle)

Presentation of M. Vancoppennolle here​

Wave coupling (E. Clementi)

See presentation here​

The development of large scale coupling with waves in now done, and included in the trunk so that is will be available in the next NEMO release. Working group is now focused on coupling at smaller space and time scale.

It is noted that whereas large scale wave coupling is indeed part of NEMO development strategy, coupling at small scales has to be scoped. It is clearly an interesting scientific question, but probably out of scope of NEMO, expect maybe for shore.

3) Discussion on the draft of NEMO Development Strategy version 2017 (C. Lévy)

Draft available here​

• Is the document fulfilling the goal: design NEMO development for the next 5 years?
• What could be improved in the draft?
• How to make the strategy become effective implementation in NEMO reference?

The document appears to be in a good shape for now, i.e. as a complete draft. A number of suggestions are made and will be taken in account by the writing group.

The Developer's Committee believes it would be useful to publish it as open document, especially since it will allow to refer to it in projects, etc... The Developer's Committee will write a message to SC, action J. Le Sommer, see message here​ to try convincing SC to make it open.

Claire Lévy will ensure the draft is complete and fulfils the suggestions and comments of Dev. Committee. As so, the draft, approved by Developer's Committee, will be sent (as a final draft) to Steering Committee for information by end of July.

4) Preparing 2018 and mid-term

Evolutions of Working Groups

Developer’s Committee to make recommendations for each Working Group by the end of 2017. More specifically, the Committee is expected to validate the list of questions each Woking Group is expected to address. If relevant, list of new Working Groups to be created, and selection of their members.

• AGRIF:
  • WG is expected as proposed to organise validation of existing and expected developments, in order to ensure robustness of AGRIF in the future release
  • Question on compatibility between AGRIF and OpenMP should be explored and answered in the next months
  • WG shoud contribute to decision on how to configure an application using AGRIF, to be discussed with Configuration Manager and Test cases WGs: need to make one choice between nesting tools (needing update), future configuration manager, or tools build for test cases

• Configuration Manager:
  • WG should focus on the tool to set up NEMO configuration only, leaving aside the coupling module with other models. Objective is to define a strategy with existing resources to decide where to drive the future for next generation, starting from SIREN.
  • Same item as for AGRIF WG. Overlap with Nesting Tools of AGRIF and tools developed for test cases should be clarified by deciding a unique tool for each functionality.

• Robustness and test cases :
  • WG should now focusing on the ways to set up, accept and distribute test cases.
  • Same item as for AGRIF WG

• Data assimilation and interface:
  • Without any leader for now and taking in account the new status of TAM within NEMO (no further developments than what is now in place in 3_4_STABLE release), the need for this WG is not clear for now
  • Committee requests that Matt Martin, with the other members of the WG, prepare an answer for next meeting, taking in account also NEMO data interface NEMO-OBS and NEMO-ASM, to decide if a WG is still useful on these subjects

• Parametrisation of mesoscale eddies
  • As suggested by WG, it is now disbanded.

• HPC
  • Important and useful work to be continued sorting out priorities with all members of WG in order to define the optimal paths for NEMO performance improvements on these subjects moving quite quickly

• TOP
  • Has been a discussion group as a start
  • Could become an effective WG, wxith some precise questions to be presented during next Dev. Com. meeting at the end of the year.

• Sea-ice
  • WG should continue to elaborate the development phases of the new component, details expected for next meeting of the Committee in December 2017
  • Committee suggests to include some test cases for sea-ice from the beginning of the development of this new european sea-ice component
  • Working with wave coupling has been suggested but will be envisaged alter on

• Wave coupling: reorganise this WG to air-sea coupling, including waves (aligned with Chapter 9 of Dev. Strategy document). Proposal for this renewed WG to be presented by E. Clementi and L. Brodeau during next meeting end of the year

First ideas on 2018 Workplan (presented by System Team), and discussion

No time for this point during the meeting, and limited number of ideas from System Team. This point is postponed but list of preliminary ideas available Ideas for 2018WP.pptx​ here]

5) Review of the role of Developer’s Committee

Mike Bell's presentation of the ideas discussed during Enlarged Dev.Com. in Barcelona​

Discussion and comments: Need to take in account carefully the existing resources for development: creating teams will not make development happen. All volunteers for sustainable developement of NEMO are welcome (a clear workflow is in place for this), but new features and improvements of NEMO are de facto created by developers.

• Role of the Committee

The NEMO Developer's Committee is the Scientific advisory board of NEMO Consortium. The role of the external experts is important and could be enhanced: need for regular attendance of these experts also to the meetings of the Committee. Somme additional external experts are proposed: Eric Chassignet

• What is working?
  • Creating and ending Working Groups
  • Building the mid term strategy (Enlarged dev com meeting, writing and updating the strategy document)
  • Getting the complete view on what is going on through the meetings twice a year
  • Giving advices on yearly workplan (although messages to SC not really followed up to now)

• What could be improved? (including link between scientific projects going on and NEMO development workplan)
  • Committee suggest to try having a list of WG corresponding to the Chapter of the Development Strategy document
  • Meetings of Developer's Committee are too long (up to now, it seemed important to have information on each group or team (System Team, Working Groups...). The committee proposes to have from now on a subgroup to examine all ongoing actions in order to limit the agenda of the meetings to the points needing discussion. Claire Lévy to propose the organisation, list of members and tasks of this subgroup before next meeting.

END of the meeting

List of participants

Name	Role	Connecting from
Claire Lévy	Project manager	Paris LOCEAN 4ème étage
Joanna Staneva	External expert	Hamburg
Emanuela Clementi	INGV officer, WAVE-WG leader	Bologna
Simona Flavoni	CNRS Officer, Robustness and Test Cases WG leader	Paris
Stefania Ciliberti	CMCC Member of the System Team, CONF MAN WG leader	Lecce
Martin Vancoppenolle	Sea Ice WG leader	Paris
Mike Bell	Developers' Committee, Met Office Consortium expert	Exeter
Jérôme Chanut	AGRIF WG leader	Toulouse
Miguel Castrillo	BSC, HPC Grp. member	Barcelona
Rachid Benshila	CNRS Consortium expert	Toulouse (Mercator)
Dorotea Iovino	CMCC Officer	Bologna
Tomas Lovato	Developer's Committee - TOP	Bologna
Clément Bricaud	MO Officer	Toulouse
Silvia Mocavero	CMCC, System Team and HPC-WG member	Lecce
Clement Rousset	CNRS System Team, Sea-Ice WG	Paris
George Nurser	Wave WG, NOC Consortium Expert	Southampton
Pier Giuseppe Fogli	Consortium expert	Bologna
Julien Le Sommer	CNRS Consortium expert	Paris