The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Hurricane Research Division has been producing real time analyses of tropical cyclone surface wind observations on an experimental basis since 1993. HRD's analyses are created by compiling all available observations relative to the storm center about which the analysis is made.

The advent of the Internet has spawned a whole new generation of Web-based applications allowing dynamic interactions with databases. Rapid maturity of Web programming techniques have provided enterprise-level functionality, reliability, and scalability in business and scientific applications. Benefits of a web-based approach include ease of maintenance and development, and centralized distribution of data services. These new technologies are part of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), which offers a powerful platform on which to build Web-based component applications.

The HRD Real-time Hurricane Wind Analysis System (H*WIND) is a distributed system that ingests realtime tropical cyclone observations measured by land-, sea-, space-, and air-borne platforms into an object relational database, adjusts them to a common framework, and then graphically displays the data relative to the storm with interactive tools so scientists can quality control, objectively analyze, and visualize the information.

More info can be found on the Real-time Hurricane Wind Analysis Project website.