Iowa Environmental Mesonet

Iowa State University Department of Agronomy

iembot

iembot is a Jabber chat bot that relays National Weather Service issued text products to Jabber chat rooms primarily hosted at the IEM Chat Project. iembot was written to aid the dissemination and use of NWS issued warnings by their chat partners.

Where to access iembot messages?

Experimental RSS feed of iembot messages per NWS Forecast Office:
WFO:


All iembot messages are here: http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/iembot-rss/wfo/botstalk.xml

How does iembot work?

iembot consists of two programs that run on the Iowa Mesonet server. The first is a parser that ingests text products issued by the NWS. The parser picks out the important information regarding the product and sends it via a Jabber instant message to the bot logged in on the chat server. The bot then routes the incoming message to a WFO chatroom from which the product was issued. The entire process takes much less than a second.

Why was iembot written?

  1. During chats, the NWS should not need to relay details of already issued products to the chatroom. Replication should always be avoided.
  2. During onair coverage, the media often are not able to quickly read severe text products that come off the printer. Instead, they can quickly view the chatroom and clearly see what has just been issued.
  3. The NWS can get instant verification that their product was disseminated over NOAAport and processed by a computerized ingestor.
  4. With the advent of Valid Time Extent Code (VTEC), the NWS can issue complex statements. The bot's report of these products can help clear confusion with the media partners.
  5. With the products and timestamps in the chatroom logs, it is an outstanding log of how the severe weather event played out for historical review.
  6. It is a proof of concept for how NWS products can be disseminated securely and synchronously to clients in an Open Source and standards based framework.

What does iembot look like in the chatroom?

Here is a screenshot from the "botstalk" chatroom where iembot dumps all processed messages. The text in blue can be clicked on for the product text and perhaps a visual display.

Example iembot messages

These are example messages that appear in the chatroom from the iembot user.

Text products iembot parses: (as of 12 Jul 2007)