[OZAPRS] WXSVR-AU - definition of Marine Forecast areas

[Geoff Gatward]

Folks,

During testing of the new server I have found a couple of problems that
have been introduced by the way we have defined the FWA identifiers.
The FWA code is used by IGates to determine which messages to gate locally
to RF.
This currently affects the MARINE warnings, but could potentially flow on
to other warning types as well as we transition them over to the new server.

A bit of background, the three letter FWA code is NOT provided by BoM, we
derive that from the warning area issued by BoM from a database lookup.
For the standard forecast areas it is straight-forward, e.g. Southwest
Slopes = SWS, Riverina = RIV etc.  However for the maritime zones, we have
previously been allocating them to the adjacent land zone. The problem is
with the new shapefiles, some of the marine areas extend past two or
sometimes three different land zones, so allocating a single FWA is
difficult, for example "Spencer Gulf" in SA adjoins Lower Eyre Peninsula
(LEP), Eastern Eyre Peninsula (EEP), Flinders (FLI), Mid North (MDN), and
Yorke Peninsula (YKP) - so which zone do we allocate it to?

My thought is to allocate each Marine zone it's own new FWA. This would be
the easiest solution, HOWEVER we still need to ensure that we don't
conflict with any codes used in the US by the NWS system, since we need to
ensure that they don't inadvertently gate our messages over there and
vice-verca.

Anyone have any thoughts on this before I make the change?

Regards,
Geoff
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