nizations; municipalities, state governments, and federal agencies; and small businesses and Fortune 500 corporations. While each of these entities is important to the enterprise, all have a limited mission and therefore a mission-limited role where provision of infrastructure and services is concerned. A hybrid public-private organization would encourage the leadership and prominence of federal agencies such as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, while also protecting, facilitating, and enabling the role of other interests, which are essential to the success of the collaborative enterprise.

While the mesoscale observational enterprise extends far and wide throughout the nation’s commerce, industry, academia, and all levels of government, the federal role is pivotal. This is especially important in the case of costly three-dimensional observations, which enable short-range numerical weather prediction, the nowcasting of high impact weather, and chemical weather predictions.

The societal uses of mesoscale information are evolving rapidly, and these are increasingly interactive with the technical enterprise of weather prediction and climate monitoring. The need for information is sometimes driven by the increased importance of specific physical, dynamical, and chemical processes to new applications in an expanding user base. However, other needs are driven by behavioral change, evolving social values, and changing demographics. This aspect of mesoscale network design and evolving requirements must be viewed as a two-way process that includes integrated feedback mechanisms.

In addition to the involvement of known data providers and users, a less formal survey should capture user comments from blogs and webpage feedback. Such a survey would actively seek out comments from people who are registered or who regularly access the data. The broad objectives of a survey would be to