GÉANT and PAGASA – saving lives by timely typhoon forecasting
Collaboration between Philippines and Germany via high speed research networks provides accurate, real-time flow of meteorological data to drive forecasting.
In countries such as the Philippines typhoons and tropical cyclones are a major threat to life and property. For example the landfall of Typhoon Uring in 1991 led to over 9,000 casualties, as well as widespread destruction of infrastructure and communications. The only way to minimise the impact of typhoons is by preparing for their arrival and evacuating people. This relies on having accurate and quickly communicated storm forecasts that enable sufficient time for disaster warning plans to be put into operation.
To ensure storm forecasts are as exact as possible, the Philippine weather bureau PAGASA collaborates closely with its German counterpart DWD, which provides an accurate, real-time flow of meteorlogical data to drive PAGASA’s forecasting. Transmitting this vast amount of data quickly requires the guaranteed, high capacity power of research networks, including GÉANT, the TEIN3 Asia-Pacific network and the German and Philippine national research networks.
More accurate forecasts
The benefits of this collaboration are simple – more accurate forecasts mean earlier warnings of impending typhoons, enabling preparations to be made that save lives. In 2009, Typhoon Emong struck the Philippine town of Bolinao. Despite being much stronger than Typhoon Uring 18 years earlier the impact was mercifully much smaller, with only 126 casualties. This was largely due to better weather forecasting through the PAGASA/DWD collaboration which meant emergency teams had sufficient time to put in place disaster warning plans and evacuate residents to safety.
The benefits of this collaboration are simple – more accurate forecasts mean earlier warnings of impending typhoons, enabling preparations to be made that save lives. In 2009, Typhoon Emong struck the Philippine town of Bolinao. Despite being much stronger than Typhoon Uring 18 years earlier the impact was mercifully much smaller, with only 126 casualties. This was largely due to better weather forecasting through the PAGASA/DWD collaboration which meant emergency teams had sufficient time to put in place disaster warning plans and evacuate residents to safety.
The Challenge
Save lives by providing effective early warning of impending typhoons through faster, more accurate weather forecasting across the Philippines
The Solution
The stable, high speed network connections provided by GÉANT and its partner networks deliver a high capacity platform for the fast transmission of vast amounts of real-time weather forecasting data between Germany and the Philippines.
Key Benefits
The collaboration between the weather bureaux of the Philippines and Germany across high capacity research networks delivers highly accurate real time meteorlogical data that enables more detailed typhoon forecasting and crucially more time to prepare for their impact.
Read the full case studyPartners in the typhoon forecasting project:
GÉANT: www.geant.net
TEIN3: www.tein3.net
PAGASA: www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph
PREGINET: www.pregi.net
DWD: www.dwd.de
