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Weather at your fingertips

 

Nicola Mawson
By Nicola Mawson, Contributor.
Johannesburg, 11 Aug 2009

The SA Weather Service is taking its information mobile, with an offering that will trim wasted working hours due to unexpected storms.

Chris Barker, a partner at consulting company Future Foresight, says weather information - such as impending storms and lightening strikes - will soon become available through cellphones, as the company is seeking developers for the applications.

Future Foresight has been appointed by the service to work on the project.

The offering will add to subscription-based industry portals that allow companies to log on to the recently-developed Web site and receive live information about weather patterns in their area.

A desktop widget is targeted to go live at month-end, and a mobile application is already available, on a trial basis. While the project is in its infancy, Barker says it could be a good revenue stream for developers, as revenue will be shared between the service and developers. "It could be very exciting."

Barker wants developers to create applications - including replacing the mobile application - that will be hosted on the server. He says these applications should include a connection to social networking sites such as Facebook, but developers are only limited by their imagination.

Subscription will initially cost R10 a month, and this will be split between developers and the additional cost of hosting, he adds.

Money saving

At the moment, the company is marketing the industry portal aspect of the weather site. Companies can subscribe to portals, which will provide information relevant to their location, and in as much detail as zooming in on a road constriction site, says Barker.

Subscription costs vary depending on the size of the area for which information is provided, but generally companies pay about R8 000 a month.

He comments that companies will receive SMS or alarm alerts, and can then look up detailed information on the Web site. The information it provides - through the Google Earth application - is as detailed as to show wind speed and storm direction. It also gives views of recent lightening strikes.

The information is provided in a three-dimensional format and is interactive, he explains.

MTN and Vodacom, which read the warning database on a continual basis and then send out warnings, facilitate the SMS system. However, Barker says the company is moving to a general packet radio service system in the next two months, which will send warnings directly to either a SIM card or an alarm system.

Barker says he aims to have industrial subscriptions account for half of the SA Weather Service`s revenue by the end of 2011. The balance is earned from supplying data to aviation companies.

So far, says Barker, the site has been well received by companies in the construction and mining sectors. In mining, for example, bad weather can cost a company 1% of its revenue, which can translate into as much as 20% of the firm`s net profit, he notes.

Making use of the portal can trim some of this loss, as companies can plan around the weather, with information that is being constantly fed to them.

Another project is being pitched at the 463 golf courses in SA. Barker says golf courses can receive accurate SMS warnings of lightening, or they can install an alarm box for R2 600 to warn golfers.

Barker says the monitoring system will also extend to metropolitans, and Future Foresight is in talks with a handful of cities to provide weather warnings. The idea is to offer national management services, such as flood warnings, in exchange for the feed from their traffic cameras.

He explains that an SMS can be sent to a village chief to alert villagers that a flood is on its way in an hour. The warning is expected to save lives, as previous cautions were vague and most people did not leave the riverbank, he says. "You can`t say, for this whole month, keep away from the river."

Go live

Barker explains that, until now, the service has not been able to commercialise its data due to not having the right skills set, which is why it hired the company. "Our job is to help [the service] make money."

Since relaunching the Web site, visitors to the page have increased fourfold and 450Gb of data is going down a line to the server every month, hosted by Internet Solutions. Previously, the site would hang if too many people were online at one time, Barker says.

The site is more user-friendly and provides interactive charts that give seven-day forecasts, overlays rain maps, and provides storm warnings among other offerings. "The intention was to get weather out there in a big way," and make it easier to access than the previous site, which was very technical, explains Barker.

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