Group to roll out 1,000 weather stations in PH

The Weather Philippines Foundation (WPF) is on track to install about 1,000 units of automated weather stations (AWS) by the end of this year, with 500 expected to be installed across the country by mid 2013.

Founded by a partnership between Aboitiz Foundation, UnionBank and Swiss firm Meteomedia, WPF aims to deliver accurate weather forecasts to the Filipino community, with the hope of improving nationwide disaster preparedness and timely response to variable weather conditions.

The solar-powered AWS will measure various indicators for accurate and localized weather information.

Data from the weather instruments are sent to the servers of Meteomedia, WPF’s founding technology partner, to be interpreted by meteorologists and the results published in www.weather.com.ph.

WPF, in partnership  with the League of Cities in the Philippines and League of Provinces in the Philippines, is conducting a series of trainings for  the more than  200 personnel nationwide, which include disaster risk officers, public information officers and administrators of local government units where the AWS are located, said WPF general manager Celso Caballero III.

The training aims to discuss the features of WPF’s web portal (weather.com.ph) and enable the users to find information on localized weather and typhoons.

Users will also find other useful information like basic meteorological or weather articles and can see actual atmospheric/meteorological readings, i.e. solar radiation, wind speed and direction, precipitation, temperature, pressure and humidity, in their locality.

During the month of April, the trainings were conducted in Tagum in Davao, Butuan City, Tangub City, Tagbilaran, Bacolod, Legazpi City and La Union, Cebu, Iloilo, Quezon City, Cagayan de Oro City and Baguio.

In the future, WPF wishes to add the basic weather and climatology in the training.

WPF will provide support that can strengthen the disaster risk resilience of the country.

“WPF’s localized weather information will help Filipinos living in high-risk areas and those vulnerable to climate-related disasters,” Caballero added.

“We believe that the private sector must do its share in supporting the cause of disaster preparedness and climate change adaptation in the country to reduce human suffering and economic loss. This is why we opened the program to corporate sponsorship to help us deploy more AWS and other related technologies around the country.”

Organizations that have already pledged support are SM Investments Corp., Nickel Asia Corp., Vista Land and Lifescapes Inc. and International Containers Services Inc.

For more information about Weather Philippines Foundation, visit www.weather.com.ph.