Hyperlocal Weather
Challenge
Weather and heat influence our day-to-day lives and have a major impact on our wellbeing.
Most Australian cities are hot in summer and set to get hotter due to a combination of climate change and urbanisation. In urban areas, extreme heat can be accentuated by heat island effect, and temperatures can vary greatly within a Local Government Area.
A large number of regional Local Government Areas span over thousands of square kilometres, with often significant weather conditions variations between locations.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) is providing a great source of information with regards to past, current and future weather conditions. However, due to the limited number of BoM weather stations deployed in some areas, it does not always suffice to capture hyperlocal weather variations.
Opportunity
As such, there is an opportunity for local councils and other organisations to provide more localised weather data through the deployment of their own weather stations infrastructure and sharing of the data, for the benefits of a vast range of users including its residents, farmers, scientists and students.
How does it work in the background?
Weather data collected into our platform for above case studies come from a wide range of data sources including Micro-climate sensors, LoRaWAN Weather Sensors, Thermal Cameras and BoM API.
Some of the raw data is displayed as collected to end-users e.g. temperature, humidity, wind speed.
“On-the-fly” calculation is also performed to generate certain metrics and enrich information available on our dashboards, for example:
- Heat Stress Index
Heat Stress Index is calculated to provide a useful and more encompassing metric derived from Temperature, Humidity, Radiation and Wind Speed
- UV index
UV index is derived from Solar Radiation data provided by sensors
- Temperature trends
Temperature trends are calculated based on past measurements
- Daily precipitations
Daily precipitation since 9am is calculated to align with BoM methods for precipitation measurement