GIS Application For Weather Analysis and

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GIS Application for Weather

Analysis and Forecasting
S.T.W.H.WIMALADHARMA
PGIS/MSC/07/56
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1. Overview
Weather plays a significant role and makes great impact on the

operations of various facilities and industries around the world as well as the
day to day life of the people. Therefore, from time immemorial, weather
forecasting was a subject of concern for the scientists. But, due to complex
nature of various physical processes of the atmosphere, which leads to
weather, these endeavors have always been met with limited success.
Even with sophisticated tools and technologies available, weather

forecasting is still a challenging subject not only for developing countries like
me but also for the developed nations. Recent experiences of natural
disasters within last few years around the globe, raises the necessity and
importance of more and more accurate weather forecasting and early
warning systems, at least to mitigate the scale of destruction caused by
natural disasters. Therefore weather forecasting is crucial not only for the
governments and corporate bodies who wish to make policies and disaster
management systems, but also the ordinary people with nowadays busy life
style, expecting better forecasting of weather in order to plan their works and
lifestyle.
Even though accurate weather forecasting is not an easy or

straightforward task, information technology emerges the way towards better
solutions by providing ample support for all the activities in the subject area,
such as collecting, managing, analyzing data & even the decision making,
collaboration and communication, making the entire process more
manageable & accurate. Naturally, there are many information systems
created to manage and to manipulate weather-based data. The function of an
information system is to improve one’s ability to make decisions based on
more accurate predictions. Development of information systems –specially
GIS- brings out new solutions for managing, monitoring & visualizing weather
related data. [Ref. 1]
GIS or Geographical Information Systems comes to the play in weather

forecasting and analysis, because it is one of the best ways to represent the
weather information in graphical way. This includes graphical representations
such as plotting weather observations over base maps, indicating the real
time weather situations over specific country or region, visualizing weather
parameters and even to represent forecasts in the same manner. This
method is clearer, more precise, more straightforward and even easily
understandable by a non-subject oriented people. It would also help the
forecasters to get a better understanding on current weather situation or
even to make predictions themselves by giving them the upper hand over the
existing tedious numeric representation methods.
Even the systems of these kind, are commonly & increasingly used in
developed countries around the world, in the countries like ours, computer
based weather analysis or forecasting systems are still not used or in very
limited use due to lot of reasons. I have seen and suffered badly from the
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consequences of lacking such system in the recent past where I had to rely
on forecasts made by foreign countries, realizing the need of such a system.
With the seemingly increasing threats of nature and ever evolving needs of
such systems, I’m MSc student, ready to take the challenge of developing a
simple GIS Weather Analysis & Forecasting System as I have been discussing
through out this document. I hope to develop this system under my research
project as no other existing systems in our country to the best of my
knowledge.
Proposed system will be very useful to make quick and accurate

weather predictions with less effort and man power. It also has the benefit of
further extending to work with similar systems to make it a part of more
complicated critical systems such as disaster management systems and web
based weather service providers.
2. Problem statement/ research goals
Main Objectives and Goals
• Building an archive for past weather data by converting them

into electronic format.
• Reading various real-time weather parameters in different
formats and incorporate them into the system by bringing them
into a single, unified data format.
• Integration of local weather data into GIS.
• Developing a system for analyzing, modeling and visualizing
weather data.
• Identifying weather patterns, trends and their variations using
past weather data.
• Display data itself and predictions using visual representation
methods including geographical maps.
• Developing the application as a supporting system for weather
forecasters, by integrating all the necessary information into the
system. These will include visual representation of past weather
parameters and forecasts for near future.
• Develop a web based system which provides the user with the
location specific weather information that can be accessed via
the internet.
3. Approach
Since weather forecasting in Sri Lanka is largely done by-hand, my main

objective is to develop a system which is more efficient, effective & tailored
to local environment. Study area of the project will cover all the provinces of
Sri Lanka. It will include data from the entire locations island wide, where
weather data have been collected.
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 Collecting past weather data of Sri Lanka, at least for few decades
back and make an archive of weather data.
I have planned to accomplish this by making collaboration with
“Department of Meteorology, Sri Lanka”. These data will be vital for
the operations of the system as it uses past data to analyze and
identify the behavior of weather, which are then used to produce the
outcomes.[1]
 Gain knowledge in the areas involved in project such as Information

Systems, GIS, Weather Analysis and Forecasting, Data Mining and
Trend Analysis.
 Identifying behavior of local weather, tracking the changes of weather

patterns within past years and finding out their effect to the regional
climate.
 Integration of local weather data into GIS.
 Building the application which uses GIS and other graphical

representation methods (charts, tables...etc) to represent past weather
data and observations to make better predictions based on them. The
system will provide more facilities to the forecaster with all the
necessary information in one place.
 Develop a simple web based interactive GIS application, as an

extension to the system. This will enable to propagate the benefits of
the system to various, non-subject oriented communities – including
general public.
The users will be able to view current weather data and
predictions by accessing this web site via internet from anywhere. It
will display location specific weather parameters for many locations
island wide.[2] This will provide the decision makers with the best
weather information within a short time, therefore helping me to make
better decisions quickly.
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4. Time schedule indicating how you proceed.(This may be change)
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5. Refereces
[Ref 1] James Block, James Foerster, “Integrating new weather technology in

forecast operations”, Meteorologix Inc. USA
[Ref. 2] Scott Armstrong, “Standards and Practices for Forecasting”,

The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
[Ref. 3] Sekar D.Z, Ozdilek O. , “A Web Based Application for Real Time
Weather Predictions”, Civil Engineering Faculty, Istanbul, Turkey.
[Online] http://www.gisdevelopment.net/application/ environment/
wbg02042.htm
[Ref. 4] GIS Development Homepage.

[Online] http://www.gisdevelopment.net/index.htm
[Ref. 5] National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), USA [online]

www.weahter.gov
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You can carry on.

GIS Application for Weather

Weather plays a significant role and makes great impact on the

Even with sophisticated tools and technologies available, weather

Even though accurate weather forecasting is not an easy or

GIS or Geographical Information Systems comes to the play in weather

Proposed system will be very useful to make quick and accurate

2. Problem statement/ research goals

Main Objectives and Goals

• Building an archive for past weather data by converting them

Since weather forecasting in Sri Lanka is largely done by-hand, my main

 Gain knowledge in the areas involved in project such as Information

 Identifying behavior of local weather, tracking the changes of weather

 Integration of local weather data into GIS.

 Building the application which uses GIS and other graphical

 Develop a simple web based interactive GIS application, as an

[Ref 1] James Block, James Foerster, “Integrating new weather technology in

[Ref. 2] Scott Armstrong, “Standards and Practices for Forecasting”,

[Ref. 4] GIS Development Homepage.

[Ref. 5] National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), USA [online]

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