Description (EN): Accurate and timely weather forecasts warn of hazardous conditions e.g. snow storms, hail, freezing rain, or floods, they help save lives and property, and they can help optimize activities for several sectors of the economy. Weather radar systems are capable of monitoring rain, snow, hail, and wind over large geographical areas with high resolution in both time and space. Several such systems can be networked to cover countries, regions, and eventually continents. The NORDRAD network was established over 15 years ago with regional funding from the Nordic Council of Ministers. This network has proven to be durable and sustainable but the technology it uses is now obsolete. The objective of this project is thus to create a cutting-edge real-time weather radar network for the Baltic Sea Region. The method of achieving this result is through this ICT project BALTRAD. The project partnership constitutes national weather services in Finland and Denmark, with both weather and hydrological services in Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Russia, and Belarus. These are the institutes that own and operate the radars in each country, and that will be responsible for ensuring BALTRAD's sustainability at the end of the project. There is also a Finnish end user in the partnership, and active associated organisations in Denmark, Latvia, and Poland. The technology upon which this ICT project will be based is networking software which is targeted as the forthcoming standard for data exchange within the World Meteorological Organization Information System (WIS). Thus, BALTRAD will contribute the mechanisms by which weather radar data will be exchanged in WIS. Additionally, a critical element of this project will be the creation of functionality for processing data using harmonized methods throughout the BSR, thereby giving each country in the region the ability to process its own and others' data according to its own needs, and mitigating regional capacity imbalances. Methods for improving and describing data quality will be integrated into this radar network both in support of experts running the radars, and supporting the users of the data. This project will contain so-called "pilots" which will demonstrate the endto- end value of BALTRAD. Such a "pilot" is an independent end user whose activities should benefit from receiving the radar-based information, in e.g. optimized traffic management, road clearing of snow (including reduced salt loads), aviation (de-icing), improved flood forecasting, and crisis management. The results of this project are an element of regional infrastructure for the BSR: an end-to-end weather radar network. These results will contain standard methods for exchanging and processing data. Such functionality will be transferrable within the region to meet national and regional needs. Technology developed by and for the BSR will also be transferrable outside the region, to the rest of Europe where it may be implemented as part of WIS.
Read more Achievements (EN): During the 3-years of project lifetime the project has developed and applied the BALTRAD System which is the world's most advanced international weather radar network. The developments made use of the outstanding talents of the international project team in the best manner. The project has achieved to include all data from all weather radars in each country in the partnership. Weather radar data are available on line in real time in the BALTRAD network: 12 Swedish, 8 Finnish, 2 Estonian, 1 Latvian, 1 Belarus, 8 Polish, and 5 Danish radars. This puts an end-user in the position to either observe the situation in the Baltic Sea region as a whole or to zoom into his area of interest and use a sub-set of the whole composite. An example how this composite looks like is available on the BALTRAD webpage under http://baltrad.eu/radar-animation. The BALTRAD system as it stands now significantly reduces the time it takes for weather radar products to reach the consumer. BALTRAD is an initiative of the national weather and hydrological services in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Belarus. These are the institutes that own and operate the radars in each country, and that will be responsible for ensuring BALTRAD's sustainability. In addition, cooperation has been established with the weather services in Germany, Lithuania, Norway and Russia to pave the way for a wider application. Since BALTRAD aims to deliver customized high-quality products for end-users (e.g. road management authorities, air traffic control, local rescue services) steps have been undertaken to investigate the needs of potential end-users and develop concepts on how the BALTRAD system could deliver the required information to these end-users. The achievement of this activity is the final version of the so-called BALTRAD Application Case Log. This is a compilation of cases where the BALTRAD system can be applied. The areas covered are Hydrology, Meteorology, Aviation, road and railway control and protection, Nuclear Safety, Civil protection, Hydropower, Urban water management, Agriculture, Ecology, Education and Mass Media. For the areas Aviation, Nuclear Safety and Hydrology the project has developed dedicated applications where the end-users are applying the BALTRAD system. Collaboration outside the project partnership has continued; our relationship with the operational weather radar community in Europe, through EUMETNET (the Network of the European Meteorological Services) OPERA, has continued. This is enhancing the liaison at the European scale. To summarize, the project has prepared and integrated the final version of the BALTRAD system and has demonstrated that it can be deployed as planned. The project has met all its objectives and continues the interregional cooperation with an extended partnership in the BALTRAD+ project.
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