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HARVEST: establisH A foRecast VErification dataSet Through citizen reports

Active Started 2019-12-08 No strict spatial extent since there is no restriction at the input side. The bulk of the observations are received from within Belgium. 297 views

About

Since August 2019, users of the smartphone app of the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMI) are able to send an observation of the meteorological conditions at a certain place and a certain time. The observations provide information about the weather conditions and potentially severe weather to the other users and to RMI. The collection of citizen weather reports is a valuable complement to the information obtained with the classical instruments like stations, radar and satellite.

Users can report one the following weather phenomena (with several subtypes):

  1. Sun & clouds
  2. Overcast
  3. Rain
  4. Thunderstorm
  5. Hail
  6. Snow
  7. Severe wind
  8. Whirlwind
  9. Fog
  10. Snow cover
  11. Road condition
  12. Flood
  13. Optical phenomenon

Each observation is subject to a sanity or plausibility check. The sanity check consists of a real-time comparison with a relevant field of RMI's nowcasting system. The thresholding limits used to attach a quality-label to an observation were set in consultation with the RMI forecasters.

Users are also able to attach a picture to their observation.

Aim

 The data can be exploited for nowcasting, warnings and model verification, and eventually in data assimilation.

How to participate

Download the RMI app and send in your first observation!


Impact and insights

- Vast collection of citizen reports over the years - Intensive use in operational weather and flood monitoring and forecasting - Integrated in dashboards of hydrological authorities - Exploited in research such as hail detection by radar - Development and/or validation of newly developed products, e.g., hydrometeor classification - Fake observations and trolling. - Users being not precise enough on their observation. Launched in 2019 and still active. Solid user base is established ensuring continuous growing database.

Organisations

Project data

No published data has been added to this project yet.