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WIMEA ICT presents the Dissemination system, Data Repository, Rain gauge redesign and AWS monitoring System to Uganda National Meteorological Authority.
WIMEA ICT presents the Dissemination system, Data Repository, Rain gauge redesign and AWS monitoring System to Uganda National Meteorological Authority.
On 10th August 2017 student teams doing internship with the WIMEA-ICT project made presentations to a team of Directors, meteorologists and Engineers from Uganda National Meteorological Authority (UNMA). The presentations focused on additional functionality to the Weather Data Repository, Weather Dissemination system and the Automatic Weather station software.
Weather Data Repository investigated by Muhumuza Joshua and Mutesasira Jovan both
Software Engineering students from Makerere University School of Computing and Informatics Technology.
This project involves capturing data into the data repository where a Mobile App – runs on smartphones that are android based. It follows regulations given by users whom the supervisor interacted with.
Users can capture data offline, location tracking is supported to ensure that Data is entered when the user is around the weather station. The location is given as coordinates. Use of forms submissions on android, once a form is uploaded from a phone, the data on the mobile is exported and deleted from the phone.
On the administrator end, there will be dashboard, where the last reported data at the station will be displayed. The application is an open source tool which can be downloaded and tweaked as any future developers may wish to have.
Automatic Weather Station (AWS) Monitoring by Kasumba Robert and Kiryamwibo Yenusu
This tool tracks the status of the AWS reporting any sensor failures. Automation of the AWS monitoring increases the uptime of the station. When there is a fault at the station, components at the station collect info and send it to the by email or system reports to preconfigured contacts.
Weather Information Dissemination System.
This is was presented by Kagwa Andrew a Data Communications and Software Engineering Master’s student in the Makerere School of Computing and Informatics Technology.
The main objective of the system is to provide, especially the farmers (in crop production) in Uganda, relevant and appropriately packaged weather information to enable them to make informed decisions.
This system has two components
- Web Access Component.
- USSD-SMS Component.
Benefits of the system.
- Updated forecast information
- User participation
- Tailored Advisories for users
- Tailored audio uploads
- Advisory templates
- Effective and efficient advisory inputs
- Downloadable data in editable and non-editable format
- Centralized information
Rain Gauge Redesign presented by Patience Tusiimire a Masters student at the College of Engineering.
The telemetry unit has been added. This unit comprises of so many component i.e, Data logger, rain gauge sensors, to mention but a few.
There is a sim 800 Modem which has been embedded in the rain gauge. Here, a sim card must be inserted.Sim Modem is powered by Lithium Ion Battery-2200mAH. The sim Modem is kept off for 24 hrs or for a programmable interval of time until it’s time to make a next transmission for example 9am every day.This rain gauge using the data logger records all the amount of rainfall that that has fallen between the time it transmitted the previous rainfall information until the current time it’s going to upload more information.
This information that has been collected is then uploaded to the server. There’s a listening application running on the WIMEA server on which the rain gauge sends its data and the listener stores the data in a text file on the server.
Currently, the rain gauge is estimated to run for about six months without recharging the batteries depending on the frequency at which the rainfall information is transmitted.This could go on for either a shorter or longer interval of time perhaps even a year without charging.
UNMA representatives were impressed by the projects but raised concerns on issues concerning data quality control, areas of reporting and whether the system shows the representation of area and indicates the physical features e.g. lake, mountain …. The calibration of the AWS was also a point of concern such that results given are within acceptable ranges.
It was agreed that UNMA representatives will interact more closely with the software applications to ensure standardization then the operationalization phase will kick in.