The National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR) yesterday unveiled a mobile app that shows the next hour’s expected rainfall near a user’s location to help authorities and the public to better prepare for potential disasters caused by sudden rain.
The app, called Rainfall Aid (落雨小幫手), shows the amount of rainfall recorded in the 20 minutes prior to an inquiry and the amount expected over the next 60 minutes for a 10km radius of the user’s location, NCDR Director Hongey Chen (陳宏宇) told a news conference in New Taipei City.
The GPS-enabled app warns users 30 minutes before expected rain at their location so that people can, for example, decide when to collect their washed laundry drying outside, Chen said.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Science and Technology
Local governments can use the app to plan disease prevention measures, especially for remote and mountainous areas, he added.
The app incorporates data gathered by the Central Weather Bureau’s meteorological radars and rainfall measuring stations nationwide; Taiwan Volcano Observatory data on activity in the Datun Volcano Group (大屯火山群); and information transmitted by the Formosat-7/COSMIC2 satellite constellation, he said.
The satellite constellation, launched in June last year, can collect 4,000 data sets per day between latitudes 50 degrees north and south, Chen said.
The data, which were made available for public use in March, have improved the precision of domestic weather forecasts by about 10 percent, he said.
The rainfall forecast techniques used by the app were developed by atmospheric scientists at National Central University and National Taiwan University who have conducted projects funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, NCDR Meteorology Division Head Yu Yi-chiang (于宜強) said.
The NCDR uses the National Center for High-performance Computing’s supercomputer Taiwania 1 to process numerical model data for the app, he added.
The app updates information every 10 minutes, he added.
It covers all of the nation, except the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) and Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島), Yu said.
While the app requires a user’s location to display warning messages, it does not record it, he said.
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