The major weather giants now facing a challenge

The market for weather and traffic services is being transformed. We are moving from a situation where it has been difficult to acquire access to information to a situation where more and more tools are being introduced, and with time it will become easier to gain access to weather and traffic information at a low cost.

“When I at the beginning of the 21st century tried to acquire traffic and weather information from Vägverket, I remember that it was okay. But it was never possible to acquire the information electronically, Vägverket would fax the information over,” says Katarina Elevant.

But still, in the year 2010, there remain problems in gaining access to weather information.

“SMHI want SEK 60,000 per year from the research project for its weather observations. We therefore decided to take action and to make exclusive use of freely available data via the Internet and make this into an interesting research issue. In other words, we do not use SMHI at all as a source of information,” says Katarina Elevant.

Katarina is a meteorologist and has recently released the research report at KTH entitled “Governmental services and social media: when weather becomes global”, and she relates that weather information and models from for example the United States are nowadays readily available at no cost.

Katarina Elevant is also involved and cooperating with SR which is participating in KTH’s research project and which will provide the people of Stockholm with traffic weather information in the future. It is called “Directed Traffic Weather” and will provide traffic weather and weather warnings individually adapted to the recipient.

Her primary work principle is that weather and traffic services will increasingly become linked to social media. You and I will be responsible for what it says in the report. The incentives to make it so are not lacking.
“More than 1,200 people are constantly reporting on the traffic situation to Radio Stockholm already today,” says Katarina Elevant.

What she means is that social media will change the way we communicate, which means that in theory at least, there will be millions of observation points. Katarina Elevant’s research project is just about to develop a “Share weather” platform which will collect weather observations from many different sources, with a focus on weather reports from private citizens. The reward will be weather forecasts and services such as a weather and traffic warning services which is now being tested over a period of two winter seasons.

There are also major financial benefits with direct weather and traffic information. In the USA, one survey has indicated cost savings of USD 1 million per coastal mile where warnings of impending floods may result in evacuations.

In Sweden, a survey from KTH’s Department for Transport Systems Analysis has been able to show that delays due to weather cost SEK 300 / hour per person. Those people who for example have the possibility of working from home would be able to do so instead of leaving their homes and getting caught up in traffic.

Katarina Elevant’s research project is testing how people respond to the information and whether their behaviour changes when they hear about the impending bad weather. This includes for example working from home, starting a journey earlier or later, changing the route, changing tyres and adapting driving styles to the prevailing weather conditions. Later this year, the research project will also present the weather community shareweather.com among other things through a new research article and conference in April in Spain.

For more information about the research report and the weather and traffic services of the future, contact Katarina Elevant at 08 - 790 68 93 or katael@kth.se.

Peter Larsson