A jointly developed Severe Weather Warning system
Over ten years ago, UBIMET developed a data transmission system for severe weather warnings in conjunction with the Fraunhofer Institute.
In order to provide severe weather alerts to customers, it is not enough to just generate location-specific and correct meteorological prognoses in a timely manner. It must also be ensured that the alerts reach the customers (such as insurance customers) without delay via SMS or e-mail. Together with the Fraunhofer ISST (now: Fraunhofer Fokus), UBIMET developed a reliable, high-performance data transmission system over ten years ago. Immediately after being generated, severe weather alerts prepared by the meteorologists are automatically integrated with data from a customer database. Here, it is initially determined which customers are affected by the generated alerts.
In a second step, the information regarding the severe weather is transferred to the delivery channels specified by the affected customers. The transmission system is therefore vital and cannot afford to have any glitches, as the alerts must be received by the end user within a few minutes after being generated by the meteorologists. This poses a significant challenge, in particular, due to the fact that UBIMET’s customer database contains several million entries.
The Fraunhofer Institute is an institution for the promotion of applied research. Among other things, the institute focuses on information logistics/transmission, and research results are implemented directly into industrial projects – from inception to realization. The cooperation between the Fraunhofer Institute and UBIMET in the field of severe weather transmission has resulted in a fast and operationally safe system that has worked extremely well for many years, ensuring that recipients receive severe weather alerts in a timely and reliable manner. The results of this project are clear: the “Safe & Secure Vienna 2006” award, ISO certification and many years of successful application.
