Disaster Warning and Crisis Support

In recent years earthquakes, tsunami, typhoons, volcanic eruptions and other natural disasters and extreme weather events, have highlighted the need to improve early-warning and disaster aid systems. GÉANT plays a key role in the timely and accurate transmission of data, contributing to rescue efforts and early-warning forecasts that can make life-or-death differences to citizens across the world. Two recent instances where GÉANT has made a difference are:

Sichuan Earthquake - assisting disaster relief efforts
PAGASA and DWD - typhoon forecasts for the Philippines

 

Sichuan Earthquake –
providing bandwidth for faster disaster relief



Following the devastating Sichuan earthquake in China, in May 2008, GÉANT played a critical role in analysing the disaster’s impact and aiding reconstruction. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) used GÉANT and the ORIENT Europe/China link to transfer high-resolution satellite images of the areas devastated by the earthquake from its Italian office directly to those leading the relief work.

“Modern communication networks such as GÉANT and ORIENT are essential for an effective and speedy collaboration between the European Commission's researchers and local government in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake in China. In such a situation of natural and human disaster, we cannot afford to rely on conventional means of communication, such as fax and post, but need modern tools for carrying out a proper analysis within short deadlines. GÉANT and ORIENT provide the bandwidth to transport high-detail images, thereby making an important contribution to speeding up the reconstruction of infrastructure and to saving human lives.” – Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media

Typhoon Forecasting – delivering a reliable, high-bandwidth network for transferring life-saving data
The potentially catastrophic impact of typhoons is well understood by PAGASA, the Philippine Weather Bureau. Following one of the deadliest tropical cyclones in Philippine history, PAGASA now relies on the TEIN3 and GÉANT networks to collaborate with its German counterpart Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), generating accurate real-time flows of meteorological data to drive its forecasting and life-saving early-warning systems.

DWD has developed numerical weather forecasting models based on distributed computing to facilitate the prediction of weather systems up to five days ahead. A global model at DWD in Germany produces data for high-resolution regional models used at national meteorological services worldwide.

The vast quantities of forecast data produced at DWD are sent over the GÉANT and TEIN3 networks to PAGASA, just one of the national weather bureaus that benefits from this service, enabling the bureau to give early warnings of typhoon danger to its citizens and thus to save lives.

“We cooperate with the DWD and have access to the enormous power of their supercomputers to run our weather prediction models. This is an expense we would find difficult to manage on our own, and it is only a viable method because GÉANT, TEIN3 and PREGINET together provide an absolutely stable and predictable network for transferring the data we need.” – Dr Alan Pineda, PAGASA