Saint Lucia is the West Indies Country Island in the Eastern Caribbean, located on the northeast of the Island of Saint Vincent and amid a Hydroemet Portal. The Development of a Hydromet Portal in Saint Lucia is an initiative of the Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project (DVRP). The Government of Saint Lucia aims to strengthen its hydrological and meteorological services and to provide more accurate climate data and forecasts.
The Saint Lucia Government recently reached out to their social media handle and shared about the Development of the Hydromet Portal in Saint Lucia.
The Saint Lucia Government shared that in the 21st century, technology will soon improve the work of The Saint Lucia Met Service and the Water Resource Management Agency (WRMA). The development of a Hydromet Portal is an initiative of the Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project (DVRP). It also shared about the online facilities the system provides to the people of Saint Lucia for adequate water supply and management. The government shared that the online platform allows users to collect, archive, visualize and share hydrometeorological data.
The Hydrometeorological data can forecast the amount of rain and its effect on specific areas. The Information Systems Manager of The WRMA, Luther Tyson, said that the new system would support his organization and the Saint Lucia Meteorological Service.
“Met services and WRMA are at the top of the early warning system or information chain because they are the data providers. The Saint Lucia government provide the information and the data upon which decisions are made. In that regard, it is also important to provide that information promptly. Hence, the purpose of the Hydromet Portal system is to speed up the access to that information to their partners like NEMO, which is responsible for communication when it comes to declaring a disaster or instructing persons of the general public what they should be doing,” Tyson explains.
System users were treated to a 5-day training session towards the end of March. “This week, The Hydromet Portal had training with the system developers, so there are two contracted firms—one from Italy, CIMA and the other from The Netherlands, Deltares. Deltares is responsible for the back end, which is the database, that will drive the system. CIMA is responsible for the user interface, the front end, and the web portal, which most people will interact with,” Reveals Tyson.
The International Centre for Environmental Monitoring (CIMA Foundation) is a non-profit research organization. Deltares is a non-profit knowledge institute for water and the subsurface.
Hydrologist of CIMA, Dr Alessandro Masoero, explains the twofold objective of the Hydro met Portal. “The first one is to allow and enable the two agencies, the weather resource management agency and the Met Services, to work together to share the weather and water information in a single access point that is the Hydro met Portal and to perform their analysis forecast and assessment to this Portal.
The other objective of the Hydro met Portal is to share the most critical information with the general public,“ Masero notes. Aside from platform development and training sessions, the project also includes the supply of necessary hardware.
