Hurricane season is upon us, and for New Yorkers who remember Hurricane Sandy, this season’s La Nina weather system and warmer sea-surface temperatures are not contributing to a welcome forecast.
Hurricane warnings have historically been relayed to the general public through television or radio broadcasts, but advancements in weather tracking, combined with the availability of smartphones, is starting to change that, and open-sourced data is leading this evolution.
One newly available service is Accuweather, an app and website which aggregates open-source data from the National Weather Service’s National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD). Accuweather provides minute-by-minute precipitation forecasts, and in the case of an extreme disaster, the app can function as a warning system.
The NFDF analyzes 5-kilometer, 2-dimensional grids of air temperature, to create “experimental forecast data mosaics for the coterminous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Guam.” The NDFD’s information is openly available on data.gov, and “can be used by other governmental agencies, the private sector, the public, and the global community.”
Hurricane warning apps are undoubtedly useful to anyone preparing for an impending storm, and are an example of how open data is being collected by the government, and molded by private actors to create useful tools for the general public. While their reliance on a mobile data connection means that they cannot be the sole source of information and warnings, apps such as Accuweather have the ability to reach people quickly, making them an invaluable live-saving application, courtesy of open data.