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Wednesday 2.00pm
Dr Michael Uddstrom, Science Leader from NIWA (National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research), New Zealand, gave a very interesting outcomes based talk on the Early-warning systems for weather, floods, landslides, and coastal and marine natural hazards, using NIWA's Integrated Hazard Forecasting System. Weather-related hazards have historically been the most frequent and costly of hazards in New Zealand, especially when considering the downstream effects of floods, landslides and service disruption. The model control system considers the problem of automation of regular forecasts from multiple environmental models (weather, waves, hydrology, storm surge) over a heterogeneous distribution system, with multiple runtime dependencies, so that end users have a system they can rely on.
Chris Elvidge, of the NOAA National Geophysical Data Centre at Colerado, joined by videoconference, to talk on the estimation of poverty rates based on satellite observed night time lights across the world. His hypothesis was that observed night lighting may be able to demonstrate or estimate poverty levels worldwide. He overlaid the data he obtained on lighting, on the World Bank poverty map. The results he found, were encouraging.