InterMET Session 1
11:30 - 13:00
CHAIR: Michael Wilton, General Manager, MMI Asia
The latest technology & service innovations from the Global Weather Enterprise which can help weather affected enterprises increase business efficiency.
- Mark Harvey, CEO and Founder, Resurgence
Title: Chiang Mai: Refining City Information Ecosystem Mapping (IEM) to Create Inclusive Weather and Climate Information Services (WCIS) and Early Warning Systems (EWS).
Abstract: How can dynamic information ecosystem mapping (IEM) approaches be applied to engage city stakeholders and, above all, vulnerable communities in the development of effective early warning systems for flood risk management?This study explored how critical design practices in disaster risk management can be integrated with an urban information ecosystem mapping technique (one of the key elements of our co-production approach we have developed in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam) to diagnose the weather and climate information needs of a city. The IEM tool, in particular, is a specific technical innovation that uses natural systems-based approaches to understand the way information flows dynamically amongst people and institutions, through various channels, and in various formats.
Through our participation at the Understanding Risk: Chiang Mai Field Lab interdisciplinary unconference (organised by Co-Risk Labs and World Bank GFDRR) in Chiang Mai last June 2019, we worked together with various hydromet and risk reduction professionals around the world and local organisations such as FOPDEV and Oasys Lab to collaborate and produce a skeletal information ecosystem mapping. By focusing on the city of Chiang Mai, the two-week research was able to pilot a community mapping methodology based on a chosen community close to the Ping River, and experiences annual flooding causing health issues, damage to property and disrupting travel.
The IEM mapping produced can help ascertain how weather and climate information is communicated, the types of user groups it reaches, and how the available information is processed and adapted for day-to-day decision-making. The type of information generated from an IEM can inform how organisations which supply the city of Chiang Mai with essential services, can address the needs of its locality. It can also present an opportunity for the Thailand Meteorological Department, disaster management authorities and public utilities to improve their capacity to anticipate and prepare for a range of climate hazards and extreme weather events to enable them to disseminate an effective weather forecast. Weather information produced and communicated based on IEM research is more likely to be relevant, timely, locally accurate and used to inform decision making. This can, therefore, lead to an integrated resilience planning that can reduce the impact of climate and weather-related shocks on the day-to-day life of its communities and stakeholders.
- Richard Fellner, CEO, nowcast GmbH
Title: How to mitigate the business impact of thunderstorms
Abstract: Disaster related to weather and climate kills thousands every year and causes billions of US$ losses. The majority of severe weather warnings are attributed to thunderstorms.
High precision lightning data helps to mitigate those risks and can protect lives and assets and are a perfect enabler for increasing operational efficiency and financial performance.
Just to mention a few examples: airports can maximize safety and reduce the time for shutting down an airport. Infrastructure companies correlate the thunderstorm information with the operational data to reduce outages and optimize service processes. Claim handling can be improved significantly.
Himanshu Mishra, Editor (Government Affairs), Department), New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV)
Title: Climate Change, SDGs and a Climate-Smart Development Agenda: Targets and Challenges for India.~
Abstract: Climate Change is significantly altering the broad contours of global climate. As the global climate crisis deepens, a significant gap remains between the national commitments made at Paris Climate Agreement (2015) and the emission reductions required to contain climate change. The United Nations has called for a three- to five-hold increase in global efforts to contain climate change to a 1.5 degree Celsius rise at the most. It has alerted that if urgent steps were not initiated by the global community, the world faces at least a 3-degrees Celsius of global heating by the end of this century.
These alarming changes in global climate are triggering abnormal changes in weather patterns, leading to a rise in climate-related disasters. In a research study titled “The human cost of natural disasters: A global perspective” (2015), the UNDRR and Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters found the climate-related disaster events like floods, storms and heat-waves more than doubled from 3,017 events recorded between 1976 and 1995 to 6,392 events recorded during the subsequent two decades between 1996 and 2015. The two consecutive years of devastating floods in Kerala in 2018 and 2019 is broadly reflective of the gradual increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events in India.
Objective: The formulation of United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September, 2015 marked a watershed in the global effort to combat the challenges posed by climate change and disasters. It is significant to note that 10 of the 17 SDGs and 25 of the 169 targets identified under SDGs are related to disaster risk reduction. This Paper attempts to critically analyze the challenges and policy bottlenecks India faces towards achieving its SDG-related targets by 2030. It also studies the commitments made by India in its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted before the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which includes a reduction in the emissions intensity of its GDP by 33-35% by 2030 from the 2005 level.
Problem Statement: India has initiated several measures to achieve its SDG-related goals and UNFCCC targets by restructuring its policies in several critical industrial sectors like transport, power, coal, telecom and steel to reduce carbon emissions. But a significant gap remains between the national commitments India has made and the emission reductions required to achieve the required targets. This Paper essentially seeks to analyze the challenges and roadblocks India faces towards achieving these targets by 2030, including the difficult task of mobilizing US $ 2.5 trillion to fund them.
Ari Davidov, Director of International Government Sales, Tomorrow.io
Title: Developing the First Operational Global Satellite Constellation of Precipitation Radars and Microwave Sounders to Enable a Modular Technical Support Solution for NMHS Multi-Hazard Impact-Based Forecast and Warning Services.
Abstract: Weather radar is one of the most important tools to track precipitation and provide short-term forecasts and warnings. However, the coverage of ground-based weather radar is limited, with roughly 5 billion people worldwide living outside of radar coverage. This limits the ability to provide reliable forecasts not just in those areas without radar coverage, but also everywhere else, because all local forecasts depend on global data.
Tomorrow.io, a weather forecasting and climate security company, is launching starting later this year a constellation of miniaturized Ka-band radar satellites and microwave sounders to provide global coverage of precipitation with an average revisit time of one hour for any given location. This first-of-its-kind constellation builds on the heritage of NASA's GPM, TRMM and RainCube satellites, leveraging advances in small satellite and sensor technologies to affordably field a constellation of precipitation radars and microwave sounders providing equal coverage across the developed and developing worlds, with the temporal resolution needed for operational applications.
The dramatic increase in precipitation data, ranked by the U.S. Group on Earth Observations as the highest priority Earth observation out of 152 parameters, will enable reliable forecasts of precipitation and extreme weather to help countries, businesses, and individuals mitigate the growing physical and financial impacts of extreme weather and climate change. This live presentation will provide a high-level view of mission objectives; calibration and validation activities; expected improvements in forecasts of extreme weather such as floods, hurricanes and drought; and applications in climate studies.
Tomorrow.io presents a fully integrated sensing, data assimilation, forecast modeling, alerting and decision support tools, supported by a global team of expert scientists and engineers, deliver high-value weather, climate, air quality, water data and products to enable NMHS mandated service delivery to government stakeholders ranging from disaster management agencies to vital economic sectors. On top of industry standard hydromet capabilities, Tomorrow.io helps equip NMHSs with innovative remote sensing and modern data architecture, resulting in scalable and cost-effective solutions, serving the technical capacity and sustainability needs of advanced, modernizing, and developing NMHS.
Michael Wilton
General Manager, MMI Asia Pte Ltd
Experienced exhibition organiser, delivering market leading international trade shows around the world, in varying industries.
A track record of establishing, growing and leading regional offices throughout Asia. Covering the responsibilities of hiring and developing teams comprised of multiple nationalities, to grow existing and launch new trade fairs (and associated events). Ensuring and achieving optimal productivity and efficiency for the company in the region.
Leading companies in Asia, including P&L, budgeting, sales, marketing (corporate and show), show/brand development (new & existing), operations and strategic direction of exhibitions and all associated events.
Mark Harvey
CEO and Founder, Resurgence Urban Resilience Trust
Mr Harvey is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Resurgence Urban Resilience Trust. He has leading expertise in flood and climate risk communication, and has over two decades of experience working on climate policy, flooding and extreme weather response and risk mitigation with clients and partners such as the World Bank, UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, UN Environment, DFID, UK Meteorological Office, AECOM, and Deloitte.
Mark is a member of the UK Flood Partnership and British Expertise. He is a Learning Associate of the Open Data Institute, and a member of the Urban Expert Group advising the UN Office of Disaster Risk Reduction 'Making Cities Resilient' Campaign.
Mark is currently leading DARAJA, Africa's premier urban weather and climate information services project, which has recently won a prestigious award from the Global Resilience Partnership to scale up.
He has degrees from Oxford & Harvard Universities, where he won a William Starr Innovations Fellowship
Himanshu Mishra
Editor (Government Affairs), New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV)
Himanshu Shekhar Mishra works as Editor (Government Affairs) in New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV), a leading twenty-four hour national news channel based in India. He was part of Prime Minister's official entourage to the UN Annual Summit in New York (September, 2003) and also to Indo-Turkish Summit in Ankara and Istanbul (2003). He has also covered Indian Prime Minister’s official visits to Islamabad, Pakistan (January, 2004) and Kabul, Afghanistan (August, 2005) as a TV news journalist.
He has also reported and researched extensively on issues related with climate-related disasters like floods. His research paper on the unprecedented floods in Jammu and Kashmir in September, 2014 was selected for presentation at the 3rd United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan in March, 2015. Titled “Interrogating Right to Compensation in Disaster Laws: A case study of Kashmir Floods”, this Paper was later published in an international volume edited by Prof. Dr. Amita Singh titled “Disaster Laws, Emerging Thresholds”. It was published by Routledge in July, 2017.
His second research paper titled “Urban Flooding and Threats to Sustainable Development: A Study of Srinagar and Chennai Floods” has been published in an edited volume titled “Disaster Risk Management in Agriculture: Case Studies in South Asian Countries”. It was published in April, 2019 in New York.
In last five years, he has presented papers on disaster management-related issues at two ASEAN University Network conferences in Manila (2015) and Kuala Lumpur (2016); BRICS Symposium in Fudan University, Shanghai (2017) and at conferences in Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee (IIT R) and Jawaharlal Nehru University. He also travelled to Seoul, South Korea to present a Paper on Crises Communication and Disaster Sensitive Journalism at an international workshop.
He holds a Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) degree from the Centre for West Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). His M. Phil Dissertation was titled: "Military in Politics: A Comparative Study of Post-War Turkey and Algeria" (1999). Earlier, he did his Post-Graduation in Political Science from Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, JNU (1995-97) and Graduation in English Literature from Delhi University.
Ari Davidov
Director of International Government Sales, Tomorrow.io
In late 2021 Ari Davidov joined Tomorrow.io and its Government and Space Division as the Director of International Government Sales. He leads Tomorrow.io global government relations with a focus on modernization programs for National Hydro-Meteorological Services. Prior to joining Tomorrow.io, Ari served as Director for International Business Development at Advanced Environmental Monitoring (AEM Group) and Earth Networks (EN a.k.a. WeatherBug), which he joined in 2011. In this role, Ari led international sales of Early Warning Systems to National Hydro-Meteorological Services and Disaster Management Agencies as part of Climate Change Adaptation.
He also managed go-to-market activity aimed at state owned enterprises in energy and aerospace verticals. Prior to EN-AEM, Ari was at an international division of News Corporation and before that with Population Services International supporting ExxonMobil’s overseas operations. Ari received his Master’s of Public Administration, International Public Service and Development from Rutgers University in 2006.
