Information Technology Reference
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output result, e.g. the date of the first appearance of a pest. In the first part of this chapter
a software is presented which was developed to administer the data of weather stations
and to make it available for prognosis models. In the second part the results of a study
how to increase the accuracy of simulation models by using Geographic Information
Systems (GIS) are presented. The influence of elevation and geographical location on
temperature and relative humidity are interpolated using GIS methods, whereas
precipitation data was obtained from radar measurements. These meteorological data
were then used as input for the simulation models. The output of the models is presented
as spatial risk maps in which areas of maximum risk of a disease are displayed. It is
expected that by using GIS methods the acceptance of model outputs will be increased by
the farmers. Finally model validation is one of the essential requirements of the model
development process to guarantee that models are accepted and used to support decision
making. Validation ensures that the model meets its intended requirements in terms of
the employed methods and the obtained results. The ultimate aim of model validation is
to make the model useful ensuring that the model addresses the right problem, provides
accurate information about the system which is being modelled and makes it actually be
used. Methods for the validation and evaluation of forecasting models are described in
the third part of this chapter.
2. Management of meteorological data
The meteorological data in Germany are provided on the one hand by the German
meteorological service, on the other hand some federal states in Germany built up their own
meteorological networks. At the moment data of 148 stations of the German meteorological
service and 417 stations owned by the federal states are available. In sum these are data of
565 stations which can be used to run decision support systems. The federal states use the
locally installed program AgmedaWin (Agrometeorological database for Windows) (Keil &
Kleinhenz, 2007) to administer the data of their own weather stations. With AgmedaWin
they can import, check, evaluate and store the meteorological data and export them to the
internet system www.isip.de in which the data are imported and forecast models are run.
AgmedaWin is used so far in 8 states in Germany since 2005. Also the data of the German
meteorological service are transferred to www.isip.de.
2.1 Import of meteorological data
Meteorological data can be imported in AgmedaWin as long as the file containing the
meteorological data is an ASCII file. The format of the ASCII files of different stations can
vary, depending on the type and the manufacturer and depending on the sensor equipment
of the weather station.
With AgmedaWin it is possible to import data having different formats. For this reason an
“import wizard” was developed. With the import wizard it is possible to describe exactly
the format of almost every ASCII import file by defining “import profiles”. The advantage
of this solution is that no changes in the program are necessary when a station with a new
data format is added. In this case only a new import profile is defined and assigned to the
weather station.
How the format of an ASCII file can be described with an import profile is shown in fig. 1
(a-c).
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