Weather is life, especially in rural areas of most developing countries. Being able to manage rather than coping with weather impacts makes all the difference.
ownweather supports setup, operation and expansion of locally owned, decentralized, open-source and low-cost systems that generate and distribute the weather intelligence required for sustainable livelihoods.
Own weather stations A wealth of affordable sensors allows for assembly of weather stations which cost a fraction of commercial alternatives. When combined with open-source hardware designs and firmware, they become easy to maintain.
Own server and processing Open-source systems, receiving and processing the data from these stations for localized weather forecasts and intelligence, avoid vendor lockin and reduce operating costs to a minimum.
Own weather intelligence The specifics of productive weather intelligence differ locally. ownweather supports local partners in adapting existing or developing additional services. Local solutions are equally important when it comes to delivery of weather intelligence across the last mile, accounting for local coverage of cell phone (internet) and digital literacy of end users. Being open-source, the portfolio of services offered by the systems curated by ownweather grows with every localized application.
ownweather builds on the technical foundations laid by a scientific consortium of MeteoSwiss, ICARDA, WMO, and SLF. Led by Caritas Switzerland, these partners, together with their national counterparts, established a fully open-source end-to-end system for delivering targeted Weather Water Climate Services (WWCS) to the population of Tajikistan. Jointly funded between Caritas Switzerland, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and several Swiss foundations and donors, Caritas Switzerland and Tajik Hydromet have jointly installed 300+ low-cost weather stations across the entire country. Their data allow for locally specific weather forecasts and a suite of relevant WWCS for agriculture. Pilot replications of the systems developed in other countries of Caritas Switzerland’s operations are under way.
Long-term operation and maintenance of the station network and related systems is undertaken by a public-private-partnership between Tajik Hydromet and Rizome Systems, a spinoff of Caritas Switzerland established as a for-profit company in Tajikistan.
ownweather curates and bundles the technical know-how from the initial work on WWCS, made productive through Rizome Systems in Tajikistan. In going forward, ownweather collaborates with a growing network of partners across countries and continents. Jointly expanding the portfolio of WWCS and bringing these to the public domain, partners and ownweather push for a weather intelligence which is owned and becomes productive locally.