| Consider your options for looking up local weather | | | | the safety of people or property. |
| conditions. Do you use an Internet website? | | | | 2. Integration with standardized GIS formats |
| Perhaps you have installed weather software on | | | | Millions of datasets comprising petabytes of data |
| your desktop? Regardless of the source, you | | | | already exist in the form of standardized GIS |
| must consider if it was built on a robust, | | | | formats like ESRI Shapefiles, Digital Elevation |
| industrial-strength GIS engine. If not, the way you | | | | Models, GeoTIFF, and Geographic Markup |
| are currently predicting and monitoring weather | | | | Language. A modern-day GIS engine would |
| threats may not be as sophisticated as you think | | | | support all of these formats giving you the |
| - or as accurate as you need to stay safe. | | | | flexibility to combine basemaps and foreground |
| In recent years, there has been an explosion of | | | | layers with weather data. |
| activity in the computerized mapping industry, | | | | 3. Repurposing weather conditions for specific |
| known as Geographic Information Systems (or | | | | uses |
| GIS for short). Advances in Internet-based GIS | | | | Anyone who is serious about weather tracking |
| platforms and the rapid adoption of broadband | | | | needs the ability to customize how weather data |
| have allowed countries, states, and cities to start | | | | is rendered. GIS applications usually contain |
| distributing geographic datasets of their territories | | | | sophisticated rendering engines for customizing |
| through their own websites. The availability of | | | | the appearance of data - the shapes, colors, |
| geographic data has never been greater. | | | | labels, and transparency of each layer. |
| That's why the integration of weather software | | | | 4. Collision-detection and alerting |
| and GIS is a natural fit. In fact, many government | | | | Another important reason why GIS software |
| and private weather agencies have been | | | | makes the most effective weather monitoring |
| harnessing these advances to provide more | | | | solution is its built-in ability to detect collisions |
| accurate, more timely weather information to | | | | (intersections) between various shapes and layers |
| their customers by distributing weather data in | | | | inside a dataset. For weather software, the |
| standardized GIS formats. | | | | benefit is clear: detect weather threats |
| When it comes to weather tracking, here are | | | | immediately at precise locations before they |
| some of the advantages of using GIS-enabled | | | | reach you. |
| weather software: | | | | The next time severe weather approaches, |
| 1. Accuracy in weather prediction and monitoring | | | | instead of a time-delayed, low-resolution weather |
| With high resolution mapping software, accuracy is | | | | website, consider the advances in GIS technology |
| automatically increased. Knowing precisely where | | | | and what hyper-local, hyper-current weather |
| the weather threats are in relation to your | | | | tracking could mean for you. |
| location is a must when you are responsible for | | | | |