BALTRAD Advanced Weather Radar Networking

Abstract

BALTRAD software exchanges weather-radar data internationally, operationally, and in real-time, and it processes the data using a common toolbox of algorithms available to every node in the decentralized radar network. This approach enables each node to access and process its own and international data to meet its local needs. The software system is developed collaboratively by the BALTRAD partnership, mostly comprising the national Meteorological and Hydrological institutes in the European Union’s Baltic Sea Region. The most important sub-systems are for data exchange, data management, scheduling and event handling, and data processing. C, Java, and Python languages are used depending on the sub-system, and sub-systems communicate using well-defined interfaces. Software is available from a dedicated Git server. BALTRAD software has been deployed throughout Europe and more recently in Canada. Funding statement: From 2009–2014, the BALTRAD and BALTRAD+ projects were part-financed by the European Union (European Regional Development Fund and European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument), with project numbers #009 and #101, respectively.

Keywords

• radar
• weather radar
• radar networking
• data exchange
• quality control