By Rivka Borochov
Knowing which way the wind will blow or when the floodwaters will flow has been an age-old human preoccupation. Business, and survival, depend on the weather.
At first there was a wet finger to the wind, and then native Americans who studied cloud patterns to predict rainfall. Later there was a Farmer’s Almanac, then the weatherman, and then the ubiquitous 24-hour weather channels. The next evolution in weather prediction comes from a company in Israel that has developed a powerful predictive tool useful for transportation businesses, aviation companies and wind farms.
Meteo-Logic, founded in 2011, created a cloud-based software-as-a-service solution that lets independent weather stations, or owners of point-source weather data, get hourly predictions on the weather – updates more powerful than any tool available before. The company’s solution bypasses the need for costly human-generated maps, weather synopses and biased interpretations.
Meteo-Logic’s founder and CEO Igal Zivoni, an engineer, says the 10-person company has a proprietary algorithm to number-crunch all the data.
“We give the weather prediction power to the world, an hourly prediction which can be assessed from any of the parameters being measured by the local weather station,” says Zivoni.
Fed into the system are real-time point source readings from weather stations and historical data from at least three years back at the station, all cross-referenced to open-source GSS data provided by the US government from its weather satellites around the world.
Meteo-Logic aims to take guesswork out of weather predictionFree for now
The first market of Meteo-Logic’s three targets is the wind-farm business: working a bit like a brokerage house, wind-farm owners and energy dealers can bargain better for their energy production with utility companies if they can accurately forecast what they are going to produce based on the wind. Wind farms that don’t deliver according to their contracts can be penalized, so Mateo-Logic can help wind farms become more profitable.
"Meteo-Logic revolutionizes the wind-farm weather forecasting market, offering exact and detailed micro-forecasts based on the client's specific needs," says Zivoni.
"Our ability to provide exact weather prediction for each turbine separately at cost-effective price makes Meteo-Logic's service very attractive for all those operating in the wind-power energy field."
To date, the company has about 100 beta testing sites in Israel, among which are wind-farm owners.
Broad potential applications
Among the weather parameters the Meteo-Logic software can predict include humidity, temperature, wind speed and direction, and the amount of precipitation that can be expected – all within a one-hour time frame.
Organizations without weather stations can still benefit from the system as long as weather measurements are being taken somewhere in the region of interest.
The Meteo-Logic solution could also save lives and basic assets of people in poorer countries who lack expensive infrastructure for human-based prediction and analyses.
Some examples of organizations that could benefit from the Meteo-Logic system include national parks, aviation companies, trucking companies (will their fleets be heading into unsavory weather?), sailing companies and seaports.
Based in Ramot Hashovim, self-funded Meteo-Logic has launched its service for wind-farm companies around the world, and it expects to start marketing in other directions in the coming months.
All that is needed to start using the system is an upload of historical data from the weather system, along with an upload of a real-time weather data feed.