Natural Resources Wales: Flood Forecast Web Service

Natural Resources Wales (NRW) asked Aspire systems to develop a bespoke replacement to a static and aging online weather forecast service, which is used round the clock by NRW’s duty officers.

We employed .NET technology to create a system that receives and collates large amounts of raw data from over 200 locations in Wales. This is collected, checked for accuracy and analysed through the world’s first cloud-hosted Deltares Delft-FEWS platform. It is then imported into the Forecast Web Service, giving duty officers a complete overview of the forecast, highlighting potential weather issues, and helping them to focus on any necessary decisions. Combined with a regular import of documents from third party agencies including the Met Office, the system is able to provide a complete picture of the flood risk across Wales through a single interface.

This project was a finalist in the Wales Technology Awards 2017 in the Best Tech Adopter category.

Challenges

• Highly critical system, requiring constant availability
• Large volumes of data requiring immediate processing
• Requirement to present a wide range of data using the most accessible methods available

The Solution

• Powered by the world’s first cloud-hosted Deltares Delft-FEWS platform, trusted by leading agencies worldwide
• Hosted within a resilient cloud-based, Microsoft Azure environment
• Fully integrated with the ArcGIS mapping platform
• Combining server-side processing and complex modular Javascript

Outcomes And Benefits

• Flexible layout engine, accommodating a vast array of data types
• Rolling archive of each and every forecast, allowing search and analysis of historical data patterns