October 31 isWorld Cities Day (WCD)，and the theme of 2024 is "Building People-Centered Cities for Better Life". Find out how meteorological factors and services are integrated into 5 Chinese cities.

Shanghai：

In June, 2024, experts from the Shanghai Municipal Meteorological Service (SMMS) introduced the progress of the development of the“Urban Multi-Hazard Early Warning Toolbox” at a side event of 78th session of the Executive Council (EC-78) of World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The interface of Urban Multi-Hazard Early Warning Toolbox. Source: SMMS

The Toolbox integratesinstitutional tools, algorithm, modeling tools and operational systems that support urban multi-hazard early warning risk assessment, monitoring and warning, information dissemination and emergency response. It provides ready-to-use and customized services for countries in need, reducing the difficulty of professional operation and the cost of secondary development and learning. In addition, it is also able to provide full chain solutions based on weather and scenarios according to the common problems of urban disaster prevention and mitigation.

Beijing:

On March 23, 2021, the “meteorological brain” of Haidian District, Beijing was initially completed. With the completion of 20 sets of intelligent meteorological observation stations, it is like the formation of a neural perception network, which allows meteorological data to be officially landed on the Intelligent Operations Center (IOC) to serve the city operation and management.

There are more than 20,000 city cameras in Haidian District, whose data have been connected to the“meteorological brain”to provide support for recognizing weather disasters through artificial intelligence technology. During the extreme rainstorm at the end of July 2023, the “meteorological brain” identified signs of flash floods in some areas behind the Haidian Mountains to help avoid casualties.

The“meteorological brain”. Source: Haidian District Meteorological Office

Fujian：

On May 13, 2024, a new version of the Fuzhou Metro Weather Service System was operationalized. Due to new scientific and technological meteorological achievements and customized “call and response” services, the speed of early warning response has been accelerated by 3 to 5 minutes on the basis of the previous one.

In Fujian traffic management weather risk management platform, road ice, fog, heavy precipitation and other risk warning technology to achieve location-based traffic weather monitoring, automatic grading warning and meteorological disaster visualization. And the Digital Intelligent Platform for Weather Forecast and Warning Services -“Meteorological Fairy” into the Fuzhou city flood risk model, automatic alarm function can help increase the efficiency of drainage and flood control emergency response by more than 50%.

The "Meteorological Fairy" Source: Fuzhou Municipal Meteorological Department

Zhejiang：　　　      

In Zhejiang, Ningbo Municipal Meteorological Department has made the “Tianji” robot to realize extreme weather response loop, including automatic correspondence of meteorological elements, real-time “call and response” of the robot, the first response of the charge person, and timely response of the emergency management department. Its service object covers transportation, sea fishing, flash floods, water resource dispatching, drainage, marine engineering, electricity and insurance and other industries. With the "Tianji" robot in place, the risk rate of port container terminals was reduced by 71.2% in 2023, and the number of hours of operation was increased by about 150 hours.

Moreover, all weather stations in Ningbo have been automatically matched to the city's 12,751 grid points, realizing the precision of weather information into the grid.

Editor: JIANG Zhiqing