Maceió, May 6, 2019 - A state-of-the-art meteorological station will be installed this Monday (6) in the Army Barracks, at Avenida Fernandes Lima, in Maceió. With the equipment arriving, the objective is to obtain more precise weather forecasts in the district of Pinheiro, with more anticipated calculation of the amount of rain estimated for the region. 

The meteorological station is multifunctional: besides of measuring the rain volume, it also measures more accurately the temperature, air humidity, atmospheric pressure, direction and speed of the winds. According to Gleyson Marquesin, operations manager at PCP Engenharia, company hired by Braskem to execute the installation of the station, the technology will allow the forecast of the rain volume with up to ten days of anticipation.  

The installation of the meteorological station in the district of Pinheiro is part of a set of emergency actions proposed by Braskem in a partnership with the Municipality of Maceió, the Federal, State and Labor Public Prosecutor's Offices (MPF, MPE and MPT) of Alagoas and the Regional Council of Engineering and Agronomy (CREA-AL) to mitigate the effects of the rainy periods in the district. 

Big data

The meteorological station will collect multiple data and it is interconnected to a network of rainwater stations located all along the Brazilian coast. "This will allow us to aggregate information and increase the assertiveness in the forecasts" explains Marquesin, and adds: "Through big data, we will generate reports that are easily analyzed by the technicians and generate safety alerts". 

All data will be collected constantly - and those referring to rain volume, every minute. The information will be generated and stored automatically in cloud systems every 15 minutes, with no need of 3G or 4G Internet infrastructure for remote collection. Once consolidated and processed, the information will be made available to the Civil Defense every hour in an on-line platform.

Among other equipment, the structure of the meteorological station comprises a rain gauge with capacity to measure up to 225 mm of rain per hour. "For comparative purposes, in the early morning of January 28, when the rain in Maceió achieved the estimation for the whole month, the rain volume registered was 120 mm. So, we will use a rain gauge with high capacity and we will be able to measure from light drizzle to tempests with high precision" states the operation manager at PCP Engenharia.