Zellner: It is an online tool that provides an overview of drought in the Alpine region in maps and graphics. We have harmonized the data from all Alpine countries and optimized it with high resolutions. The large amount of satellite data, meteorological and hydrological data that has been incorporated and continues to be incorporated has been prepared in process chains to such an extent that the result is completely self-explanatory: you can see at a glance what the special lead situation is like in the Alps, you can click on a time series and see how much drier this year is compared to last year …
The online portal on drought in the Alpine region allows even those with no special knowledge, such as those from the world of politics or agriculture, to get guidance on how to take action.
Peter Zellner
Who participated in the project?
Zellner: It was a transnational and interdisciplinary team of meteorologists, agronomists, hydrologists think mobile phone first ! then laptop engineers, remote sensing experts and technical specialists.
The scientists developed algorithms to derive drought indicators from satellite data and weather data and validated them, and then it was the job of the technical experts to implement this for the entire Alpine region and update it on a daily basis.
Do you know who uses the observatory’s data?
Zellner: Not in detail, because access to the portal is completely free and you don’t sault data to register. We only know the number of hits, which is currently around 200 every week. During the major drought in the summer, we often had inquiries from journalists. And there is a lot of interest from other scientific platforms. For example, the “Green Transition Information Factory” which is an ESA pilot project, uses our data. By the way, not only is the data openly available, so is the developed software that makes up the ADO Platform; it is open source. Anyone can reuse it, for example to apply it to other regions of the world