The Hong Kong Observatorys "Weather Services on GIS" won ICT Awards

11 April 2014

The "Weather Services on GIS" won the Best Lifestyle (Learning & Living) Bronze Award in the Hong Kong Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Awards 2014. The Awards aims to recognise and promote outstanding ICT inventions and applications, encouraging innovation and excellence among Hong Kong’s ICT talents and enterprises. The Best Lifestyle Award recognises excellence of ICT development and adoption to most outstanding applications, services, products that enable people move towards a more convenient and enjoyable lifestyle. The awards were presented at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on 7 April.

Weather conditions and their evolutions can vary considerably across different parts of Hong Kong. The "Weather Services on GIS (Geographical Information System)" websites feature regional weather information in Hong Kong, including actual meteorological observations and forecasts for the next few days. The websites depict detailed current weather and forecasts at different regions, facilitating members of the public in planning their daily activities. Employing the latest technologies of internet web browsers and map services, the GIS platform enables the public to easily gain access to location-specific weather information of temperature, relative humidity, wind direction and wind speed via the web browsers in computers, mobile phones and mobile tablet devices. Radar images and lightning location information can also be overlaid to depict areas being affected by rain and thunderstorms. In the Automatic Regional Weather Forecast webpage, members of the public can view the regional distribution of weather information in the next few days in still picture as well as animation sequence. By selecting a location, users can see the time series charts of hourly weather information at the location concerned as well as the chance of rain over Hong Kong for each day.

You are welcome to visit the webpages of the Regional Weather in Hong Kong on GIS ( http://maps.weather.gov.hk/index_e.html ), and the Automatic Regional Weather Forecast ( http://maps.weather.gov.hk/ocf/index_e.html ).

Chief Executive Officer of Junior Achievement Hong Kong, Ms. Vivian Lau (third from right), presented the award to the project team of the "Weather Services on GIS" including Mr. Ma Wai-man, Senior Scientific Officer (fourth from left) and Mr. Wong Wai-kin, Acting Senior Scientific Officer (second from right).