Method to Use

The detailed radar images with geographical information can be used most effectively when they are displayed on a geographical information system (GIS) platform. To this end, the radar images employ the Open GIS standard KML 2.2 (KML stands for Keyhole Markup Language, details of which is available at: http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/kml/), which is currently a popular data format on the Internet capable of displaying GIS data in the four-dimensional space and time. There are quite a number of KML-supported GIS display software available in the Internet but the degree of compliancy to version 2.2 varies a lot. The end users are recommended to choose the appropriate software according to their own needs (some general reference can be found at this web site). Through GIS display software that can be downloaded from the Internet, users can zoom-in, zoom-out, configure panoramic view and animate the radar imagery. This enables the users to appreciate the spatial coverage and the movement trends of the rain areas on the radar images, as well as the amount of rainfall that can be expected. According to internal test results (as of September 2008), "Google Earth" is found to be more comprehensive in the visualization of KML 2.2 data file. The required software can be downloaded from this web site free of charge.