Synop – a New Generation Weather Information System

Challenge

We were tasked with the challenge of establishing a practical design, that included both front-end development, and functionality that would meet the businesses objectives, i.e seamless information browsing, and analysis.

Solution

The team at HQSoftware decided to give special attention to the design, as the customer required it to present complex, and substantial information that would be user-friendly. This project also included extensive front-end development, such as creating semantic, modular code using HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript. Our team also created a “high performance” page which would generate, and display over 15 meteo parameters, for selected locations, as well as allowing the user to request further analytics. 

Some of the main priorities were: 

• Creating rich, and interactive content with the help of JavaScript frameworks
• Integration with server-side code to produce dynamic pages
• Generating pure client-side javascript charts with the help of jqPlot – jQuery plugin
• Improving the speed at which the site loaded, by using automatic creation of CSS sprites using Sass and dynamic stylesheet language LESS

 Our front-end development mostly covered:

• Performance optimisation using YSlow and PageSpeed
• Revision of designs to improve site user-friendliness
• Development of cross-browser and cross-platform compatible solutions.
• Testing and debugging
• Adherence to SEO best practices (title, description, keywords, etc)
• W3C code validation

The portal that our team at HQSoftware created is now a global IT solution that improves business efficiency and safety, allowing those interested in meteo data to make better decisions.

How the System Works

In order to forecast and display real-time meteorological data, Synop installed an array of sensors on powerlines. They gather and analyse the collected data and present it in a clear and accessible manner. But Synop does not just predict the weather.

Using the weather data, Synop can anticipate potential problems on power infrastructure. An example would be powerlines being downed due to the weight of snowfall over several weeks. The system analyses past and future weather conditions and draws the conclusion that if it continues to snow with the forecast intensity, there will be a failure on the line. 

This enables a notification to be issued to the maintenance team, which tells them what needs to be done and where, in order to prevent any failures.

In parallel to this, the inventory management system tells the team which items of equipment are needed to troubleshoot the problem. It also shows the fastest and shortest way to the location. With weather data, the system determines whether there is ice on the road and analyses local traffic information (taken from Yandex maps). It collates this together to provide a total awareness picture for the repair team.

Thus, Synop benefits from predictive maintenance, inventory management, and geolocation features while providing real-time weather information and forecasts. Further, businesses are able to make data-driven decisions based on collected, verifiable evidence.