The National Centre for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting (NCHF) has beenconnected to the Vietnam Research and Education Network (VinaREN)since 2006, which has significantly helped the centre improve thequality of weather forecasting and disaster warnings.
According to NCHF, the network became a key channel in collecting andexploiting data sources from international forecast centres.
At present, VinaREN includes six network operation centres (NOC),connecting more than 60 member networks from hundreds of researchinstitutes, universities, scientific organisations, data centres andhospitals in 11 provinces and cities nationwide.
VinaREN allows Vietnam’s community of researchers and educators tomake high-speed connections with over 50 million colleagues working atmore than 8,000 centres worldwide, helping them share information onscience and technology and promoting cooperation through remoteeducation and health check-ups, grid computing, cloud computing,weather forecasting and climate change response.
Dr. Nguyen Hong Van from the VinaREN management centre said throughusing the high-speed network, several units operating inhydrometeorology forecasting frequently connect with data centres in theUS, Canada and the Asia-Pacific region to gather data on globalmodels.
At present, NCHF also exploits somesources of remote sensing observation data such as data from the MultiFunctional Transport satellite (MTSAT) and the Atmospheric MotionVectors (AMV) satellite via VinaREN. The move helps improve theoperation of regional weather forecast models and meets the demands ofshort and medium-term forecasts.
It also supportsinternal and external research activities in sharing data related tohydro-meteorological and climate change forecasts, especially stormprojections over the East Sea.
According toexperts in the field, VinaREN provides access to more sources of dataand useful referential products for forecasters, especially in short andmedium-term forecasts.
VinaREN plays a key role incollecting data sources in NCHF. Total volume of data exploited via thenetwork is estimated to account for more than 90 percent of datacollected from all sources by the centre.
Since2011, the VinaREN management centre has teamed up with agencies andorganisations operating in the fields of hydrology and environment tobuild a network for collecting and sharing data from remote sensingsatellites with the aim of responding to climate change.
Thanks to VinaREN, the cost of purchasing remote sensing images toserve teaching and study reduced remarkably as many images can bedownloaded for free from satellites in under an hour.-VNA