Ever imagined of your smartphone alerting you about the bad weather or related obstruction while you are on the way? Or as you are heading ahead, it will notify you about the black ice that can cause you an accident.
Yes! This can happen for real with the help of IoT technology. IoT based weather systems can collect data from the surrounding environment and vehicles of the same road. The sensors will measure to transmit road and weather condition. The device will update information like air temperature, barometric pressure, vehicle stability control and amount of differential rotation between wheels.
Additionally, there will also be an update about the amount of sunlight and status of headlight.
The sensor will not only assist the user to track the moisture, pressure and light, but also employ motion sensors in the form of gyroscopes and accelerometers. However, most of the sensors are available in the smartphones these days and are expected to be present all around.
This clearly means that weather measurement will be available all around and thus, it will enhance the precision of weather forecasting. Initially, these devices and systems were limited upto an extent. Let us have a quick glance over it.
The Early Phase of Weather Sensors
Before the launch of sensors and wireless technology, weather analysis was done at weather stations and sea for commanding ships. Weather sensors were used to track wind condition, pressure, speed, pressure trends, sky cover, dew points and temperature.
Concerned professionals used data to plot the graph and then forward it for forecast analysis. As in whole, forecasters plotted hundreds of data, in case of local, and sometimes thousands, in case of global forecasts. The potential of weather forecasting devices reflect that it will become easy to acquire billions of data. Thus, the more will be the data, the more will be the precision in weather forecasting. This won’t only help the drivers, but also the industries, government and agriculture.
A few years ago, a renowned company introduced remote monitoring stations for agriculture sector for measuring the ground and atmospheric conditions for soil moisture. And now, around 4,000 systems have been deployed.
Usually, this data is used by government and private sectors associated with agriculture to make the improvement in water, pesticides, fertilizers and supplied water. The system can also help the farmers to figure out the changes in the land status.
Also, it will become easy for farmers to identify the micro-climates on farm. Basically, the concept was having the aim of diminishing the risk of weather and optimizing the water so that money could be saved.
Accuracy Issues
Using the weather data for analysis received from different sources is a bit of daunting task, thus, the weather researchers are now using the data along with the sensor data. The meta data can be used as it will help the researchers to detect the instrument used for storing the data and its accuracy can also be easily identified.
Thus, the researchers can also use their precious time picking only the useful data and neglecting the irrelevant one. It is another noteworthy fact that the data collected by the sensor may vary depending upon the location it is mounted. Even the surrounding colors can affect the accuracy of the device. However, no standards have been released for placing the sensors.
Impact on Various Sectors
An immense benefits can be availed out of the weather data received by vehicle sensors. These can be used to generate the alerts for the drivers. On an average, over 5.6 million car crashes in a year and 22% crashes due to weather calamities. All such accidents and crashes can be avoided and approximately 445,000 people could be saved from injuries and 6,000 from death. There are many more challenges to be tackled.
Sensor data also helps in capturing the physics with a perfection with fine resolutions. Micro-climates can also be influenced by urban lakes, environments, streams, rivers and other natural elements.
As of now, weather forecasts cannot be tracked using vehicle sensors or cellphones on the regular basis, but a solution will be introduced soon. In short, in the upcoming years, research will help in availing methods and technique in advantage.
