The Solomon Islands Meteorological Service (SIMS) is the responsible Government office for issuing weather updates and early warning information for most natural hazards such as tsunamis, cyclones, flooding, heavy rainfall, and other potential disasters.
Every day the SIMS office gathers weather and climate data from its various network of data collection mechanisms (i.e. Automatic Weather Stations, Manned stations, Satellite etc.) around the country, however, there are challenges with limited capacity to store data. The Solomon Islands National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) issues ‘what to do’ information based on early warning alerts from SIMS during an emergency or disaster event.
United Nations Development Programme - UNDP, in partnership with the Australian High Commission, Solomon Islands (Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade), was pleased to hand over a set of server equipment as well as ICT accessories to increase the storage capacity of SIMS to perform their early warning mandate.
The weather and climate data can be further analyzed by key decision makers to develop actionable risk information for a broad range of sectors and the public.
Also handed over at the same event were ICT equipment to support the NDMO response capacity and business continuity for MECDM Corporate Division.
This handover was part of the Integrated Disaster Risk Management project implemented by UNDP Solomon Islands in partnership with the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change, Disaster Management, and Meteorology with financial support from the Australian Government.
Source: UNDP