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Specialization and segmentation, these are the watchwords as meteorology forecasts its way into the latter half of the millennium¡¯s first decade. Rough forecasts by cities or county are old hat: now the public want to know how the weather will change within the hour in a 1 km radius of their home. And the industry can oblige.
¡°Customized¡± weather forecasts are based on information published by the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) by city and county, and private weather forecasters then add the finishing touches by putting in ground configurations, facilities and population. For even more accurate and detailed weather information, Auto Weather Systems can calculate temperature, humidity, wind direction and speed and air pressure. Personalized weather forecasts are updated every three hours for three days ahead and cover areas barely bigger than neighborhoods measuring 5 km by 5 km. When customers want weather information for a certain day in a certain area, more detailed analysis and forecasts are made. Accuracy is high, or at least about as good as conventional forecasts, at 85 percent.
As weather forecast technology develops, so does the market based on it. The KMA says total revenues of domestic private weather forecasters, which stood at a mere W4 billion(US$4 million) in 2001, doubled to W8.4 billion in 2003 and again to W14.5 billion in 2005. Sectors from leisure and sports (7.9 percent) to transport (6.7 percent), from construction (39.8 percent) to distribution (13.3 percent) are using weather information to reduce cost and increase sales.
One such business is Hansol's leisure resort Oak Valley, which gets its weather update every two or three hours from a private weather forecaster. When more than 15 mm of rain is expected, the resort notifies customers who have booked for the day. "Our revenues have grown more than W5 billion annually since we started using weather reports in running the resort,¡± a staffer says.
Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering is another firm that benefits from the service. It plans outdoor jobs like painting and welding of hulls based on customized weather forecasts the company started using last August. As a result, delays in delivery, which stood at as much as 10-20 percent until 2004, dropped to zero at the end of last year. Moreover, while the company suffered losses worth billions of won when four of its LNG ships were damaged in a surprise attack from typhoon Maemi in 2003, last September¡¯s typhoon Nabi found the company prepared.
Experts say more technology development is needed to get the maximum benefit from customized weather forecasts. Technology needs to improve to produce more accurate and detailed weather information and, more importantly, that information must be packaged so it can be more conveniently put to use in customers¡¯ daily lives, they say.
Take the example of wind and rain. Precipitation and wind speed figures in themselves are no use unless customers can translate them easily into the wetness underfoot and the banging shutters they will mean for them. "We could provide information for customers¡¯ makeup and clothes like the cooling and heating indices we already offer,¡± a KMA official says. Another idea would be to offer weather forecasts about a motorist¡¯s destination via the in-car navigation system.
"There are plenty of areas in society that can benefit from using weather information,¡± he adds. ¡°Actually, the weather forecast market generates almost W1 trillion in the U.S. and W500 billion in Japan. We need to make efforts to capitalize on weather data in diverse ways instead of just looking at the weather as a risk factor for running a business.¡±
(englishnews@chosunn.com )
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