poor reservoir management with deforestation, environmental degradation,
poor agriculture practices in catchment areas contributing as well. The result
was low water levels and under performance of turbines, cascade operations
sustained thru low level outlet releases. The recommendations to KPLG and
the government from this study included incorporating seasonal forecasts
into its long term plan for hydropower management. For the prediction
community there is a need to increase rainfall prediction tools, and to
incorporate soil and evaporation for calculation of water losses.
13.
Entraining environmental information in decision
support tools
One of the biggest challenges to both the provider community as well as
the business community is to turn an environmental forecast into a business
decision support tool. From the user point of view, the high level goal of the
entire process is to “morph” the environmental information into something
that the industry can use – or “Turning a metocean forecast into a business
forecast” to enhance decision making. The steps are straightforward and
consist of
1. Improving the metocean product to deliver the information on an
operational basis and in a format usable by the business
community;
2. Establishing the “relationships” or dependencies between the
environmental event and the business effect (i.e. the power curve
of wind speed and electricity generation)
3. Turning that relational information into a predictive business tool
4. Using the predictive tool to formulate an action plan
Figure 11 illustrates how appropriately designed decision support tools
(this one designed for MEMA, the Maryland Emergency Management
Agency) can “pull in” a hurricane track forecast, link it with a critical
infrastructure list to feed into a consequence risk assessment prediction
toolset (CATS) that is capable of informing decisions on which transmission
lines to restore (Expert Grid) in order to ensure the hospitals and shelters in
the disaster area have power. This method creates the situational awareness
to map the “at-risk” critical infrastructure with reliable environmental
forecasts to activate disaster management action plans. The work helps
emergency managers to identify, prioritize and coordinate the protection of
critical infrastructure, and can be integrated into comprehensive emergency
management systems. Ensuring that the Global Observing system
infrastructure is also on the critical infrastructure lists of nations is essential
to national security.
,
economy was $100M/month. Drought was one of the contributing factors to
502
MARY ALTALO
poor agriculture practices in catchment areas contributing as well. The result
was low water levels and under performance of turbines, cascade operations
sustained thru low level outlet releases. The recommendations to KPLG and
the government from this study included incorporating seasonal forecasts
into its long term plan for hydropower management. For the prediction
community there is a need to increase rainfall prediction tools, and to
incorporate soil and evaporation for calculation of water losses.
13.
Entraining environmental information in decision
support tools
One of the biggest challenges to both the provider community as well as
the business community is to turn an environmental forecast into a business
decision support tool. From the user point of view, the high level goal of the
entire process is to “morph” the environmental information into something
that the industry can use – or “Turning a metocean forecast into a business
forecast” to enhance decision making. The steps are straightforward and
consist of
1. Improving the metocean product to deliver the information on an
operational basis and in a format usable by the business
community;
2. Establishing the “relationships” or dependencies between the
environmental event and the business effect (i.e. the power curve
of wind speed and electricity generation)
3. Turning that relational information into a predictive business tool
4. Using the predictive tool to formulate an action plan
Figure 11 illustrates how appropriately designed decision support tools
(this one designed for MEMA, the Maryland Emergency Management
Agency) can “pull in” a hurricane track forecast, link it with a critical
infrastructure list to feed into a consequence risk assessment prediction
toolset (CATS) that is capable of informing decisions on which transmission
lines to restore (Expert Grid) in order to ensure the hospitals and shelters in
the disaster area have power. This method creates the situational awareness
to map the “at-risk” critical infrastructure with reliable environmental
forecasts to activate disaster management action plans. The work helps
emergency managers to identify, prioritize and coordinate the protection of
critical infrastructure, and can be integrated into comprehensive emergency
management systems. Ensuring that the Global Observing system
infrastructure is also on the critical infrastructure lists of nations is essential
to national security.
,
economy was $100M/month. Drought was one of the contributing factors to
502
MARY ALTALO