WeatherPia knocks on global market with high-end snow gauge
WeatherPia President Lee Chun-woo, left, stands with foreign buyers at an international trade show hosted by the World Meteorological Organization in July last year. / Courtesy of WeatherPia
This is the first in a series of stories about Korean meteorological equipment makers seeking overseas expansion. ― ED.
By Park Si-soo
WeatherPia looks to sweep the global meteorological equipment market with its multipoint snow gauge.
The device has higher accuracy than similar products from rival companies thanks to patented multipoint scanning technology ― collecting data from up to 200 points on sample ground.
Accurate measurement of snow depth is crucial to ensure safe management of road and air traffic, as well as to support many other economic and military activities.
The gauge is also designed to provide quickly information about the onset of snowfall or snowmelt to weather agencies.
“Nothing can challenge our product in terms of accuracy,” WeatherPia President Lee Chun-woo told The Korea Times at his office in central Seoul.
“There are many snow gauges on the market, but many of them check depth based on data from a single point or dozens, at best.”
The performance of WeatherPia device, named SDMS-30, was proven by field tests over the winter seasons in 2013 and 2014. Five SDMS-30s are installed at five meteorological observatories here, transmitting data to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA).
Lee said the device was designed to operate without trouble in extreme conditions ― between minus 40 degrees Celsius to 50 degrees Celsius.
He believes there will be high demand for the product in snow-blanketed regions during winter, especially in Russia, Canada and northern parts of the United States.
He plans to promote SDMS-30 at the Meteorological Technology World Expo in Belgium in October and at many other international events.
“A small number of European companies have dominated the snow gauge market. But we will break the dominance with SDMS-30,” he said. “I believe we will make it.”
Meanwhile, WeatherPia sees its big growth potential in developing countries with what he calls “weather industry advancement services.”
Under the services, WeatherPia engineers examine working and technological conditions facing clients, mostly weather agencies, and suggest cost-efficient and time-saving ways to improve their weather forecasting capacity significantly.
“Korea was able to have a highly reliable weather forecasting system in a relatively short period of time,” Lee said.
“It was possible because of the KMA’s ‘information integration system,’ in which data from domestic and foreign weather satellites, radars and grounded, floating and flying monitoring devices is put together and processed into a form with which weather forecasters can make reasonable forecasting.
“Our consulting will enable this to happen in nations with poor weather forecasting capacity.”
Lee contributed to establishing the system while at the KMA from 1970 to 2005.
Among clients for the services were state weather agencies in Mongolia, Vietnam, Myanmar and the Philippines.