This weather-risk industry access Workshop was held on 22 June 2004 at LSE.

Background

The Centre for the Analysis of Time Series (CATS) at LSE is leading one of the Faraday Partnership research projects: DIME (Direct and Inverse Methods in End-to-End Environmental Estimation). The principal investigator on this project and Director of CATS, Dr Leonard Smith, is also involved with the NOAA THORPEX Research Program, which is directed towards serving society’s needs for weather and water information, the Framework 5 DEMETER project on seasonal forecasting, and the Framework 6 ENSEMBLES project on forecast reliability on all time scales.

There is technology emerging from these projects, namely probabilistic forecasting, which can place environmentally induced risk in the user domain to aid decision-making. Whilst there exist a number of important impact studies, the existing plethora of environmental data and emerging forecasting tools remain under-utilised by government and commercial organisations. There is a need to 'translate' this technology into society and commerce in general.

The KTN and CATS are scoping applications of this technology and plan to increase awareness of its potential benefits in the wider industrial and commercial communities. The workshop held at LSE on 22 June 2004 was the first in a series of awareness raising workshops for industry; future meetings will be held both in the UK and in the US. Follow-up activity will be offered to help those who wish to apply these methods in their businesses.