Update of three new weather stations in Rotterdam

In the morning of the 5th of May 2014, the internal systems of three small weather stations in the area of Rotterdam were updated. In order to do so, the software needed to be installed and tested on site. At the same time the maintenance of the measuring devices of the weather station was done. Robbert Eggermont and Ruud de Jong, both working at the faculty Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science of  TU Delft, performed this maintenance and updates.

In total, there are 14 weather stations located in the area of Rotterdam. Eight of them have been updated with the newest communication software. The old communication software worked with GSM signals, and the new software is working with GPRS. The change of the software leads to a change in data collection process. In the old system, the data server needed to connect to the weather stations to collect the data, and was collected once a day. Now, with the GPRS system, the data is sent automatically to the data server every 5 minutes. With the use of this system, we have direct access to the data in real-time. In addition, this system can detect sensor errors very quickly. The new software will be installed on the other six stations in the near future.

The weather stations work on solar energy, collected with a solar panel. The stations are equipped with a tipping bucket rain gauge, an ultrasonic anemometer, a temperature and relative humidity sensor, a net radiation sensor and a black globe thermometer.

These stations will make it possible to validate the high-resolution rainfall radar, that will be installed in the following months on one of the highest buildings in Rotterdam. This radar, which is funded by Rotterdam, Province of Zuid-Holland, and the Interreg NWE IVB Program, will provide rainfall observations at a scale of 30x30 square meters, and better previsions of the urban floods in the Rotterdam area.