Harry Otten Prize for Innovation in Meteorology awarded for the first time

Idea to use “Social media for meteorological prediction and information” receives 25,000 Euro

The Harry Otten Prize for Innovation in Meteorology has been awarded for the first time during the Annual Meeting of the European Meteorological Society currently taking place in Reading (UK). Harry Otten announced that the jury has decided that Karolina Stanisławska with her idea “Social media for meteorological prediction and information” has won the prize which is endowed with 25,000 Euro.

The idea “Social media for meteorological prediction and information” proposed by Karolina Stanisławska is about constructing a meteorological system based on the information extracted exclusively from social media content. The system would be a service providing crowdsourced information about actual weather conditions, identification of hazardous weather events and reaction of people to weather information.

Karolina was born in Poland and graduated in computer science at the Poznań University of Technology in 2011. She is currently working as a researcher in climate modelling and greenhouse gases topics for the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) and as a programmer for improving point forecasts for Institute of Meteorological Research (IMR) in Iceland.

The winner of the prize has been selected out of three finalists. The other two finalists received 2,500 Euro for the following ideas:

The “Global Weather Alliance – the WeatherShare service – wxshare.org” presented by Karl H. Eggestad is a free and open video and audio clip and image material service specifically targeted for the worldwide weather broadcasting community.

“Forecasting and Mapping Ice Thickness for Ice Skating on Natural Lakes and Canals” presented by Gert-Jan Steeneveld, Bert Heusinkveld and Kevin Damman aims at improving the quantitative forecasting of ice growth and communicating this in a fast way to the general public.

Overall the jury has received 19 applications for the prize mainly from different European countries and the USA. The Harry Otten Prize is awarded every two years. More information including the full abstracts of the finalists is available on this website.

Hans Reiff, Chairman of the jury: “Karolina’s idea is highly innovative with significant potential benefits to society.  These benefits include both use of people to provide weather data and information to meteorologists through the social media as well as information on how society reacts to weather information and forecasts from meteorologists.“

Harry Otten, Founder of the Harry Otten Foundation: “I am delighted that the Prize has been awarded to such an innovative proposal. I hope that the Prize helps to put her idea into practice.“

Pictures from the EMS Annual Meeting 2013 – Awards Ceremony