The advent of new technologies based on the Web has raised both awareness and expectation amongst a large section of traditional users of meteorological data. No longer the passive display of a few meteorological parameters such as rainfall, but increasingly key decision makers are expecting a range of services from simple visualisation to full integration with command and control systems hosted by the end user. This has led to a need to understand the new requirements and make radical changes in the way in which we interact with our customers by intelligently exploiting the newly available technologies. Recent flooding events have show how important the local environment is terms of understanding the impact of severe weather and increasingly our clients expect more than just simple file transfers or pictures but the ability to integrate with other sources of information such as “Geographical Information Systems” (GIS). This need for information “in context” is increasing, especially as our traditional users are much more aware of technologies such as GIS

Recent improvements in the spatial resolution of NWP (Numerical Weather Prediction) models has meant that the Met Office's forecasting capability has now improved to the extent that forecasts are now available at lengths scales of a few kilometres over the UK. This increase in spatial resolution has meant that weather forecasts, particularly precipitation, are increasingly useful on a scale that was hitherto unachievable and therefore the need to combine this high resolution data with infrastructure e.g. roads, storm drains, buildings etc is becoming increasingly important. Thus there is a need to deliver this data to those who are responsible for local services such as emergency responders e.g. fire crews, police, medical etc as well as those who are responsible for the day to day running our communities. The main challenge that we face is to ensure that the information presented to the responders is timely, relevant, and accurate and of a form that is directly useable by those who need access to it.

This talk presents the design and development of the web-based applications currently taking place within the Met office based on a rapidly forming SOA (Service Orientated Architecture). One of the main drivers behind this initiative is to ensure that the Met Office is better positioned to respond to the requirements and expectations of our customers with particular respect to the response to sever weather events such as flooding or pollution. The emerging architecture has as its foundation a number of standards, especially those developed by the OGC, ISO and W3C. These standards allow but do not guarantee interoperability; there are number of reasons for this and the lessons learned will be described.