HeliosTM Situational Weather Reporting: How Repurposing Sensors for the Internet of Things is Changing the Way American Business Combats Weather Interruptions

Government and weather service companies provide the best information possible using the assets available today. Yet despite significant investment, current data sources, such as satellites, radar, and airport sensors, do not provide data at the frequency and density that is required at local ground levels.   Dense ground observations provide complementary data with the level and clarity required to help business make complex business decisions.  In reality, what happens in the atmosphere is not necessarily the same as what is occurring on the ground.  For retailers, what happens at one store may not be the same or relevant to another store despite the proximity.  Store/property location and building placement make each location very different. Sensors are everywhere—attached to our wrists, embedded into our devices, employed by companies, and mounted along just about every block of our cities.  These systems are the instantiation of large invisible systems that have a very real impact on our lives.  For all their ubiquity, the aesthetics of these public objects are generally unconsidered, and their function and provenance are entirely inscrutable. It is one thing to be able to recognize a closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera; it is another, however, to know the fate of its data. Perhaps it is streaming live video to a far-off police control room, being scanned in real time for flagged license plate numbers. Or it may be recording footage that will later be viewed by a private security contractor working the night shift. Some may never have been seen by a human, instead archived to a remote server under an entirely different jurisdiction.  Emerging from such sensor data is the ability to detect information that is normally not in the context of the device manufacturer’s original purpose.  We are now see that sensors are providing significant, valuable information in many areas that they were not originally intended for.  Large retailers and property management owners are starting to understand how their current sensing equipment (e.g., CCTV cameras) surveilling their properties can be used to drive hyper-local weather data in the context of how it impacts critical infrastructure to drive the operational decisions.  This is possible using novel methods and algorithms that can uniquely detect and validate weather conditions, leveraging thousands of public and private traffic and web cameras. Various data layers can be incorporated into the system to provide hyper-local information regarding fog conditions, pavement wetness, and snow, among other conditions and events. This information assists large retailers and property management companies in improving operational efficiency and decision support, improving safety and reducing costs.