Pacific Island Meteorological Service Offices Web Site Development: a Model for Cost Efficient Implementation and Sustainability—the Case of Papua New Guinea

Pacific Islands (PI) Meteorological Service offices are using the internet to improve services to their clients. They are reducing their costs, improving the efficiency of delivering information, and creating a system that is sustainable. The Global Observing Systems Information Center (GOSIC) at the University of Delaware, in conjunction with the U.S. GCOS Program Office at the National Climatic Data Center, are jointly supporting the development

PI met offices provide clients with weather data and information on a daily basis and have been faxing information to clients. For small met offices with limited staff, this procedure has been difficult to fund, implement, and sustain. It is more efficient for clients, who have internet capability, to access meteorological information on-line. Products such as color satellite imagery, which cannot be faxed, can now be posted. These web pages, hosted at the University of Delaware in Lewes, DE, USA, are accessed and edited by PI met offices staffs over the internet using MS Frontpage. One part-time system administrator keeps the system running at GOSIC, performs back ups and software updates in support of 20 PI meteorological service offices.

The Papua New Guinea (PNG) Meteorological Service office faxes weather data to clients twice a day. They find that posting daily updates on the PNG web site and having it accessed by their clients via the internet is more cost efficient and sustainable. E-mail is used as a secondary mode of transmitting data and information. The PNG web site is in development and is available at http://pi-gcos.org/PNG/default.htm.