With the growing threat of climate change, many industries need precise weather forecasting every hour. Plugin’s blockchain solution provides decentralized, verifiable weather data.
Problems with existing weather information technology
Weather intelligence platforms collect weather-related information from distributed radar and satellite systems. While this is useful for gathering data from remote corners of the world, it limits the scope of weather forecasts to wider geographic regions, such as cities and states.
These generic weather forecasts don’t provide details on how the weather will change in a specific street or neighborhood. But having this type of information empowers businesses to make more informed decisions.
Why industries need better weather data
Weather data is collected in various ways globally, but the most popular data collection methods are satellites and hyperlocal sensors. While satellites cover a wide range of geography, they compromise accuracy in specific areas that hyperlocal data can mediate. Hyperlocal data collection is the most efficient form of data collection.
One of the largest industries relying on weather updates is the agriculture sector, and the more detailed the weather forecast, the better. Bringing that information to farmers all over the world will prove to be a challenge, although blockchain technology could facilitate the matter.
The future effects of climate change will necessitate better weather information for agriculture. IPCC chairperson “Hoesung Lee” said that “The next few years will be crucial for the state of climate change in this century. This is why an updated assessment of mitigation is more important than ever”.
Why extreme weather increases the importance of weather data
Many industries, ranging from aviation and agriculture to automobiles and transportation, are significantly affected by weather phenomena like fog, freezing rain, thunderstorms, heavy wind, or even a drop in temperature.
The present increase in extreme weather events, accelerated through climate change, is significantly increasing the importance of detailed weather data from trustable systems.
Advantages of putting weather data on the blockchain
With every industry getting disrupted by new technology, blockchain wins over competitors by offering immutability, trust, security, and decentralization. Putting weather data at a granular level on the blockchain powers many use cases with real-time data at the push of a button.
The alternative is a centralized data structure, which is vulnerable to malicious attacks and systemic errors.
XDC’s Plugin Decentralized Oracle Network offers due support here.
How Plugin Weather Forecast Node (Plugin WFN) solves the weather data problem
Plugin, a decentralized oracle built on XDC Network offers decentralized weather data. This data gets collected and processed through registered weather stations (hyperlocal sensors) placed across different places worldwide.
The weather data from these nodes gets collected and processed at near real-time velocity and pushed into a data lake. This can be scaled up highly by setting up similar units across the globe, forming a great data lake.
The information collected in Data Lake is at a granular level. Each weather unit has latitude and longitude coordinates tagged with data. This provides weather information that is cryptographically signed when uploaded to the Plugin blockchain, so anyone who needs weather information for a smart contract can verify its provenance. The provenance information cannot be forged or falsified.
Plugin WFN data providers are duly compensated by Plugin for providing an important fuel for the future: weather data. There are periodic checks performed at registered weather nodes as a measure of quality.
Due to climate change-induced extreme weather phenomena, such weather data is needed for validation and verification of crop insurance claims, which offer payouts when specific conditions are met. It can also be used by commodities investors hedging against drought or even logistics companies to re-route their cargo on land when unfavorable weather conditions persist.
How Plugin’s system will build a new economy
The Plugin Weather Forecast Node use case setup by Plugin on the XDC Network brings the data from various regions across the globe at a granular level. Through efficient data processing from various units across the globe, Plugin’s data lake will build a new economy in the future, decentralized world.
Using the decentralized application UI, users can get real-time or near real-time data from weather units currently deployed across the region. By selecting ‘Country’, ‘State’, and ‘City’, users can view the data at a latitude/longitude level. More filters can be enabled to drill down to the granular level.
These data can be pushed onto the blockchain using smart contracts, and events can be triggered to make insightful decisions.
Plugin Weather Forecast Node is currently open to the community members. In the near future, it will improve the efficiency of many industries, including agriculture, aviation, and insurance.
Plugin (ticker PLI) is listed on various crypto exchanges such as Bitrue, Liquid, HitBTC and Globiance.