9PB of IBM Storage at South Korea’s Meteorological Administration
To increase accuracy of weather forecasting
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on March 4, 2013 at 2:43 pmSouth Korea’s Meteorological Administration
(KMA) and IBM Corporation announced a project to help KMA and its affiliate,
the National Meteorological Satellite Center (NMSC), tackle big data for
better, more accurate and predictive environmental forecasting.
As South Korea’s national meteorological
organization, KMA’s mission is to protect citizens’ lives and property from
natural disasters and support economic activities sensitive to environmental
conditions.
However, weather forecasting is the
proverbial data deluge. Every day KMA gathers more than 1.6TB of
meteorological data, including temperature and barometric pressure readings,
wind speeds, images as well as observations from satellites, balloons, ships
and aircraft. One of the key sources of data is Korea’s first communication,
ocean and meteorological satellite – dubbed Cheollian – managed by the National
Meteorological Satellite Center.
To allow for the torrents of data to be
stored and available for real-time analysis, IBM has provided KMA and NMSC with its storage technologies capable of recording 20GB (equivalent to
400,000 web pages) of data per second. With a total storage capacity of 9.3PB, it is South Korea’s most powerful data storage system to date.
The new infrastructure enables KMA and NMSC
to analyze data more quickly and accurately than previously possible. By
incorporating maps and historical data, KMA is able to develop tailored weather
forecasts for each of South Korea’s nine regions. Processing data in real time
enables immediate updates on weather conditions. For example, meteorologists
can predict more precisely the trajectory of a typhoon or the coverage of the
‘Hwangsa’ – the yellow sand storms originating in Mongolia and Northern China
that cause environmental problems in Korea in the spring season.
The system paves the
way for localized weather forecasting services for clients in certain regions
or cities, such as emergency service providers, hotels, golf courses and farms
as well as related services such as weather insurance for outdoor events.
"IBM’s
Smarter Storage system provides a powerful platform for big data analytics
helping us to provide more accurate and timely weather forecasting services,"
said Gyoung-Hyun Lee, director of National Meteorological Supercomputing, KMA.
"The
volume of meteorological and satellite data is so vast that it requires the
most powerful technologies on earth," said Jung-Uk Tak , systems and
technology group leader, IBM Korea. "IBM’s
smarter computing system helps KMA and NMSC to take a proactive approach to
changing weather conditions, supporting its mission of protecting and enhancing
lives and business."
The
new system at KMA includes an IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS) – a
high-performance enterprise file management platform. IBM has also provided a
high-capacity data storage system to NMSC. Together, the systems provide
consistent and secure access to a common set of data from multiple servers
outperforming single file server solutions. IBM worked with local business
partner Moasys Corporation to provide the solution.