Weather intelligence for the future: Crafting a strategic enterprise approach to changing environmental conditions
Continue readingTrial aims to increase mission success, reduce costs and protect lives by integrating new technology and superior data within synthetic environments
ATLANTA – Nov. 7, 2024 – As the battlefield undergoes transformation, so does the need for understanding weather’s impact. In a changing climate characterized by erratic swings in weather patterns and increased intensity of severe weather events, the reliance on accurate and reliable weather data for operational, strategic, and infrastructural decisions has never been more critical. Traditional, synthetic weather simulations fall well short when it comes to replicating real-world conditions on land, at sea, and in the air.
As part of its collaboration with SimCentric, The Weather Company will be providing integrated weather data, visualization and risk analytics for Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025. Exercise Talisman Sabre is the largest combined military training activity between Australia and the United States plus 23 other partner nations, and happens every other year. For the first time at a large-scale joint defense exercise, live weather data aligned to training event profiles and risk thresholds will be available to help defense training and simulation leaders improve efforts across distributed training areas and diverse exercise profiles.
While many current simulations and digital twins have used synthetic weather, The Weather Company’s Weatherverse™ solutions deliver real weather information, based upon historical, current and forecasted datasets and weather models, for use in live, virtual and constructive simulation environments at a global scale. The Weather Company uses advanced analytics to automatically detect weather-related impacts on training exercises tied to specific locations, enabling better informed insights, more confident decision making and improved outcomes.
The Weather Company’s Weatherverse Planner™ Plugin deployed within SimCentric’s military planning and live training monitoring solution SAF-FORESIGHT will be employed in planning for Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025, which will take place in July and August next year across the Indo-PACOM region. Designed to test forces in planning and conducting joint, coalition military operations, Talisman Sabre aims to improve the combat readiness and interoperability between partner nations.
This incorporation of weather data from the world’s most accurate forecaster1 into SAF-FORESIGHT enables its seamless integration into planning and operational processes. Access to current weather conditions, forecasted conditions, summary dashboards and weather data allows for more interactive and intuitive visualizations, helping customers better understand and prepare for the actual effects of weather conditions on the safety and outcome of training exercises.
Weather conditions can affect a broad range of military operations, such as soldier deaths due to extreme heat or cold, littoral risks in high sea states, the dangers of low visibility and electrical activity on helicopter maneuver, misjudgment of tidal patterns on platform insertion, fire danger for high explosive munitions and severe injuries from parachuting in high winds.
“Globally, we’ve seen evidence of weather’s impact creating risks and ongoing dangers to personnel and platforms, in addition to the potential inability to conduct training in certain weather conditions leading to reduced military readiness,” said Dr. Adam Easton, CEO of SimCentric. “We continue to evolve and improve our world-class SAF-FORESIGHT technology, and working with The Weather Company helps us deliver to military planners and stakeholders practical tools that enable them to plan training effectively, mitigate key risks at a system level, and achieve the balance between realism and risk that all military training must resolve.”
SimCentric is working with The Weather Company to enhance safety in training by integrating reliable real-time weather data into SimCentric’s SAF-FORESIGHT live training safety software. This cooperation aims to leverage the innovation and leadership of both companies to facilitate a new range of holistic, system-level risk mitigation measures to be employed by users of SAF-FORESIGHT, a unique live training safety tool that ultimately strives to save lives and reduce injuries in training.
“As weather grows more disruptive and impactful on operational and planning requirements, it’s increasingly clear that leaders within the defense space require increasingly reliable, real-time weather intelligence,” said Sheri Bachstein, president of The Weather Company. “Cooperating with innovators like SimCentric and as part of the Talisman Sabre exercise has helped crystallize how critical it is to incorporate reliable, globally scaled weather data and insights into simulation environments such as defense planning and live training scenarios to help improve confidence in both decision making and outcomes.”
In addition to working with SimCentric, other defense industry leaders including many of the top prime contractors are actively exploring how best to leverage Weatherverse solutions to help improve the effectiveness of military planning, as well as live, virtual and constructive simulations. Users of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine for visual rendering can now leverage Weatherverse Sim as a plugin to integrate weather data into Unreal-powered simulation environments, whether offline or via API. Additionally, The Weather Company is working with NVIDIA to make Weatherverse capabilities also available on NVIDIA Omniverse,™ the platform for connecting and developing OpenUSD applications.
About SimCentric
SimCentric is a technology company focused on transforming training, safety and operational decision making through innovation. We develop commercial, off-the-shelf technology and strive to be thought leaders and innovators in the areas of: Joint Fires training, Range Safety, fratricide prevention, and Virtual Unreal Engine training environments. For more, visit simct.com.
About The Weather Company
The Weather Company helps people and businesses around the world make more informed decisions and take action in the face of weather. With its deep industry expertise and highly accurate, high-volume weather data combined with advanced technology and AI, The Weather Company provides insights and solutions that harness the power of weather in a scalable, privacy-forward way. The world’s most accurate forecaster, the company serves hundreds of enterprise customers across media, advertising, aviation and more, and is trusted by hundreds of millions of monthly active users via digital properties from The Weather Channel (weather.com) and Weather Underground (wunderground.com). For more, visit weathercompany.com.
1 ForecastWatch, Global and Regional Weather Forecast Accuracy Overview, 2017-2022, https://forecastwatch.com/AccuracyOverview2017-2022, commissioned by The Weather Company.