Award for innovation in meteorology - VineForecast reaches TOP 3
At our first StartUp competition, we reached the finals of the Harry Otten Prize (award for innovation in meteorology) with VineForecast at the beginning of September. We were one of the three selected projects from an international field of applicants.
The final took place at the annual conference of the European Meteorological Society (EMS) in Copenhagen. There, Paul Petersik presented the VineForecast forecasting system and answered questions from international experts.
Harry Otten Award presented by namesake
The Harry Otten Prize is awarded every two years by the Harry Otten Foundation and this year it was awarded for the 5th time. First of all, we would like to congratulate the winners Malcom Kitchen and Chris Brunt from the UK Met Office. They are developing a measuring device to accurately determine relative humidity in higher atmospheric layers.
Alongside VineForecast, Sky-Echo completes the TOP3 with its "enLight" project. With the help of enLight, citizens will in future be warned in good time about approaching weather hazards such as thunderstorms by means of special lighting elements that can be attached to lampposts, for example.
Long preparation time for the final of the Harry Otten Prize in Copenhagen
The final was preceded by two selection rounds. In these rounds we convinced the jurors of VineForecast and were nominated for the final in Copenhagen. With an idea that slowly took shape at the beginning of the year and is now 6 months in development, we faced a professional audience for the first time.
In a lively and focused discussion, we were able to enjoy the many positive responses and valuable feedback. In particular, the exchange with the other participants proved to be extremely exciting. For example, Sky-Echo is working on high-resolution radar images that can estimate precipitation with up to 20 times higher accuracy than ordinary radar images. In the future, viticulture could also benefit from the development of this technology in order to be able to estimate more precisely the precipitation that has fallen as well as the water content of the soil.
