The World Meteorological Organization’s World Weather Information Service Website Wins the Prestigious Stockholm Challenge Award 2008

The World Weather Information Service Website (English version)

The World Weather Information Service (WWIS) website operated by the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) on behalf of the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has won the prestigious Stockholm Challenge Award 2008 in the Environment category.

HKO is one of the early users of internet technology to deliver weather information to the local public. Since the mid-1990s, HKO has designed, managed and operated websites for meteorological data processing and presentation. HKO’s own website (is the most popular government websites in Hong Kong that has attracted over one billion page visits in 2007.

The Hong Kong Observatory team operating the English version of WWIS

The WMO recognized HKO’s expertise in website management and entrusted the Observatory to create and host the WWIS website which began trial operations in 2001. This website contains weather forecasts and climatological data provided by participating National Meteorological Services (NMS) of countries and territories around the globe and serves as a central portal for official weather information worldwide.

The Stockholm Challenge  is an international competition held once every two years and is often labeled as the “Nobel Prize” of the ICT sector. The first competition was held in 1994 at Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Its objective is to promote the use of information and communication technology (ICT) applications to help counteract social and economic disadvantage.

Dr CM Tam, Senior Scientific Officer of HKO (second to the left) received the Environment category trophy of the Stockholm Challenge at the Stockholm City Hall

The jury of Stockholm Challenge commended the WWIS as “having a strong vision, global objectives, a robust sustainability model and demonstrate information exchange between national and international organizations sharing weather data.” The success of WWIS is a manifestation of active contributions of participating Members, the stout support of WMO Secretariat and the enthusiastic inputs of Members operating the website in several languages. It is also the latest recognition of the virtues of this project in enabling developing countries, including the least developing countries, to participate in a highly visible international project with easily-accessible IT technology.

The World Weather Information Service Website (English version)

The WWIS website enables the public worldwide to have easy access to authoritative weather forecasts for cities in all corners of the globe, issued by official meteorological services. These meteorological authorities are responsible for operating the worldwide weather observing network regulated by the WMO. They are the ones who have first-hand weather information from the front line and so know best the weather in their regions of responsibility. Therefore, they are the most authoritative source of weather forecasts.

At present, 118 participating countries/territories provide weather forecasts for 1,263 cities. The website has a total of six language versions, namely English, Chinese, French, Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish. HKO was the lead organization in setting up and running the WWIS website in English. Every day it receives official forecasts from NMSs and processes the data for display in the website. HKO also serves as the data hub, receiving data from NMSs and redistributing them to the other five language hosts of the website.

Dr CM Tam, Senior Scientific Officer of HKO and Janine Selendy, Horizon International Chairman and President, and Publisher and Editor of the Horizon Solutions Site

  The World Weather Information Service (WWIS) website was one of ten Finalists in the Environment category of the Stockholm Challenge. Other Finalists included the Horizon Solutions Site, Environment Online - ENO, Africa Environmental and Sustainable Development Challenges, Blogging for Wildlife, Indigenous Peoples Mapping, KidsRgreen, OpenmindProjects, Saving the Ayuquila River, and World Without Oil.