The Met Office has launched its new five-year strategy for 2025-2030, designed to position the organization as the most trusted provider of weather and climate intelligence.
Strategic priorities and refreshed vision
To achieve this goal, the plan identifies three priority areas – customers, purposeful data and intelligence, and agility and innovation. Its customer-driven focus is intended to ensure citizens, communities and businesses are served with trusted services which deliver growth and value. The purposeful data and intelligence priority area will focus on getting its large quantities of data into the hands of users to maximize its value, contributing the government’s growth mission. The third area, agility and innovation, involves working with more agility, balancing innovation with risk and value for money.
According to the organization, the implementation of the Met Office’s new supercomputer is a cornerstone of the new strategy. Exploiting its new capability will “blend science with artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance forecast accuracy and resolution”, the Met Office said. This will mean enhanced flood notifications for emergency responders, helping airlines minimize flight disruptions and providing real-time meteorological data to the armed forces.
Consultation and collaboration
The new strategy was developed through consultation with customers, partners, staff and industry disruptors. Speaking at the launch of the strategy, Professor Penny Endersby, chief executive of the UK Met Office, highlighted the UK government’s stated five missions and the relevance of the Met Office in achieving these. As an example of the economic value the Met Office brings, London Economics estimates the Met Office will add £56bn (US$75bn) of value to the UK economy over the next decade – £19 (US$25) for every £1 (US$1.35) of public money invested.
Professor Endersby said, “As one of just a handful of world leading meteorology organizations, the Met Office is proud to provide trusted weather and climate intelligence for government, citizens, industries and their worldwide interests. Our strategy for the next five years that I’ve announced today (June 4) will enable us to deliver more impact, more innovation and more value.
“Our customers will be at the heart of what we do, we’ll place even more purposeful data and intelligence right in the hands of users and work with them to innovate quickly at a time of unrivalled technological change. In a rapidly changing world, this new strategy will enable us to deliver our ultimate purpose, to help people make better decisions to stay safe and thrive.”
In related news, a team of researchers – led by Colin Manning, a research associate at Newcastle University and visiting scientist at the Met Office – recently published a study, ‘Antecedent rainfall, wind direction and seasonal effects may amplify risk of wind-driven power outages’, which highlights that incorporating the additional factors into a statistical model, alongside wind speed, greatly enhances the predictive accuracy of power outages during windstorms. Read the full story here