Wepoco is a voluntary community with an interest in improving the utility of weather forecasts in developing countries.
Wepoco has submitted an idea for the Social Innovation Camp to be held in early April. You can find our idea here. Please take a look and add a comment.
Wepoco has been spotted by others in the past, see here and here.
Add comment March 6th, 2008
Many months have passed since the last news was posted here and unfortunately it’s still not possible to disclose all that has happened or announce any projects.
Please don’t think we’ve given up. The team are working hard on several fronts.
There has also been some further work on software for the website. The observations mashup will be upgraded soon.
Add comment October 7th, 2007
Michael and Carlo are back from their trip to Nekemte, Ethiopia. More details will follow soon. For now there’s a short post on Michael’s blog.
February 6th, 2007
Over the last couple of weeks the Wepoco team have been busy developing plans and investigating funding for 2007. The process has helped us to understand what we are really about right now. But where might we go in the future?
An article in CHINAdaily with the title Tech firms woo ‘next billion users’ suggests that we might not be completely crazy to imagine a dozen scientists and engineers delivering information that could make a real difference right into the hand of those who need it most.
Another article in ZDNet reports on progress with the one laptop per child project http://opinion.zdnet.co.uk/comment/0,1000002138,39284994,00.htm This is a timely reminder that all this technological cleverness needs a purpose, and what better purpose than eliminating poverty?
So let us see if we can develop something that ensures, as far as possible, anyone who can make a better life for themselves and their family though a better understanding of what the weather and climate will do in future has access to the best possible information.
Seasons greetings from the Wepoco team.
Add comment December 15th, 2006
The premise on which wepoco is based is that providing quality weather and climate information to vulnerable communities reduces risk, so it was interesting to see weather mentioned as an explicit concern for India’s ICICI bank as it expands lending to rural customers. See http://ifcblog.ifc.org/emergingmarketsifc/2006/11/indias_icici_ba.html
Add comment November 12th, 2006
One topic that comes up at Wepoco meetings is how to communicate beyond the Internet. With so much use made of email, blogs, search engines and the like it’s sometimes hard to remember what we used to do to find things out - newspapers, libraries, etc. So it was interesting to see the article “Communication is key to development, say experts” which at least shows that others recognise the importance of this issue.
4 comments November 11th, 2006
Our trial of rainfall forecasts for Ethiopia has begun and the Wepoco team will be working hard to get this into good shape before the 2007 main rains begin.
Click on forecasts link above to see the site specific forecasts - zoom in to see the markers for major towns, then click on a marker.
Feedback is always welcome.
November 5th, 2006