ESSL and a number of weather serives in Europe have initiated a collaboration to exchange crowd-sourced weather and weather impact reports.
This works as follows:
- Weather Services in various countries collect weather reports from individuals, e.g. through the weather app that they operate, or from storm spotters or emergency services.
- These reports are uploaded in real-time to the EWOB database at ESSL, which acts as an overarching data hub.
- Reports from the international database are frequently downloaded by the participating Weather Services to ensure they also obtain reports from neighboring countries to complement their national report database.
![](https://www.essl.org/cms/wp-content/uploads/Cooperation_Scheme-1024x576.png)
Some important points are that…
- The international collaboration and the EWOB Standard for data exchange are governed by the EWOB Oversight Committee with delegates from all partners.
- The data are not checked for correctness, with the exception of data obtained by reliable sources such as spotters or emergency management. Thus, they differ from quality-controlled data, e.g. that collected in ESSL’s European Severe Weather Database.
- EWOB reports do not contain any personal identifiable data.
The EWOB data exchange takes place using the EWOB API. The specification can be requested from ESSL at ewob@essl.org. Please also contact us here if you are a weather service interested in joining EWOB.