PRIMET: The Association of Private Meteorological Services 5/6/20151 PRIMET: A trade association open to all private sector weather and environmental companies.

PRIMET: The Association of Private Meteorological Services

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PRIMET: A trade association open to all private sector weather and environmental companies in Europe.

PRIMET acts for open environmental data policy

www.primet.org

General Secretary: Dr Richard Pettifer MBE FRMetS CMet CEnv

[email protected]


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Meteorological Data•Most observational data comes from:

• Observing systems run by National Meteorological Services (NMSs).

•Satellites operated by international or national organisations

• Observing systems run by other public bodies e.g. aviation and road authorities

• Computer analyses and model output produced by the NMS are also vital


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Current weather data pricing rules

• ECOMET E.E.I.G. created 1990-95 for the pricing and delivery of weather data by European NMSs www.meteo.oma.be/ECOMET/

• Currently weather data priced on a unit by unit basis for real time synoptic data, climatological data, models, radar images, lightning detection and some satellite imagery

• Price varies country to country, and also by type of customer (end user, broadcaster, service provider excluding or including redistribution licence)

• Other data sources: Very variable. E.g. in Finland road weather data is available but in many other countries it is not


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Weather data pricing rules cont.•Some EU data (which can be obtained from other sources

such as the US) is now available free of charge but in general, European data has very high basic price.

• Data priced per single observation – prices published in ECOMET catalogue

• Volume discounts and discounts for small service providers (SMEs) are available, but only for a part of data

• In addition to the data price, delivery or transmission costs and internet broadcast fees are charged

• Thus ECOMET pricing structure is complicated, inconsistent between countries, prohibitively expensive and discriminatory


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• Cost of basic subset of surface observation data for one year for a medium sized country and after applying all discounts was around € 50,000 (The range was from € 0 to € 82,000).

• For many applications data from all of Europe may be required at an annual cost (after all possible discounts) of at least € 750,000 plus distribution and broadcast license costs

Examples of Prices (2007)


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Pricing of radar rainfall observations

• Approximate annual prices for National Composite Radar pictures for:– Western Europe € 780,000 – Northern Europe € 408,000– Eastern Europe € 180,000– Total € 1,381,837


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Pricing of climate data• Archived climate data is priced by each weather

variable (typical price 0,16 € for a service provider)

• Accumulated data volumes very large, millions of parameters per year

• Thus total price of European climate data is enormous (several hundreds of millions of Euros - impossible to calculate)

• Some NMSs very reluctant to sell climate data (or any other data)


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Key problems in today’s Europe• The availability of affordable data is key for much

value added business. Small businesses cannot afford to develop products with data at these prices.

• EU weather market weak, non-competitive. 40-50 SMEs with small turnover (<1 Me), only very few are >1Me (annual real growth about 4% p.a. since 2003)

•Compare with US and Japan - open policy (all data are free) and strong competitive market (annual real growth about 12% p.a. Since 2003)


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• At least 300 M€ of annual European private weather business missing: society loses around 100 M€ per year in direct (tax)and indirect (social) benefits and about 2000 new jobs are not created

• Meanwhile only 14 M€ returned through data sales (either through ECOMET or direct sales by NMSs)

Economic consequences for Europe


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Key problems in today’s Europe

• Data supply and some end user business areas (e.g. aviation) are governmental monopolies.

• NMSs share the market regionally - very little real competition

• PSI Directive has had little effect. It contains contradictions that allow NMS to restrict data availability to SMEs and suppress competition.

• Result: innovation potential and creation of new services are in trouble in the EU


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Key solutions for commercial meteorology in tomorrow’s Europe

• NMS commercial arms must be separated financially and physically from their data supply arms

• Data should be available at the marginal cost of distribution

• Efficient, on-line data delivery is required.

• Ideally a centralized organization and public data server for environmental data as in the USA

• Restrictive licensing terms should be abolished


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Achieving these solutions

• New policies must come top-down from the governments and ministries

• NMSs and national competition authorities cannot achieve these changes because of internal conflicts of interest.

• Start with the revision of the PSI Directive 2003/98

• Remove the contradictory charging rules and provision for restrictive copyright protection rules.

PRIMET: The Association of Private Meteorological Services 5/6/20151 PRIMET: A trade association open to all private sector weather and environmental companies.

Documents

meteorological data

data price

european data

data sources

climatological data

observational data

eu data

applications data