News

Rasdaman Training Workshop

Back from the Rasdaman training workshop on the campus of Jacobs University in Bremen, the DeepRain co-ordinator Dr. Martin Schultz sounds rather satisfied: “This workshop was very helpful to all ten participants. Not only did we learn a lot about the amazing technology behind Rasdaman and the thorough design concept, which not only follows but actually sets standards for geographic data processing, but it was also good to find a bit of time to actually work on samples from the actual data that will be used during the project. It was great to learn that we can obtain even more data from DWD than we had thought initially. At JSC we now have to get our heads together to organize the transfer and management of half a petabyte of weather model data. DeepRain clearly is one of the most exciting projects I have been working on in my career.”

DACH Conference in Garmisch-Partenkirchen

At the DACH Conference in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Dr. Rita Glowienka-Hense from the University of Bonn will give the first presentation that is associated with the DeepRain project. The title of her talk on Fri, 22 Mar 2019 at 11:50 h will be “Partial correlation the natural correlation skill score”.

DeepRain Kickoff Meeting

Yesterday, the partners of the DeepRain project met at Forschungszentrum Jülich for their Kickoff meeting. Two months into the project, the partners had already exchanged quite a few emails and discussed issues concerning the selection and management of data, the choice of deep learning methods, statistical approaches, and other issues. Some preliminary work has started and everyone was eager to get the project off the ground. The DeepRain team consists of scientists with rather different backgrounds who are all excited to work together in this challenging endeavor. It was difficult to keep the meeting on time, because so many interesting discussions were spun off.
Besides clarifying a number of formal project management issues, some agreements were reached how to approach the next steps. As common test case covering most aspects that need to be addressed during the project, we will focus on the Harz region during autumn. This choice was made, because the Harz represents a region with variable orography, and there are data available from earlier downscaling studies. Also, during autumn, rainfall is primarily driven by large-scale weather phenomena, which makes an easier start for the deep learning networks. Finally, the Harz is well covered by radar data and will allow an analysis of the effects from overlapping radar coverage. Firstly, we will work to establish the necessary data flows and reformatting, thereby making use of the Rasdaman database technology. In parallel, some first test neural networks are designed and decisions concerning the evaluation metrics and methods will be made. The project partners will meet again for a Rasdaman training workshop in Bremen in January 2019. The next project meeting will take place in Osnabrück in March 2019.