Hera Group: more precise and accurate data with Furuno Weather Radar

Last year, the first Furuno Doppler Weather Radar was recently installed in Italy in collaboration with HERA Emilia Romagna, an Italian multi-utility company that provides energy, water and environmental services in 265 municipalities in the Emilia-Romagna’s area.

The radar was positioned on top of HERA’s building in the hinterland of Rimini, in a particularly privileged position that enjoys a free 360 degrees horizon. Before the installation of the new Doppler Weather Radar, the company received weather data from the Radar Band C of Bologna which, for the Rimini area, was at the range limit, providing inaccurate data on weather precipitation. For this reason, it was necessary to install Furuno’s new Solid-State X-band Weather Radar with double polarization, which now allows to take advantage of extremely precise data within a coverage range of 70 km from the installation point.

Furuno Italia interviewed Sandro Boarini – Technological Center of Remote Control & Technical Call Center Manager of Hera Group – that explained us the reasons that moved HERA to choose our Furuno Weather Radar.

What were the motivations and needs that moved you to look for a solution like the weather radar? 

The Hera Group has equipped itself with a professional radar service such as that found in the Furuno Solid-State X-band Weather Radar to finalize and improve the management of rainwater drainage - as the managing authority of the public Integrated Water Service. This is to pursue policies of environmental and socio-economic sustainability of the complex ecosystem of the Rimini coast.

The meteorological aspects present increasingly complex issues that become more and more strategic in the management of the technical-managerial aspects and which for this reason must be characterized by some salient characteristics, such as reliability, continuity, timeliness, accuracy: the radar of the ARPAE service of the Emilia Romagna Region is located at a distance of over 100 km and does not guarantee the level of precision highlighted above necessary to detect increasingly rapid, localized summer storms and which if they occur at low altitudes are not visible from the service radar audience of ARPAE (Earth curvature effect).

What brought Furuno to the table that other solutions from our competitors didn’t bring? 

We asked for a solution to other competitors but for the double polarization technology the Furuno Italia’s proposal was very advantageous.

The double polarization allows, especially in case of strong storms, to overcome a limit of the X band of penetration of the front by acting in two perpendicular planes. In addition, the dual polarization X-band radar has proved indispensable for monitoring those storms and meteorological phenomena of particular intensity but of such limited extent as to escape the measurements of public weather stations in the area.

The great effectiveness of the Furuno Weather Radar consists in the possibility to visualize what is really happening in the area locally with extreme precision and in a clear and immediate way; in fact, the radar provides real and very precise information, with a detail that even falls below 100 m (pixel size), a value that represents a degree of extreme accuracy in monitoring sewer networks.

Is the Weather Radar adapted to your needs? How exactly do you use it and what are the main strenghts in your current use?
The radar proved to be particularly useful because, in addition to real-time forecasts, it provided a perfect service of operational support and visualization of meteorological data for the platform created by our partner company of Meteorological Survey “Radarmeteo”. 

In particular, the nowcasting algorithm, powered by Furuno weather radar data, is able to provide us with that fundamental decision support for the geographical context of the Rimini Riviera. Nowcasting allows, in fact, to monitor the delicate balance between reservoir capacity, time / intensity, rainfall duration, operational maneuvers, etc. in order to allow to organize in advance those delicate decision-making choices that strongly reverberate on the socio-economic context of Rimini, especially in the summer period (think, for example, of cases of flooding or discharge into the sea with consequent bathing prohibition).

How satisfied are you as a customer? Was our solution up to your expectations?

Satisfaction is high and in line with expectations. We believe that the best available technology, associated with IT and Data Analysis opportunities, represents the path to follow to improve the quality of services rendered to the territory and to monitor the increasingly insidious phenomena that climate change manifests.