History of IEDRO
A track record of successful collaborations
The Start
IEDRO’s founder, Dr. Rick Crouthamel, D.Sc., witnessed a horrific situation which led to the starving death of two daughters in a Bangladesh farming family. The tragedy was caused by the farmer not having access to past weather data. Knowing the frequency of droughts over the past 100 years could have saved his kids from starvation. Had he known the actual frequency of droughts, he could have saved enough rice in the good years to make it through the droughts.
The data covering the previous 120 years was available at their National Meteorological Service in Dacca, the capital. Unfortunately the data was all on paper and not available to the farmer hundreds of miles away.
Dr. Crouthamel finally realized a way he, with the assistance of NOAA, could help keep this from recurring in developing countries. In 2000 Dr. Sharon E. Nicholson, Ph.D. worked with NOAA’s National Weather Service’s International Activities Office (IAO) to form the Climate Data Modernization Program (CDMP) to locate and rescue historic climate data in Africa.
NOAA, along with cooperating federal agencies, provided digital cameras, computers, copy stands and software to six African countries: Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Senegal, and Zambia to locate, image and digitize historic hydrometeorological data at risk of disappearing forever.
Dr. Crouthamel retired and formed IEDRO in 2005 to continue to assist NOAA. Since that time, he and dozens of volunteers have managed to locate, image and digitized millions of historic hydrometeorological observations from 18 developing countries. Most of these records are now part of an open and unrestricted NOAA data base enabling the records to be distributed to scientists, educators and even farmers.
A Broader Role
With NOAA’s role in digitization lost, IEDRO stepped forward to take that on as well.
IEDRO partnered with Summit Business Technologies in Millersville, MD to develop software to streamline that digitization process. Accessible via the internet, the Weather Wizards tool allows individuals from around the world to assist. In some cases these are university students from the host country, in others volunteer “citizen scientists” eager to contribute.
Early successes focused on strip charts, a particularly difficult form of record, where ink pens trace a continuous line over time to record temperature, rainfall, and other measures. Weather Wizards has been more recently modified to support keyed entry of alphanumeric data from images of tabular forms.
Building a Future, Together
IEDRO is eager to find new opportunities and partnerships as it works to expand its team of volunteers. Early participants drew heavily on the hydrometeorology community. More recent additions bring other backgrounds including forestry, oceanography, history, technology, and communications. We’ve found applications in bird migration, aeronautics, hydroelectric power, and shipping. Not all historical records are in government agencies. Data are also stored by museums and private firms. Collectively these diverse sources challenge us to forge new connections and alliances. Where could you contribute?
Fueling the Effort
IEDRO’s successes could not have occurred without the funding assistance provided by our partners. These have included the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations Development Program and Food and Agricultural Organization, USAID, and the Korea Meteorological Administration, to name a few. While funds are critical, so too is the assistance of volunteers.