Resilience
Météo-France offline: the warning map stays on the video wall
Wednesday 21 October, around 4:30 pm: not a single Météo-France server was responding. We happened to be checking the weather warnings at that very moment.
It was not a failure, but a precautionary shutdown, after the alert about two critical flaws in PHP, software that runs a large share of the web’s sites. A wise decision, and Météo-France data remains the reference. But in a crisis room, a map that disappears at the wrong moment is a real problem.
A Météo-France integration designed for the crisis room
At the request of the ANSC (French civil security digital agency, which runs NexSIS 18-112), where our solution is on trial, we developed a more modern integration of Météo-France weather data in CollectivView. And we planned for this:
- the last map received stays on screen, in full;
- a red banner clearly states since when the data has been unavailable;
- the module retries by itself every minute and updates again as soon as Météo-France is back;
- never green without data: missing data is shown in grey, with the message “NO DATA”.
9 official views, one click to zoom
Warnings, forest fires, stations, rain over 3 hours, wind over 6 hours, 4-day forecasts, waves, storm surge, avalanches: the data comes from the official Météo-France interface, with its official colours and the source shown on screen. Only the views you need are displayed. One click on a département, and all the views zoom in on it.
Local first
It has always been our rule: when the network falters, the screen must not go blank. Our software runs on site, with no cloud and no subscription, and it stays readable when an outside source goes down. This integration is a first version, still in beta.
A project? Guy Condamine will answer you directly: Guy@easymultidisplay.com, +33 6 79 07 55 19.