By Mohamed Attia
Egyptian Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli witnessed the signing ceremony of a co-operation protocol between the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and the Egyptian Meteorological Authority (EMA) of the Ministry of Civil Aviation on the implementation of joint projects for technological solutions based on artificial intelligence (AI) techniques.
The co-operation protocol was signed by Deputy Minister of Communications and Information Technology Engineer Raafat Hindi and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Meteorological Authority Major General Hisham Hassan Tahoun in the presence of Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat and Minister of Civil Aviation Manar.
Minister Manar added that predicting climate conditions and its variables is one of the biggest challenges facing the planet and since artificial intelligence technology has had a great impact and interference in all fields so it can provide appropriate means to win the battle that the world is waging in the face of constant weather fluctuations.
Minister Talaat, meanwhile, said that the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has a plan to implement a number of projects with the Egyptian Meteorological Authority, especially projects related to preparing for natural disasters and climate changes, through artificial intelligence techniques, which has become a key factor in weather forecasting.
Under the agreement, an application for smart phones (iOS, Android) will be developed to provide the services of the General Meteorological Authority to citizens, supported in Arabic and English, to display accurate and real-time forecasts with severe weather alerts based on geographical location.
This comes as well as developing an application for document processing and intelligent optical identification (OCR) to digitise old records to obtain a copy that can be modified and copied, which facilitates dealing and benefiting from the data saved in these records.
The co-operation protocol also includes developing an application programming interface (API), which provides historical weather data and long-term forecast data via an easy-to-use programming interface defined by dozens of weather gauges, and developing a platform using geospatial artificial intelligence application technology to predict climate changes associated with floods.
