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BMKG, the Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics KNMI, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
Digitisasi Data Historis DiDaH · BMKG & KNMI

Background and framework

DiDaH grew out of a ministerial visit in 2009 and became a formal cooperation project between the two national meteorological services.

The Vice Minister for Transport, Public Works and Water Management of the Netherlands, Mrs. J. C. Huizinga Heringa, visited Indonesia in January 2009. During the visit she discussed water management and climate change with BMKG, the National Meteorological Service of Indonesia. In those talks Mrs. Huizinga agreed to support a new cooperation project between BMKG and KNMI to digitize and make available for research the historical climate data of the Indonesian region.

Within the framework of the project, DiDaH officially started on 10 July 2009 and ran until December 2011. BMKG and KNMI digitized millions of handwritten and printed historical weather and climate observations from the period 1850 to present. Seen against the global warming issue, this added information on the Indonesian climate is valuable for climate researchers and others in the region who depend on a better understanding of climate and weather extremes.

The project did not produce digitized data alone. BMKG archived and processed the observations and produced climate information on trends, patterns and extreme weather events. BMKG adopted database techniques and climatological methods developed at KNMI to establish a web based climate change information system for the Indonesian region. To make this possible, BMKG specialists visited and worked at KNMI for several months during 2010 and 2011.

Within the framework of DiDaH an international climatological workshop was held in Jakarta in December 2009. Under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), international data rescue and climatology experts presented lectures and training and held discussions with trainees from BMKG and stakeholders from the region. The workshop brought international attention to the project and gave the participants focus, basic knowledge and a common methodological framework.

The next page sets out the problem the project addressed and its objectives in detail.

Continue to the problem and objectives

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