For many years KNMI plays an, internationally recognized, innovative role in the field of surface based observations. This role was stimulated by developments such as merging the meteorological and climatological measurement sites and moving towards fully automated observations without the traditional meteorological observer. The challenge of obtaining both meteorological and climatological high-quality observations in an automated way has stimulated applied research programmes in fields of measurement techniques and sensor technology. The results of these efforts are shared with the international community through an active participation in expert teams of the World Meteorological Organisation and EUMETNET. The presence of an internationally renowned climate research observation site at Cabauw has resulted in a number of interesting challenges to accurately measure land surface and boundary layer conditions.

The advance of the internet has made radar images tremendously popular. There is an ongoing research effort to improve the quality of these measurements and to develop new products that contribute to the assessment of weather alert conditions and, e.g., assist in water management. Similarly, lightning detection plays an important role in determining weather warning conditions and aviation safety.

During the last decade KNMI has been involved in a number of developments that have stimulated applied research in the field of information technology. Although perhaps not a subject that is directly linked to a meteorological institute it has become a key subject for a number of reasons. The new generations of weather and climate models and satellites have such high spatial and temporal resolutions that the amount of data they generate has tremendously increased. This has stimulated the development of new techniques (like GRID-technologies and 3D-visualisation) to be able to deal with these vast data quantities. Secondly, there is a tendency to move away from central data repositories and to obtain information from distributed data services based on open standards. An example of this is the European Union INSPIRE directive that calls for an harmonized access of data with a geo-spatial dimension. These developments stimulate studies in the field of information technology on how data can be accurately described and, related to this, how specific data can be found in a large forest of services. In parallel there is a considerable research effort in the field of Geo-ICT (GIS). The GIS research deals with to the creation of optimal contour maps by statistically interpolating discretely sampled measurements. This is important information when dealing with, e.g., climate change studies in the Netherlands.

In view of these developments, a division for Research and Development of Information and Observation Technology dedicated to applied research was established in 2006. More information about the research subjects can be found under Themes.