Weather Station : Design of a portable & self-sufficient weather station for the Swedish Sea Rescue Society

Abstract: The Swedish Sea Rescue Society (SSRS) is a non-profit organization that performs sea rescue operations around Sweden’s coast line and lakes. In their sea rescue work, they came up with an idea that could be used to prevent accidents that are caused by harsh weather. According to Trafikverket, two out of three accidents at sea can be related to bad weather. Today, the SSRS have a weather application that you can download and note the weather where the different national weather stations are located. The data for this application is gathered from SMHI and YR.no. The SSRS wants to complement this data with their own weather measurements from specific places in e.g. the archipelago. To be able to do this they want to develop a portable and self-sufficient weather station. The weather station will be overseen by the SSRS rescue personnel, who will transporting and installing the weather station onto specific place. The weather station shall express the SSRS design profile, blend into the environment, and be easy to transport and install. The SSRS doesn’t have any prior products of that sort, and through a market study of competing or similar products / ideas, it became clear that this product would be innovative. By studying the environment which the weather station will be placed and faced with, and who the different users are and their requirements, a requirement framework was established which the end result would need to fulfil.  Through different methods and analysis of what people from different background think and feel about the archipelago, a joint view of what the archipelago associates with was established in order for the weather station to be designed to t into the desired environment. Studies and innovation around technical functions that the weather station should be able to perform, have led to different design restrictions in order for the weather station to be able to work. The end result of the project is a concept of a self-sufficient and portable weather station, making it possible to be transported and installed by one person. The design of the weather station has been made to make it blend into the environment and up close be able to identify as a product of the SSRS. The design has also been made to be user friendly for those handling it.