Fujitsu today announced the delivery of a new supercomputer system to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) (1)to improve prediction accuracy for typhoons and torrential rains and help authorities develop data-driven plans to provide early warning and evacuation for residents during natural disasters. The JMA will start operations of the new supercomputer system on March 5, 2024.
Together with a supercomputer system for use in linear rainband forecasting Fujitsu provided to the JMA in March 2023, the new system will increase the computing power to about four times that of the previous supercomputer and contribute to the agency’s ability to more accurately predict various phenomena.
To promote the utilization of meteorological data by private companies and research institutions, Fujitsu has also created a dedicated environment for sharing meteorological information and data as part of this system, making it possible to leverage large amounts of meteorological data that could not be provided by the previous system.
Supercomputing for more robust disaster prevention
As part of its “JMA’s NWP Strategic Plan Toward 2030” (2) the JMA is focusing on early warning and evacuation in the case of heavy rain disaster prevention, wide-area evacuation in the case of typhoon disaster prevention, and the realization of high-precision forecasts several days in advance. To enable accurate predictions and disaster prevention, the utilization and distribution of large volumes of weather information and data to society, as well as the timely dissemination of such information with private companies and research institutions will become an increasingly important priority. To this end, Fujitsu developed a new system based on the “Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX2540 M7,” which offers users high performance and reliability.
Future Plans
Fujitsu will continue to leverage its world-class supercomputing technology to support the JMA’s efforts to achieve its goals for 2030, and contribute to disaster prevention and mitigation of water disasters caused by the effects of climate change, with the aim of realizing a safe, secure, and resilient society.
(1) The Japan Meteorological Agency :Location: Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan; Director-General: Takashi Mori
(2) Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) Strategic Plan Toward 2030 :The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) issued numerical forecasts in October 2018, which are the basis of weather and climate forecasts.Based on this plan, the JMA aims to promote technology development with the goal of responding to social needs from the present to the near future.
(3) NAPS case design :NAPS on the main panel stands for “Numerical Analysis and Prediction System”; name as registered by the JMA (NAPS is not a registered trademark of Fujitsu)
