Strengthening severe weather prediction using the advanced Victorian regional GPS network - a recent NDRGS project

The Natural Disaster Resilience Grants Scheme (NDRGS) is a grant program funded by the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department under the Australian National Partnership Agreement on Natural Disaster Resilience signed by Prime Minister and state Premier of Victoria. Under the Agreement, Victoria develops an Implementation Plan, for approval by the Australian Commonwealth Minister for Justice, to receive continued funding for the NDRGS. This contribution introduces the Victorian NDRGS project - "Strengthening Severe Weather Prediction Using the Advanced Victorian Regional Global Navigation Satellite Systems" awarded to a consortium led by RMIT University in 2013. This project aims to develop a smart GPS-based water vapour estimation system for disaster management users to reduce the risks and impact of natural weather disaster events. The regional precipitable water vapour measurements obtained predominantly from this new system using measurements from regional ground-based GNSS continuously operating reference stations (CORS) networks in Australia -will be assimilated into the Australian Community Climate and Earth-System Simulator (ACCESS) model. In this paper, the main objectives, anticipated outcomes and research roadmap for this project are introduced. The key issues and challenges confronting innovative applications of GNSS for severe weather event prediction in Australia are emphasised. The key results achieved so far related to atmospheric remote sensing and atmospheric modelling etc. are briefly reported.