Americas National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is celebrating the one year anniversary of its Weather-Ready Nation project.

Weather experts from across the United States have been working to improve the way the country reacts to extreme weather. They say scientific progress has made weather forecasts, or predictions, better than ever. But, they say the cost of severe weather on life and property is still too high. NOAA says a new generation of equipment has already made its global numerical weather prediction system nearly three times faster in the past seven months. This is expected to improve NOAAs forecast models. Scientists and weather experts have launched a similar effort in the Philippines. It is called Project NOAH -- the Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards. Mahar Lagmay is the head of Project NOAH. He says his country needs high-resolution imaging to predict when and where natural disasters will strike. To be able to construct hazard maps you need very high resolutio n topography. To do the simulations of floods you do need high resolution topography. He also says these images will be used to create smaller area maps, which will shape how people react to natural disasters. By doing local scale, or community scale maps, people can relate with the problem because they see their houses, they see their neighbors houses, the bridge in their community, the river in their community in relation to the hazards - the flood hazards in particular. Geologist Carlos Primo David also works with Project NOAH. He says the group depends on satellites, Doppler radar and hundreds of rain gauges across the country. He says the resulting forecasts are very detailed, and can even predict the intensity of rainfall. The Philippine state weather agency used rainfall information from Project NOAH when Manila flooded in August. The weather agency also re-broadcast its warnings on the social networking website Twitter. And a color coded warning system was also put in place. Mahar Lagmay says the project passed its first test. He says the government used the information to move people to safety. Relatively it was successful because what we wanted to avoid was mass death. He says now the government has to get people to take severe weather events more seriously, and to actively prepare for the worst.

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In response to this hot issue about NOAH, a person with the nickname banghuyen from voanews.com said: Natural disasters have been always the biggest concern of the society, whether they are floods, typhoons or fire because of their huge destroyability. The use of satellites, especially the polar ones, and other equipments such as Doppler radars, upper-air sounding and observation network together with super computers and numerical models has been making a big progress in warning disaster, keeping human and property save from mother nature anger. I wish we will have such systems working in Vietnam soon. The comment above stated that we need to care more about predicting weather, because weather prediction nowadays has become a risky affair. Predicting the weather accurately is always a rough and tough job. Scientists' attempt to predict weather accurately is a good sign of progress, Project NOAH -- the Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards -- is an example. Because of this project, scientists now can predict the weather more effectively, and thanks to that, more people could be saved when natual disasters happen. However, we shouldnt be too depend on that, because human being still cannot fight against natural disasters. We must learn how to prepare for each situation of natural disasters rather than try to fix something when they have already happened. Our group think thats what we need to do. Thank you for your listening!