Venezuela's VENEHMET project: another example of Chavez' efficiency
By Aleksander Boyd
London 16.02.05 | Readers of this site have turned out to be incredibly valuable sources of information. Yesterday, after a tip off of a reader, I wrote something about a meteorological project, purportedly set up by the Chavez regime, to provide real time data that could be put to good use for the implementation of contingency plans geared at minimizing the loss of life caused by storms, floods, mudslides and other weather related disasters in Venezuela. Today another reader sends the following:
I wonder whether you and the other contributors to the vcrisis.com page have never heard about the "VENEHMET" project which has been dragged along for the past 4-5 years under the tutelage of an Air Force Cnl. Tirso Carballo and the Vice-Minister A. Hitcher of the Ministerio de Ambiente.
Budget is (hold your breath) US$47 million which has been mainly financed and already paid by the "CAF" (Corp. Andina de Fomento) Bank.
The project combines 06 german Met-RADAR'S to be installed in various site's in Venezuela in order to obtain data in real time about any weather situation developing in the country. The contract was awarded to a U.S. Company in connection with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and a local company EPROTEL.
So far -in four years- they have not even finished the building in Sartenejas on a plot next to the University USB.
All hardware has been bought but is lying idle in various places around the world because the managment is in such way that the right hand does not know what the left is doing. The ex Minister of Environment (since a couple of weeks fired by Chavez) OSORIO did her piece of work within this project to an extent that the contractor companies where ready to abandon the project because of the yearlong delays.
Now that is what I call "NEGLIGENCE" (to use Jorge Arenas words) having the money, having the hardware and having the partners to install such a project in NO TIME in order to have what you need to predict and forecast meteorological phenomenona in REAL TIME, i.e. seeing on the RADAR scope what is coming from which side!!!!
But the combination of chavistas, military people and the commandante itself makes it impossible to cope with anything bedides the bloody revolution.
Yesterday big "daydreams" with Lula; today's absolut "nonsense talks" with Uribe and god knows what will cross his bloody mind tomorrow - and the country is in total ruins.
Only on the faces of Diodados, Carles Mierda and the yoke Gobernador from Vargas one could see that they thought to play gobernador is more fun...
Enclosed with the above message I also received this:
AER Awarded Two Meteorological Projects in Support of Venezuela's VENEHMET Program
Lexington, Massachusetts – Thursday, February 2, 2002 - In January, 2002, AER received orders from Eprotel of Caracas, Venezuela, to provide a meteorological processing system (Sistema de Procesadores) and a provisional meteorological service (Sistema Meteorológico Provisional) as part of the VENEHMET program, managed by Unidad Ejecutora del Programa Venehmet (UEPV) under the auspices of the Ministerio del Ambiente y de los Recuros Naturales (MARNR).
The mission of the VENEHMET program is to contribute to the security of the country's citizens by improving the production and accuracy of weather and hydrological forecasts, to increase the efficiency of the socioeconomic activities of the nation, and to preserve natural resources.
AER is the principal subcontractor and will be equipping a new meteorological center in Caracas with meteorological message switching capabilities and with advanced weather visualization and forecasting tools. Existing facilities at Maracay will be enhanced and fully integrated. One of AER's major subcontractors is the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, which is the national meteorological service of Australia. The Bureau involvement adds the world-class operational capabilities and experience necessary to provide tested forecasting tools and procedures.
The meteorological center will be complete by the summer of 2003 and the provisional meteorological service implementation will begin immediately.
Founded in 1977, and now celebrating its 25th year, Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc. is an award-winning environmental research and consulting company with demonstrated expertise in remote sensing, satellite meteorology, numerical weather prediction, climatology, atmospheric and oceanic circulation diagnostics, atmospheric chemistry, air quality and risk assessment, environmental mathematical modeling, planetary sciences, and systems engineering. AER is certified to the ISO9001 quality standard. In addition to its Lexington, MA headquarters, AER has offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and Omaha, NE.
Further information may be obtained from:
AER: http://www.aer.com/
MARNR: http://www.marnr.gov.ve/venehmet/venehmet.htm
BOM: http://www.bom.gov.au
Contact: John Bennett
jbennett@aer.com
AER, Inc. (781) 761-2285
Glossary
VENEHMET program:
Programa de Modernizacion del Sistema de Medicion y Pronóstico Hidrometeorológico Nacional
Eprotel, C. A.:
Part of the Eprotel Group. Specializes in systems integration in the fields of telecommunications and information technology and is the prime contractor.
The chavista official line
We are all painfully aware of Chavez' and his minions' line; i.e. every problem of the country has to do with the opposition's 'coup', even the rainfall is a product of the machinations of the White House and George Bush' imperialism.
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