Caribbean Regional Weather Radar Project (Training)

Training, is the most important aspect of the project, in that it involves issues of sustainability of radars, beyond the life of this project. Therefore, the project identifies training for the following categories of personnel:

• Maintenance personnel
• System Administrators
• Meteorologists

Maintenance Personnel

The contract with SELEX-Gematronik provides for factory training of maintenance personnel from the four radar host countries as well as technicians from the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH).

System Administrators

The “System Administrators,” are meteorologists who deal with the radar procedures (the choice of the scanning procedures for example) and quality control. The training for system administrators will be reinforced.

Meteorologists

In this category of personnel there are two sub-groups:

• The “Normal Users” in radar host countries in host countries who will be the end-users, i.e. the meteorologists of the Met Offices who have to interpret their local radar and the composite images.
• The “Normal Users” in non-host countries in non-host Countries who will be the end-users in the Met. Offices who will have to interpret composite radar images and a limited amount of data from individual radars.

Training Levels

Since the System Administrators are supposed to play the major role in the project, it is proposed that training will be organized in three different levels:

• At the first level, training is to be provided by the Training Consultant to the System Administrators (including the CIMH).
• At the second level, training is provided by the Training Consultant, assisted by the System Administrators to the Normal Users of the radar host countries.

Maintenance staff will have the same training courses as the Normal Users.

• At the third level, training is provided by the CIMH System Administrators to the Normal Users in non-host countries.