On May 29 and 30, Scanmatic hosted HydMet 2024, a professional seminar focused on instrumentation for hydrology and meteorology (HydMet). The target audience includes customers and partners involved in distributed sensor networks for collecting hydrological and meteorological data.
Examples include:
- Producers of renewable energy, such as water, wind, and solar power
- Institutes and regulatory authorities like DNMI, SMHI, DMI, NVE, and the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority
- Suppliers and partners
Scanmatic has hosted this seminar annually for over 30 years under the name “User Days,” primarily aimed at power production. The purpose of renaming it to HydMet has been to shift the focus from customer/user groups to technology, creating a platform for everyone interested in sharing knowledge and experiences in the development, establishment, and operation of distributed HydMet sensor networks.
This year’s HydMet 2024 gathered 50 inspired participants from the industry, along with 10 internal Scanmatic employees who acted as both hosts and participants.
The seminar, as usual, spanned two full days. The program was academically intensive with a total of 15 inspiring presentations, interspersed with a pleasant and important social segment in the afternoon and evening of day one.
This year’s participants came from the following sectors, represented by:
- Producers of renewable energy: Eviny, FBR, Hafslund, Helgeland Kraft, Hydro, Kraftia, SFE, Skagerak, Skellefteälven, Statkraft, Statkraft Sweden, Vest-Telemark Kraftlag, Vattenfall, Vattenregleringsföretagen, Å Energi.
- Observation and research: NVE, Meteorological Institute, SMHI.
- Partners: AUMA, Campbell Scientific, Ott Hydromet, Skred AS.
Professional Content
In the early years after the conference was established, a program committee was chosen with members from participant companies and hosts. In recent years, due to practical reasons, we have moved away from this approach, and Scanmatic has taken full responsibility for the program and recruitment of contributors. Of course, with attentive ears to the wishes and feedback from participants.
Highlights of this year’s program (i.e., external contributions) included:
|
Topic |
By and with |
|
Phasing out of 2G – Project Thunder |
NVE |
|
Early flood warning system |
Ott |
|
Electric actuators for gates and valves |
AUMA |
|
Artificial Intelligence |
|
|
Techniques for measuring snow water equivalent (SWE) |
VRF |
|
Densification of measurement points / IoT in waterways |
Å Energi |
|
Instrumentation of the Alta Dam |
Statkraft |
|
Redundant communication – Experiences after extreme weather Hans |
Hafslund |
|
The cyberattack on Volue |
Volue |
|
Experience with using fiber buoys in water level measurement |
Eviny |
|
Extreme weather Hans |
Met. Institutt |
Additionally, Scanmatic presented on product news, secure data collection, and mobile power supplies.
Evaluation
As per tradition, all external participants were required to fill out an anonymous evaluation form before leaving the event, resulting in nearly 100% participation.
The feedback was excellent. The overall likelihood that this year’s participants would recommend the event to a colleague (Net Promoter Score – NPS) was 9.72 on a scale of 1-10.
Content (program), organization by the host, topic relevance, speakers, social event, and food and drink also received very high scores.
Areas for improvement noted include the venue, acoustics, air quality, and facilitation for active participation from the audience, though satisfaction in these areas was also very high.
The Way Forward
Our ambition is to continue positioning HydMet as a professional seminar aimed at gathering the industry on a learning platform for knowledge and experience exchange. This year’s conference is the largest to date, and we believe it is appropriate to plan for further growth in the number of participants. It is not a goal to become as large as possible, but to ensure relevance and quality, we believe 50-100 participants is a reasonable target. This likely means we will need to look for facilities other than Scanmatic’s premises, at least for parts of the event.
The participant evaluations provide us with good insights, but we are also very interested in input from other stakeholders for whom the seminar may be relevant or could be made more relevant, without compromising the primary target group.
Examples include the Norwegian Public Roads Administration with Road Weather, DSA – Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, the Coastal Administration, the Mapping Authority, and county and municipal authorities, or anyone managing distributed sensor networks for monitoring weather, climate, hydrology, and environmental parameters.
Feel free to contact us with input and suggestions.
Planning for HydMet 2025 is underway. Based on the participant evaluation, the majority clearly prefer late spring/early summer as the best time for the gathering, so we are aiming for late May or early June 2025.
As decisions are made and plans materialize, the seminar’s new website www.hydmet.com will be continuously updated. Stay tuned!
