Superior data acquisition, management and delivery

NIWA delivers high quality data which we can tailor to you and your farm's needs. We build custom instruments, manage data from them and deliver a range of products via web and mobile tools to help you make the best business decisions.

Collecting data

We collect a vast range of information from New Zealand's environment. We are constantly developing technologies that make monitoring and observations increasingly accurate, reliable and cost-effective.

We:

  • collect data from over 250 weather stations and 500 environmental monitoring stations throughout New Zealand
  • perform full calibration and quality control of our monitoring equipment
  • develop, manufacture and deploy cost effective instrument systems and services. These include:
    • specially-designed weather stations
    • soil moisture and soil temperature sensors
    • water flow measurement and irrigation control systems
    • real-time online monitoring and control systems.
  • More about NIWA's instrument systems and services

Managing data

We develop and maintain cutting-edge information management systems, including:

More about our services

Delivering data

In addition to our forecasting products, we are constantly developing ways of delivering data and information so that they're as useful as possible to you. These include the internet, smartphones and apps, text message control and stand-alone applications. A few recent examples include:

Client access to all of our observation stations.

Access for our clients to nationwide real-time and historic climate data

Extreme rainfall statistics and forecasts for any point in New Zealand (these are ideal for risk assessment)

Federated access to nationwide freshwater health information

Warren Bruce with Otis, mustering sheep on his farm near Wellington. [Dave Allen]
NIWA weather station
This map of the 100-year return period 24-hour rainfall total is based on HIRDS.
A river ecologist collects macro-invertebrate animals as an indicator of river ecological ‘health’ using a Surber sampler. [John Quinn]