Website provides real-time forecasts for Swiss lakes

A new website, www.meteolakes.ch , provides up-to-date information - such as water temperature, current speed, the chances of a storm and the presence of algae and whirlpools - on Switzerland's main lakes. The EPFL PhD student who developed the website as part of his doctoral work defended his thesis today. Will the water be warm enough tomorrow to go for a lunchtime swim in Lake Geneva? Will you be sailing against the currents to Evian this weekend? What will be the best place to collect algae samples the day after tomorrow? The answers to all these questions can be found on a single website: www.meteolakes.ch. Initially developed three years ago by Theo Baracchini , a PhD student at EPFL's Physics of Aquatic Systems Laboratory (APHYS), the project had a purely scientific goal: to enable scientists to view physical and biological data about Lake Geneva, collected over time and at different locations, that were previously difficult to obtain. But with around 330 visits a day last summer, the website obviously became useful to more than just scientists - swimmers, sailors, beach authorities, boaters, fishermen, tourists, nature lovers and people who are simply interested in lakes. Baracchini therefore expanded his website as part of his thesis research, which he defended this Friday at EPFL. "Meteolakes.ch is the first website to compile lake data from three different sources: satellite images, on-site measurements and 3D computer simulations," says Baracchini.