TY - JOUR
T1 - SASSCAL webSAPI
T2 - A web scraping application programming interface to support access to SASSCAL’s weather data
AU - Thapelo, Tsaone Swaabow
AU - Namoshe, Molaletsa
AU - Matsebe, Oduetse
AU - Motshegwa, Tshiamo
AU - Bopape, Mary Jane Morongwa
N1 - Funding Information:
For the partial financial support (with reference number: S-00086); and SASSCAL for availing the data.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s).
PY - 2021/7/28
Y1 - 2021/7/28
N2 - The Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate and Land Management (SASSCAL) was initiated to support regional weather monitoring and climate research in Southern Africa. As a result, several Automatic Weather Stations (AWSs) were implemented to provide numerical weather data within the collaborating countries. Meanwhile, access to the SASSCAL weather data is limited to a number of records that are achieved via a series of clicks. Currently, end users can not efficaciously extract the desired weather values. Thus, the data is not fully utilised by end users. This work contributes with an open source Web Scraping Application Programming Interface (WebSAPI) through an interactive dashboard. The objective is to extend functionalities of the SASSCAL Weathernet for: data extraction, statistical data analysis and visualisation. The SASSCAL WebSAPI was developed using the R statistical environment. It deploys web scraping and data wrangling techniques to support access to SASSCAL weather data. This WebSAPI reduces the risk of human error, and the researcher’s effort of generating desired data sets. The proposed framework for the SASSCAL WebSAPI can be modified for other weather data banks while taking into consideration the legality and ethics of the toolkit.
AB - The Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate and Land Management (SASSCAL) was initiated to support regional weather monitoring and climate research in Southern Africa. As a result, several Automatic Weather Stations (AWSs) were implemented to provide numerical weather data within the collaborating countries. Meanwhile, access to the SASSCAL weather data is limited to a number of records that are achieved via a series of clicks. Currently, end users can not efficaciously extract the desired weather values. Thus, the data is not fully utilised by end users. This work contributes with an open source Web Scraping Application Programming Interface (WebSAPI) through an interactive dashboard. The objective is to extend functionalities of the SASSCAL Weathernet for: data extraction, statistical data analysis and visualisation. The SASSCAL WebSAPI was developed using the R statistical environment. It deploys web scraping and data wrangling techniques to support access to SASSCAL weather data. This WebSAPI reduces the risk of human error, and the researcher’s effort of generating desired data sets. The proposed framework for the SASSCAL WebSAPI can be modified for other weather data banks while taking into consideration the legality and ethics of the toolkit.
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U2 - 10.5334/dsj-2021-024
DO - 10.5334/dsj-2021-024
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85112609431
SN - 1683-1470
VL - 20
JO - Data Science Journal
JF - Data Science Journal
IS - 1
M1 - 24
ER -
