Myanmar Field Trip Part 6: Get Your Hands Dirty

大家好，我是益嘉
Good morning, I am Yi-Chia.

Installation

After Ralph’s step by step instruction of weather station installation, it is time for YTU students to lead the whole installation process! YTU members include Prof. Win Win Zin, Prof. Zin Marlar Tin San and Ph.D. students Shelly Win, San Win Mng and Hnin Thiri Myo. Also, two IWUMD representative engineers joined the installation assistance.

The empty site before installation

Everybody starts installing weather station!

Enabling modem for data transfer

First, we installed the solar panel and navigate sunlight direction to gain maximum solar power. Then, the weather sensor was installed.

Secondly, the weather box was installed. To finish the installation of weather box, it’s necessary to match all cables to specific slots to connect weather sensor to the data logger. It is especially essential to activate data logger, sensors, solar panel and wireless modem in weather box.

Lastly, data logger and modem are required to connect a computer to enable data transfer. This step is mostly software manipulation and it ensures that automatic data transfer is successful.

Upper: weather sensor
Lower: solar panel 

Finally, after one hour straight under 35-degree celsius sunlight at noon, we successfully installed Tarwa automatic weather station and data started transferring after one hour. Hopefully, with more weather data from Bago river basin, it will be helpful to conduct more scientific research and solve flood/drought problems.

During the lunch, I asked Shelly about her feeling building weather station from scratch by themselves. “I felt exhausted! My hands and body are burned so much by sunlight. But, I felt excited to finish weather station installation!”

Visit new water level station

After taking a break, we headed to nearby water level station to check data logger and condition of station. It was just built beside Tarwa river last week.

New water level station, shot with Phantom 4 Pro

During the installation process, I took high resolution land use map by using drone. Here is the video showing beauty of Bago.

I discussed with YTU Prof. Win Win Zin and Ph.D. student Ms. Hnin Thiri Myo about research interest and challenges in conducting future climate simulation. Ms. Hnin Thiri Myo loves to share knowledge of climate change and flood assessment. Therefore, her long-term goal is to be a professor in Myanmar. Ms. Hnin Thiri Myo has the strong interest in river runoff inundation model (RRI) to conduct flood assessment under future climate change. She also introduced the high-resolution Global Circulation Model (GCM), which has the 20km resolution. (normally GCM has the roughly 100km resolution).

Currently, Ms. Hnin Thiri Myo is doing bias correction and data processing for future hydrological simulation. Prof. Win Win Zin also showed strong interest in RRI and WEB-DHM application in Bago river basin and this may promote further cooperation between The University of Tokyo and Yangon Technological University. The specific challenges for Dr. Win Win Zin to use WEB-DHM were mostly input of high-resolution DEM to hydrological model. Those challenges may be further discussed with Kawasaki group research members. I also briefly introduced my research about the application of deep learning and downscaling methods. They also give me some feedback and encouragement to build the downscaling model.

Fun

When we were roasted under the sunlight during installation, what could be more relieving than a bowl of watermelon! It’s said that Bago river basin largely produces watermelons. It makes Bago have the abundant low price and good quality watermelon. Indeed, those watermelon slices are sweet. Everybody enjoyed eating watermelon and continued the work of installation!

美味しそう

楽しかった

Fun facts: In Myanmar, buses' doors are always open even vehicles are moving. When it's too crowded in the bus, somebody is half out of the bus with one hand grabbing the door handrail.