Case Study: National Institute of Meteorology achieves digitization of 100 years of climate and weather records (3M pages) with ABBYY FlexiCapture

ABBYY FlexiCapture Helps to Read a 100-year Load of Climate and Weather Data

The National Institute of Meteorology (INMET) in Brasília has been collecting weather and climate records since 1909, amassing a vast and varied paper archive that was difficult to search or analyze. Faced with the task of digitizing more than 3 million pages—many in different formats and poor physical condition—INMET contracted Flexdoc to convert historical meteorological data into an electronic database for scientific analysis and forecasting.

Flexdoc implemented ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine to automatically recognize form types, zone fields, and perform OCR, routing unreadable handwritten fields to operators and enforcing 100% verification for scientific use. The solution processed over 3 million pages and 4 billion characters, improved recognition speed and quality, reduced typist staffing by about 30%, and enabled reliable export of metadata into INMET’s forecasting systems, completing the digitalization effort on schedule.

National Institute of Meteorology

Carlos Flávio Barreto F. de Souza

Director of Technology