Through images, graphics and a clear and dynamic interface, the new website from the Center for Meteorological and Climate Research Applied to Agriculture (Cepagri) at Unicamp intends to communicate more directly with the population. “The idea was to update the website with a different proposal. We looked for a more modern look that would help the information reach users”, explained Renata Gonçalves, director of Cepagri.
Accessed daily by more than five thousand users, including researchers from different areas, journalists and residents of Campinas and the region interested in weather forecasts, the portal has until now had a technical nature, supported almost exclusively on textual information. “The proposal for the new website is to take advantage of the potential of the Cepagri website to also publicize the center’s academic scientific production. Now, it is a scientific dissemination website”, reported Marcos Rogério Pereira, information and communications technology professional, responsible for developing the project.
According to Pereira, usability, accessibility and responsive design were among the main concerns in the development of the project. This way, the new website is adapted to any technological support and can be fully enjoyed from cell phones, tablets and computers. The accessibility of the new portal also includes the use of computer codes that can be translated by screen readers, allowing access for the visually impaired.
Among the new features of the new portal is the climatology section, which brings temperature and rainfall data, generated by the meteorological station since 1997, in graphs that enable the user to access and understand the information. Through period selection resources, for example, it is also possible to make comparisons with historical averages. Another novelty is the connection with social media, which allows users to easily follow and share website content.
According to Renata, the Cepagri website, created in 1995 by researcher Jurandir Zullo, was the University's second portal, with the last update being carried out in 2006. The website was, until then, exclusively dedicated to providing information about the meteorological station. from Cepagri, which generates data on temperature, precipitation, relative humidity and solar radiation every 10 minutes. “We needed a portal that conveyed information about climate change, meteorology, climatology and all our research in agriculture and the environment, in addition to the images generated by satellites”, he pointed out.
The new portal began to be developed at the beginning of 2017, by Renata Gonçalves, Marcos Pereira and Derivaldo Reis de Sousa, web developer. “There was extensive curation and research work to find out what type of technology is being used around the world on websites of institutions that carry out activities similar to Cepagri”, commented Pereira. According to him, the need to restructure the website itself originated from a previous project, started in 2011, within the scope of the Climate Change Research Group (AlcScens) and the master's degree at the Laboratory for Advanced Studies in Journalism (LabJor). “The challenge was to make available and accessible the information produced by the 40 project researchers, from various teaching units, centers and research centers at Unicamp”, he said.
In addition to creating and managing the AlcScens page, Pereira created profiles for the Group on Facebook and Tweeter, monitoring its reach and the flow of information it shared. “In my master’s degree, I investigated the use of social networks as a scientific dissemination tool, specifically in the case of the climate change project developed here. I mapped the use of technological tools at the time and drew attention to new means of accessing the internet. In 2011, there was still little talk about responsive websites within my field of study,” he said.
