Presented to: 3rd Natl Sfc Transportation Wx Symp
By: Ken Leonard, Director, Aviation Weather Office
Date: July 25, 2007
Federal AviationAdministrationLeveraging Related
R&D Activities to Benefit Surface Transportation
Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) Weather
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NextGen WeatherJuly 25, 2007
NextGen Weather Drivers
• Today’s US National Airspace System faces demands which exceed its capacity– Weather accounts for 70 percent of delays– Demand is to triple by 2025
• Increase airspace demand correlates with increased surface use– Weather will make both increasingly difficult
• New approaches are necessary to safely accommodate demand– Increased use of automation and network enabled operations– Better use of better weather information
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NextGen WeatherJuly 25, 2007
NextGen Theme – Reduce Weather ImpactTo Improve NAS Performance
Reduce Weather Impact By
Weather and ATM Integration (WATMI)
Weather Dissemination
Management (WDM)
NextGen Forecast Engine (NFtE)
Weather Observation Consolidation (WOC)
Thrusts
· Integrate weather location, severity and impact information into operational decision-making
· Provide improved access to weather information by all users
· Improve quality of current and forecast weather information
· Improve observations of weather information
Providing/integrating effective weather information into decision-making
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NextGen WeatherJuly 25, 2007
NextGen Network Enabled Weather• For system-wide application, all decisions made on
a common weather information base: the 4-D virtual weather datacube
• Improved with emerging observational and forecasting technologies as they emerge from R&D
• A (virtual) single authoritative source• Network enabled for machine-to-machine (M2M)
operations– Publish-subscribe (push)– Discovery service (pull)– All information metadata tagged for M2M use
• Probabilistic as well as deterministic information• Integrated into new user applications and decision
technologies
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NextGen WeatherJuly 25, 2007
NNEW and the 4D Cube
Observation
15 – 60 mins
Hazard
1 – 24 hours
Virtual4D
Weather Cube
Aviation weather information
in 3 dimensions( latitude/longitude/height)
4th dimension = time
0 – 15 mins
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NextGen WeatherJuly 25, 2007
XMLXML
ProgrammabilityProgrammabilityConnectivityConnectivity
HTMLHTML
PresentationPresentation
TCP/IPTCP/IP
Technology
Technology
Innovation
Innovation
FTP,FTP, E-mail, Gopher
E-mail, GopherWeb Pages
Web Pages
Browse Browse the Webthe Web
Program Program the Webthe Web
Web Services
Web Services
Web Services Evolution
XML andWeb Services- Fundamentalconstruct for Net-Centric applications
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NextGen WeatherJuly 25, 2007
Transportation Wx Convergence• Joint Planning and Development agencies are
committing to Network Enabled Operations (NEO)– DOD has defined a full weather data model, XML
schema/namespace• Joint METOC Broker Language is operational• Used in air, land and sea operations
– In NWS, XML used extensively in web services, but official standard not yet defined
• Several parallel developments underway, and considering reuse of or additive merger with DoD standards
• Being driven mostly by aviation, but other communities almost certain to follow
– FAA and Joint Planning & Development Office (JPDO) defining standards to be used in NextGen
– Coordination through OFCM Committee for Environmental Information Systems and Communications (CEISC) and its Joint Action Group for Extensible Markup Language and Web Services (JAG/XML-WS)
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NextGen WeatherJuly 25, 2007
Summary• Aviation weather R&D in the realms of observing and
forecasting will also benefit other modes, including via probabilistic information
• In-situ weather sensing from surface modes and on-board decision assistance could benefit the entire transportation community
• Surface transportation has an opportunity to adopt NEO and 4-D data cube concepts
• Integration of weather M2M into decision support tools is the future of aviation weather support, and surface transportation modes could do the same