leveraging related r&d activities to benefit surface transportation

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

2 2Federal AviationAdministration

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



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



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



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



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



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)



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

leveraging related r&d activities to benefit surface transportation

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