Surface Observations for Enhanced Situational Awareness for Automated Vehicles

Environmental data are being generated at a rapid pace from an ever-expanding number of disparate sources on a global scale – a circumstance that has been enabled during recent decades due to rapid advancements in computing, communications, and electronics miniaturization. With this expansion, the number of weather observing stations has increased exponentially bringing about the addition of tens to a hundred thousand or more observation platforms, providing ground-truth data in real time around the world. With the advent of more autonomous vehicles (AVs) from the land to the ocean to the air, it is critical that these technologies learn to leverage the high-quality data from these surface stations to ensure safe and efficient operations.

Synoptic Data Public Benefit Corporation has made it its mission to aggregate, quality control, and disseminate the data from these disparate sources to the public, private, and academic sectors, providing critical weather information for daily operations and decision makers across all weather-sensitive verticals. Currently, more than 150,000 surface stations are available worldwide from more than 320 discrete networks in one easy-to-access location. Additionally, federal government commercial data buy programs such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Mesonet Program were created to make non-federal assets accessible to the federal government, providing supplemental data for use in numerical weather prediction modeling and nowcasting. These data sets and services could be extended for use by AV operators and manufacturers, ensuring AVs are not only built to withstand adverse weather conditions but are also able to adapt in real time to events by utilizing all available surface weather observations in the area.

This presentation will focus on the universe of available surface weather observation data both domestically and internationally and how both AV operators and manufacturers can leverage these additional data sets for safer operations during adverse weather events.