Air traffic is expected to triple world-wide within the next 20 years. With the existing on-board and on-ground systems, this would lead to an increase of aircraft accidents, in the same, or a higher proportion. Despite the fact that accidents are rare, this increase is perceived as unacceptable by society and new systems and solutions must be found to maintain the number of accidents at its current low level. Although adverse weather is seldom the exclusive cause of accidents, it is nevertheless one of the most disruptive factors in aviation.

Weather phenomena can evolve at rapid rates, over a wide spatial extent when compared to other factors that may affect the safe conduct of flight, apart from aircraft mechanics, e.g., runway status, airspace sector access, support services. Thus, within the spectrum of aeronautical information, meteorological data or weather information is an important component for the safe conduct of a flight; and in the future for the efficient management of air traffic.

In this paper, an account of the scope and objectives of the FLYSAFE project is described, this aims to develop a Next Generation Integrated Surveillance System (NG-ISS) on-board the aircraft and a supporting Ground-based network of Ground Weather Processors (GWP) and Weather Information Management Systems (WIMS). The purpose of the NG-ISS is to increase situation awareness of the flight crew to the main hazards affecting the safe conduct of a flight: air traffic, terrain and atmospheric state. The purpose of the GWP is to receive and store weather information and respond to requests for weather information. The purpose of the WIMS is to provide forecasts of the atmospheric state with respect to the main weather hazards to the safe conduct of a flight: ice, thunderstorms, wake-vortices and turbulence; at three scales local for the terminal manoeuvring area; continental and global for en-route phases.

This paper will describe the state of development of the WIMS, the Ground-based Weather Processor architecture; examples of gridded data converted to GML data objects; and the data model used to exchange data. These developments are placed into the context of other developments with respect to availability of data for the aviation sector.

Developments within FLYSAFE and elsewhere within the aviation sector raise a number of key issues with respect to standardisation and interoperability between systems currently under development; these are highlighted as subjects for further discussion and consideration.