Near-term focus of effort, IOC 2010 (dates are from the final report and in reality are slipped 3 years):
A. Assessments of Avoidable Delay
B. Translating Weather Data into ATC Impacts
C. Improve weather input into Collaborative Traffic Flow Management
D. Weather Information and Pilot Decision Making
E. Integrating Weather Impacts with Airport and Terminal TFM
For proper context, long-term findings are
Mid Term: IOC 2015
F. Adaptive integrated ATM procedures for incremental route planning
G. Weather Impacts and Tactical Trajectory Management Systems
H. Design Airspace for Weather Impacts
Far Term: IOC Post 2015
I. Advanced Integrated ATM Approaches
What can be done now? First, the current and perhaps long-term impact of fuel costs on operations is significantly affecting traffic flow management by simply decreasing the number of operations by as much as 20%. So, 2008 delay statistics may turn out much less than anticipated from the last two years' NAS performance. Nevertheless, there is one factor that will always have a negative impact on NAS delay statistics—the uncertainty of weather and the uncertain impact weather has on ATM. And we must always remember that this conditional uncertainty is what is important, not the uncertainty of weather by itself.
The FAA estimates that 70-75% of the 500,000+ /year air carrier delays are attributable to weather. The good news is that up to 60% of these can be avoided with better weather information, and skillful application of that information to managing air traffic. This quickly summarizes “A” above with well-documented and accepted numbers. It seems the biggest, near-term impact to number and length of delays can be made right here.
Not many ATM-related decisions, whether by air traffic control, airline operations, or the pilot, are made without careful consideration of the weather environment. Indeed, weather information permeates all functional areas of the NAS. That is why JPDO planning includes Weather as a primary functional area, and Weather Integration is a key NextGen activity. Weather R&D and product development focuses on several impact areas:
• Turbulence, clear air, mountain wave, and convective
• In flight icing
• Storms, convective and winter
• Obstructions to vision
• Volcanic ash
• Space Weather
• Wake Vortices
• Environmental Impacts (Noise, Emissions)
Fundamental to NextGen's future success is the use of a common operating picture of the environment, including the weather situation, for every decision maker involved with every decision. For weather, this means there must be a single authoritative source from which all users derive their weather information for decision support. The first step, then, is the creation of a multi-dimensional (time, space, uncertainty, severity) virtual data base that is networked to the entire NAS, from which all users derive their unique weather information needs to form a common situational awareness and make decisions. And remember—the user can be a human or a machine, as in the case of machine-to-machine interactions.
The good news is NextGen Net-enabled Weather (NNEW) development is underway. But now is the time to begin understanding how the common weather operating picture integrates into NAS decision making, so that the NAS is ready to prototype, evaluate, and begin using this national asset. That is, the NNEW “application layers” tailored to specific NAS decisions should be addressed now to ultimately take full advantage of the NNEW capabilities.
Initial NNEW applications should be limited and high-impact. Focus should be on functionality and showing near-term benefits. The NextGen Concept of Operations and Integrated Work Plans are very clear here—we must not lose this focus and not be tempted into “doing it all.” The application layer with its decision support tools and interactions with the data is the most difficult part of the NextGen vision and deserves a credible initial capability with tangible benefit to the NAS.
This paper will further elaborate on these issues, in particular:
• The importance of focus on ATM impact from environmental constraints such as weather. That is, the need to address the conditional uncertainty of ATM impact given the environment vs. the explicit uncertainty of weather all by itself.
• What a “common operating picture of the environment” ultimately means. The so-called 4-D Data Cube is just the first step, but is fundamental.
• Current work of others that is modeling and verifying weather constraints to NAS operations that will result in a better understanding of true impact to en route and terminal flight profiles and flows. We anticipate reporting the initial results of studies done on turbulence and its actual impact to traffic flow management and ATM.
• Weather to the cockpit and how it fits into the overall weather integration task.
• And finally, efforts to harmonize the dissemination of weather information globally, including weather to the cockpit.
Supplementary URL: