The Network Enabled Verification Service (NEVS): A bridge between weather and ATM weather integration

The Aviation Air Traffic Manager of today mentally integrates weather information into traffic planning decisions. When developing a traffic plan, the Traffic Manager often synthesizes the weather information from a variety of weather products, accounting for forecast accuracy and uncertainty, to issue a traffic management plan. The Traffic Manager then monitors the developing weather situation for weather criteria that could impact the traffic plan. However, as the aviation community and the Traffic Manager progress toward the Next Generation Air Traffic Management System (NextGen) era, weather information will become integrated into aviation decision tools for augmenting ATM planning. However, the need to track the forecast quality and uncertainty still remains as well as the need for monitoring the weather with respect to operational criteria so that when alerted, changes to the ATM plan can take place.

To fulfill these needs, the FAA and the NWS are sponsoring the development of the Network-Enabled Verification Service (NEVS). Through NEVS automated net-enabled real-time capabilities, user-specific measures of weather forecast and weather translation quality will be provided and targeted to improve the use of weather information for ATM planning.

Within this paper, the vision for NEVS as a bridge between weather and the integration of weather into ATM decisions will be presented. The NEVS synthesis, monitoring, alert, and 4-D cube capabilities will be specifically highlighted. A detailed demonstration of the NEVS capabilities will be presented in the Madine et al. paper (this Conference): The Network Enabled Verification Service (NEVS): The Synthesis, Alert, Monitoring, and 4-D Capabilities. In addition, Vavra et al. (IIPS Conference) will present the NWS plans for the transition of NEVS to operations in the paper: Emerging Technology for the Verification of the NextGen 4-D Weather Data Cube: NWS Plans for Implementation of the Network-Enabled Verification Service (NEVS).