The Role of Verification Services in Support of Integrated Decision Making

The Forecast Impact and Quality Assessment Section (FIQAS) of the Global Systems Division of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory, in conjunction with the NWS Aviation Weather Center and the Weather Evaluation Team (WET), is working to explore and develop concepts, exploiting the use of verification information, to better enable the use of weather information to mitigate the impact of weather on congested airspace. A prototype capability, known as the VERIFIED, was demonstrated during the summer of 2012 at Aviation Weather Center Testbed Evaluation (AWT) and continued to support the generation of the AWC-produced Aviation Weather Statement (AWC; a product to bridge between weather and aviation traffic flow planning) throughout the summer. The information conveyed through the automated real-time web-based VERIFIED prototype included the following: • A translation of convective forecast products into NAS constraints with measures of confidence • The identification of impactful events, including their onset and cessation • Reconciliation of potentially dissimilar forecast products • Information to determine whether or not forecasts are ‘verifying', and • Information with a geographic focus on specific regions important to traffic flow planning to support the issuance of Traffic Flow Management Initiatives

This presentation will include a high level overview of the role of such a tool as the VERIFIED to support both the weather forecast process and the aviation traffic flow management decision by bridging the gap between the weather forecast and the use of weather in aviation operational decisions. A technical description of the VERIFIED tool is to be presented by Layne et. al (same conference).