A Concept of Operations for an Interactive Weather Briefing

For safe and efficient operation of the NAS, there is an undisputed need for the weather forecasting services and products to estimate the reduction in capacity due to adverse weather. (Even) automated weather forecast products are demonstrably uncertain (accuracy, bias, and consistency) as the lead-time increases, and this requires either, 1) decision support tools, or 2) refinement, consultation and application of the weather forecast to estimate air traffic capacity; ie, an Interactive Weather Briefing (IWB). The context for the IWB is air traffic management (ATM) of the National Air Space (NAS) by the Traffic Management Units during all phases of flight at multiple sites: the ATCSCC, ARTCCs, TRACONs and towers.

The goal of the IWB is to estimate reductions in the air traffic capacity implied by the weather forecast, and to bring all users to a common viewpoint and appreciation of the forecast, it's skill, and it's uncertainty. The objective is to rationalize estimates of reduction in capacity due to adverse weather. The 4-dimensional weather forecast must to be reduced to a product for ingest by traffic managers: a 1-dimensional, time-sequence of the reduction in capacity for selected locations/elements of the airspace. The IWB is the integrating mechanism to accomplish a “mission of transition” covering all phases of flight, from en route flight down to terminal operations. This is the operational concept (CONOPS).

The components of the IWB are presented with some counter-examples, a description of new products that are needed and estimates of personnel/schedule to cover a regional configuration. This CONOPS for an IWB is also a design standard for the development of automated decision support systems.