Developing Collaborative Software to support the Aviation Weather Center’s Collaborative Convective Forecast Project

Convective weather is the single most disruptive force affecting the operation of aircraft within the National Air Space (NAS). In order to mitigate the weather induced disruptions, several users of the NAS have proposed an experiment in forecasting of convective activity. This experiment consists of a process by which an initial forecast produced by the Aviation Weather Center (AWC) in Kansas City evolves into a final product through collaboration by participating meteorologists from the airlines and the Center Weather Service Units (CWSU). The forecast is called Collaborative Convective Forecast Product (CCFP). The CCFP is input to the Collaborative Decision-Making process for determining air traffic planning among all stakeholders. Forecasts produced by this collaboration will lead to a reduction in delays, reroutes and cancellations influenced by convective events.

In developing this collaborative process, the Aviation Support Branch at AWC investigated several methods of collaboration. AWC and the rest of the stakeholders established a set of goals for this project. First, allow the AWC forecasters to draw and issue a preliminary forecast analysis daily. Secondly, allow up to 30 forecasters from around the country to view AWC’s preliminary forecast and contribute changes to the preliminary forecast. Both AWC and the rest of the stakeholders need to ability to monitor everyone’s input while not effecting their operations of monitoring and analyzing meteorological data sources. Finally allow AWC to issue the final product in a media which all users could get to it. Several technologies were investigated including phone teleconferences, Commercial Off the Self (COTS) collaborative software, and several Internet based technologies include Java programs and Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs. After an in-depth evaluation of available technologies AWC decided to try a CGI based Internet approach, which was quite successful in achieving the goals set forth for this project.

The goals for this paper will be to provide an in-depth description of the software evaluated by AWC for this project and the final solution developed. It will focus on the collaborative software and methods used to facilitate a collaborative product and the lessons learned by using CGI and web browsers as a media to collaborate. The paper will describe ideas for future work within AWC and outside the center to continue the success seen in the Collaborative Convective Forecast Project and detail plans for the next phase in development of the project and software.