Integrated Terminal Weather System (ITWS) 1992 Annual Report

Hazardous weather in the terminal area is the major cause of aviation system delays as well as a principal cause of air carrier accidents. Several systems currently under development will provide significant increases in terminal safety. However, these systems will not make a major impact on weather-induced delays in the terminal area, meet a number of the safety needs, such as information to support ground deicing decisions, or reduce the workload of the terminal controller. The Integrated Terminal Weather System (ITWS) will provide improved aviation weather information in the allocated TRACON area (up to 50 nmi from the airport) by integrating data and products from various Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Weather Service (NWS) sensors and weather information systems. The data from these sources will be combined to provide a unified set ofsafety and planning weather products for pilots, controllers, and terminal area traffic managers. By using data from multiple sensors, ITWS can generate important new products where no individual sensor alone could generate a single, reliable product. In other instances, use ofdata from several sources can compensate for erroneous data from one sensor and thus improve overall integrity of existing products. Major objectives of the ITWS program are to increase the effective airport acceptance rate in adverse weather by providing information to support terminal automation systems, better terminal route planning, wake vortex advisory services, and to reduce the need for controllers to communicate weather information to pilots via VHF voice. This report summarizes the work accomplished during fiscal year 1992 on the development ofthe ITWS initial operational capability products; functional prototype design; operation of testbeds to acquire data for product development and testing; operational evaluation of products by ATe users; investigation of approaches for effective transfer of the technology to the production contractor; transfer of products to pilots via digital data links; and technical support for the ITWS documents required by the General Accounting Office (GAO).