Automated Weather Warnings for Dubai

Air Safety Week,  March 10, 2008  

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Weather Decision Technologies (WDT) has disclosed details regarding its Aviation Weather Decision Support System (AWDSS) designed to enhance operational safety and flight management planning.

Dubai International Airport (DXB) has implemented a fully integrated AWDSS system, which provides automated and intensely detailed, real-time "nowcasts" and forecasts on meteorological conditions such as fog, thunderstorms, low-level wind shear, microbursts, inversions, gust and sea- breeze fronts, and other hazards affecting the airport.

The Dubai AWDSS was fully installed by WDT in late 2007 and is now going through a six-month process to ensure it is tuned to the local environment and meets all of the requirements of the Dubai ATC and meteorological staff.

The AWDSS enhanced analysis, interpretation functionality and color-coded Aviation Weather Situation Display completely redefine the manner in which regional and runway weather data and custom alerts are delivered, with accurate, ultra-high resolution data supplied directly to ATC operations and to operational meteorologists for safety and flight planning up to 72 hours ahead.

With the system, airport meteorologists can customize and control a rich array of information that is precisely synchronized with scheduled arrival and departure times. Streamlined communications functions linked to airport operations centers enable rapid decision-making, thereby avoiding costly airborne staging or "on-the-runway" re-routing procedures.

"The AWDSS will greatly enhance safety with timely and accurate alerts, warnings and forecasts, enabling critical services to ATC and airport operations relating to runway management and flight planning," said David Thomas, senior manager of meteorological services, Dubai International.

The Dubai International project literally "lifts the fog" on hitherto hard-to-predict dynamic weather conditions affecting critical flight planning and airport traffic management activities.

Dubai's airport is known for its difficult-to-forecast fog, marked temperature inversions and occasional severe low level wind shear. These phenomena result from a high diurnal temperature range and rapidly fluctuating coastal humidity. The AWDSS installation marks the first time an integrated airport weather system is being utilized to predict both wide area weather conditions and local area weather phenomena in a single turnkey solution.

WDT's system is backwards-compatible with customers' installed radar, surface sensor or satellite imagery reception equipment and uses off-the-shelf hardware to reduce cost and time-to-market. The solution offers extremely high- resolution data on easy-to-use aviation weather situation displays, with one button, one-click functionality. The combined radar, surface observations and numerical forecast data are highly accurate, and are delivered as minute-by- minute visual and audible alerts. AWDSS offers full redundancy for emergency backup, with 2x the actually required server capacity.

WDT says the AWDSS technology platform offers airports the following key technology "firsts":

* First continuous wind and thermodynamic profiling system, providing continuous images designed to predict and display dynamic changes in hazardous weather;

* First built-in automatic data interpretation system to provide one- button, one-click data retrieval, color coding, audio alerts and watch warnings with an optional manual override mode for airport meteorologists to customize data and to communicate directly with ATC operations centers;

* First aviation weather nowcasting system providing very precise forecasts of fog, turbulence, thunderstorms, gust fronts, and inversion strength out to a few hours in advance;

* First mesoscale modeling system integrated within an aviation weather system for forecasts from 1-72 hours in advance.

WDT's AWDSS provides a mission-critical "leapfrog" technology for tomorrow's airport weather systems. As such, WDT is providing an effective alternative to the often limited local national meteorological forecasting systems.

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