WP4: Assessment of the Potential of the ATM Tools and Roadmap Generation

Objectives

• Identify potential users for probability forecast products of precipitation at airport environment.
• Map the user needs and study what kind of solutions probability forecast products of precipitation could give to them.
• Raise awareness of possibilities the probability forecast products of precipitation could give for improving the efficiency of existing and future processes at airport environment.
• Demonstrate how developed probability forecast products of precipitation could support Total Airport Management.

Description of work

This research will contribute significantly to enhancing ATM efficiency by integrating novel meteorological information to ATM decision making systems. It will also lead to a better understanding of the resilience of the ATM system to winter weather.
 
Precipitation, especially snowfall, reduces visibility, influences to the state of runway and surface of planes. All these effects to Total Airport Management in many ways. During low visibility events a special Low Visibility Procedures (LVP) could be activated at Aerodrome. That can reduce the capacity of airport, which can also have effects to the whole Network. Runway condition is even more than low visibility influenced by the precipitation. Precipitation reduces friction on runway and influences to the braking conditions remarkably. The runway cannot be used at all during the time when snow is removed. All these have a strong connection to the capacity of runway, whole airport and the Network, too. De-icing Management is totally dependent on accurate precipitation forecasts. When next few hours precipitation state and timing is forecasted accurately, de-icing time of an individual plane is known and the De-icing Management works well and the predictability of CDM (Collaborative Decision Making) of airport will work well as well.

The dependencies of WP4 with other work packages is described in the picture below. The information about the user needs obtained from surveys and workshops will be used in the meteorological developments in WP2, WP3 and WP5. The useful information obtained from SESAR IR workshops will also be dealt when simulations are prepared in these 3 WPs. Simulation of possible solutions for user needs at the airport will be done in task 6.1. User opinions will then be collected in task 4.3 and delivered to 6.0. The results of WP4 and WP6 will be published as described in task 7.2 and 7.3 in combined or separate publications as appropriate.

Tasks

Task 4.0: Coordination of WP4
The coordination task assures the timely progress of the work and organizes workshops and phone conferences to monitor and optimize the progress among the involved teams. It is responsible for the co-operation with the project management in WP1 in the form of regular progress reporting and preparation of the deliverables according to the agreed schedule.

Task 4.1: Survey of user needs at airport for winter weather probability product
First action in that task is identification of different user groups so that possible usage over several levels of ATM operation management is taken into account. In this stage gender analyses of user group representatives are made and sufficient means are taken to ensure gender balance in a selected representative group. Survey questions setup for collecting user opinion is pre-checked before submitting against identified background assumptions about sex and gender of the users. In case gender based question setting is identified necessary corrections are made to formulate questions before proceeding with survey.

The potential users and operations of winter weather precipitation probability forecast during winter conditions at airport will be identified by a survey (1). Results will be analysed and conclusions made for the potential users for the scientific concept demonstration campaign.
 
Task 4.2: Workshop of defining impact mechanisms between winter weather probability product and airport operations
The impact mechanisms between precipitation forecast and existing airport operations will be studied during that task. This will be done in the workshop. After that a literal description of benefit mechanisms and the thresholds to be used in a winter weather prototype will be asked from participants. The information will be collected into a user needs document, which can be used as an input in WP4 (2).

Task 4.3: Collecting user opinions after the demonstration campaign
WP 6 will organize a demonstration campaign with 1-3 partners from different areas of aviation community. After demonstration this task will create a survey (3) to collect opinions of the benefits of product to airport operations as them are today. The views of experts in the airport will be collected to determine the needs for change, when SESAR developments will be implemented in future.
 
Task 4.4: Raising awareness of the use probabilistic winter weather information in airport operations
Tasks 4.1-4.3 will build up knowledge on how improve the resilience of different airport operations by using probability precipitation forecast at airport operations and processes. In the task another workshop will be organised to conclude the findings and discuss future possibilities probabilistic forecasting can give to the resilience of an airport. Conclusions will be collected in final report of WP4.

Task 4.5 Roadmap
This task creates a roadmap about how the results will be developed into operational applications

Task 4.6: Publications
This task coordinates the publication of the results from tasks 4.1 to 4.5 in refereed scientific journals, aviation-related magazines and during   conferences suitable for the addressed topics.

Photo: Elena Saltikoff.