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Volpe Center Highlights - Summer 2005

Safety

Director's Notes | Dr. Kaveeshwar: First RITA Administrator | Focus | Safety
Mobility | Security | Contributions to TRB | Published and Presented

Thunderstorm Nowcasting: Developing New Ways to Use Lightning Data (FAA)

Convective weather, such as thunderstorm activity, impacts aviation traffic congestion as well as safety.

The Volpe Center is a major innovator in the use of lightning data for automating the reporting of thunderstorms as well as for determining how thunderstorms affect aviation. At this year's American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, where researchers discussed the effectiveness of new uses of lightning data in detecting and tracking convective storms, Dr. Thomas Seliga of the Surveillance and Assessment Division delivered a paper titled "Thunderstorm Nowcasting and Climatology using Cylindrical Hovmöller Diagrams: An NLDN Application." The paper, co-authored with a staff member of TITAN/SRC, describes work done in support of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in developing potential new ways to use lightning data collected by the National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN). NLDN data signify the occurrence of cloud-to-ground lightning flashes and represent the occurrence of thunderstorms throughout the contiguous United States. The Center has analyzed NLDN data for over 13 years, primarily in support of the FAA's program to automate the detection and reporting of thunderstorms through the Automated Weather Observing Systems and the Automated Surface Observing Systems. A link to the report can be found at http://www.volpe.dot.gov/library/pp05.html.

The paper demonstrates the potential for using cylindrical coordinate Hovmöller diagrams, also known as polar Hovmöller diagrams, for examining the behavior and spatial characteristics of lightning flashes during thunderstorms near airports (or other points of interest). Characteristics of storm behavior, such as onset, decay, duration, intensity, and radial and angular velocities, may be gleaned from these diagrams. Although not directly addressed in this study, the ability to combine temporal and spatial representations of storm activity in various forms-including varying Hovmöller diagrams, spatial portrayals, and loop replays of time sequences-should contribute to a better empirical understanding of storm behavior and its governing physics.

Enhancing the Safety Performance Analysis System (FAA)

The FAA Flight Standards Service (AFS) is responsible for certification of air operators, air agencies, and air personnel, and for implementing and enforcing the federal regulations that help ensure the safety of passengers using commercial air operators. AFS's primary tool for data access and analysis is the Safety Performance Analysis System (SPAS); FAA aviation safety inspectors worldwide use SPAS to assess information about aviation certificate holders (air operators, repair stations, aviation schools, airmen, etc.). As such, it is an important part of FAA's systems safety initiative.

The Volpe Center has been responsible for the development of SPAS since the system's inception in 1991, and the Center's Aviation Safety Division supports ongoing enhancement based on user needs and technological advances. On February 25, 2005, Volpe deployed SPAS Release 2.16.104, which incorporates improved capabilities such as the integration of information from the latest version of the Air Transportation Oversight System.

In a related effort, on behalf of the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center, the Volpe Center delivered a final document titled Concept for a Future SPAS, Entrenching System Safety Principles Across the FAA's Aviation Safety Group, to the agency's System Approach to Safety Oversight Program Office on February 16, 2005. The document describes how next-generation SPAS will serve as the primary risk analysis and decision-support system for the entire FAA Office of Aviation Safety (AVS). Intended to provide a practical foundation for future development and program management by envisioning SPAS use five to ten years from today, it provides concrete examples of AVS personnel utilizing SPAS in an environment of FAA-industry collaboration and adherence to system safety principles. Employing a series of "day-in-the-life-of..." narratives, it demonstrates how data-mining techniques, automated workflow functionality, and other cutting-edge SPAS features could be used to support aviation safety decisions.

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