MEDUSA

"MEDUSA, a Meteorological Decision Support System for Aviation"

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Weather contributes both directly and indirectly to incidents, accidents, and delays in air traffic and hence derogates safety and efficiency of airport operations. Today, the aviation stakeholders receive their meteorological information from different sources, at different update rates and with different levels of resolution and accuracy, often leading to misunderstandings and even wrong decisions. The goal of the project is to develop a MEteorological Decision sUpport System for Aviation (MEDUSA) to provide adequate information about adverse weather situations to all decision makers in the airport environment such as airports, air navigation safety providers, airlines, and weather services. MEDUSA is a highly interdisciplinary and intersectorial project dedicated to the scientific and technological development of an end-user oriented application in the field of aviation meteorology including a marketing and commercialization strategy. MEDUSA, combining scientific complexity with high requirements on technical robustness, will provide an integrated weather information solution to aviation. Adverse summer weather like thunderstorms and heavy precipitation), and adverse winter weather situations like heavy snow fall, icing and freezing conditions at the airport will be considered. Key for the technical development is the integration of the various meteorological products in a robust, reliable, and real-time operational system with an easy-to-understand visualization to assist end-users in daily decision making. The project is organized in four phases, (i) test of existing algorithms and forecasting modules and selection of best suited algorithms and modules; (ii) development of joint platform MEDUSA; (iii) implementation and test of MEDUSA at the airports Munich, Frankfurt, and Barcelona including end-users’ feedback to improve the prototype; and (iv) dissemination of the results to the scientific and end-user communities and commercialization.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Airports need quick, accurate information on surprise weather conditions that could occur both in summer and in winter. A new, practical meteorological decision support system (DSS) for aviation is being developed to address this need.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Air travel requires advanced knowledge of meteorological conditions to ensure timeliness, energy efficiency, security and safety. The EU-funded project 'A meteorological decision-support system for aviation' (MEDUSA) is working on an integrated weather information solution for aviation. The project is focusing on summer and winter weather in airports, looking at phenomena such as thunderstorms, intense rain, heavy snowfall, icing situations and freezing conditions.

To achieve its aims, MEDUSA is integrating diverse meteorological products in a powerful real-time system with a simple visual interface to help aviation authorities reach their decisions. It is studying different forecasting modules and software algorithms to develop a platform that will be tested in different airports.

So far, the project has completed its summer weather algorithms and tested them at Munich Airport, Germany during summer 2012. It has also made significant headway in completing the winter weather algorithms. Efforts are currently underway to test the system in airports at Frankfurt, Germany and Barcelona, Spain.

The summer weather algorithms have been designed based on innovative concepts for cloud tracking, radar tracking and weather prediction, enabling end users to predict thunderstorm warnings up to 30 minutes beforehand. Winter algorithms have been based on standard hourly observations, weather station data and numerical weather prediction models. In addition, an existing algorithm for snow and freezing rain has been enhanced and tailored for the needs of the aviation sector.

Once the systems are finalised the project team will finalise the MEDUSA platform, developing successive versions that are ready to operate in real-time. This includes the front-end components or interface and back-end architecture. The prototype is set to help airports worldwide, particularly small airport operations that have limited access to advanced systems. The development of a marketing and commercialisation strategy is now underway.