Adverse weather diversion model DIVMET

Abstract

Concept and first results are presented of a model development DIVMET for providing guidance for two-dimensional, horizontal navigation of an aircraft on an arbitrary prescribed flight level around or through adverse weather. In this paper we focus on thunderstorms but a later model development will allow for other weather hazards such as icing or volcanic ash. Adverse weather is represented as impermeable polygons on vertically staggered horizontal planes. The model concept maps the joint decision making process of pilot and air traffic controller into an algorithm, which encompasses (1) the recognition of thunderstorms within the pilot's field of view. The latter may consist either of the typical on-board weather radar display of varying range, or of the visible range determined by atmospheric conditions, or of the spatially unlimited “full view”. DIVMET then (2), in accordance with international flight rules, applies a minimum safety distance to any recognized adverse weather object, and (3) determines a reasonably short route not only around a single weather object but also through a whole field of them. Finally (4), DIVMET moves the aircraft purely kinematic along the previously determined diverted route ignoring so far any potential aircraft-aircraft conflicts. That movement may also be achieved by an externally coupled air traffic model which then also avoids the latter conflicts, accounts for aircraft performance and thus enables to study the combined effect of weather and traffic. Here we present the concept of the path finding through a storm field from a meteorological perspective and outline its potential applications.

A Method for SWIM-Compliant Human-in-the-Loop Simulation of Airport Air Traffic Management

“…It has been implemented as a software library in the Java and Delphi programing languages. The Java library has been used from within MATLAB by Hauf et al [14]. A C++ implementation is under development by the authors.…”

“…The air-ground communication with the simulated aircraft is performed at LAN speeds and does not yet involve an air-ground data link emulator introducing the increased communication delay expected by the wireless air-ground link. NAVSIM is an event-driven simulator providing detailed worldwide runway-to-runway (resp., gate-to-gate for those aerodromes for which taxi and gate information is available) air traffic simulation; it offers an X23 interface and can be integrated with human-in-the-loop simulation environments for human factors experiments [15], the development of novel meteorological air traffic routing algorithms [14], aeronautical communication frequency planning, and aeronautical communication volume estimation [16].…”

Tradeoffs for Routing Flights in View of Multiple Weather Hazards

“…Routing simulations in this study are done using the researchquality weather avoidance model DIVMET (which stands for divert meteorology) [44], originally developed at the Leibniz Universität in Hannover, Germany and based on a geometrical approach similar to a pilot's visual decision making. DIVMET routes aircraft horizontally through layered two-dimensional fields of adverse weather that evolve with time, and it accounts for the wind speed at a respective flight level.…”