NextGen Federal Systems of Morgantown, WV announced on March 29 that it was awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II by the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). During this 2-year effort, NextGen will create the Weather Analysis-as-a-Service (WA3S) technology. WA3S will support the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community with analyzing and disseminating extremely large volumes of global high-resolution weather data efficiently.
The Air Force has a
global mission requiring environmental situational awareness across the
terrestrial, atmospheric, and space domains to execute missions and retain an
asymmetric advantage over adversaries. This requires processing and
disseminating large amounts of weather data to the Air Force, other US military
and intelligence organization, and our allies and coalition partners so that
the weather data can be exploited by warfighters and decision makers.
Advances in
numerical weather modeling and increased global observations have dramatically
increased the volumes of environmental data available. This growth is due to
both the AFW migration to a new weather forecasting model as well as new
sensors and satellites coming online. This data explosion is affecting how the
Air Force analyzing and disseminates weather data across the enterprise to data
consumers who conduct a variety of analyses in support of mission goals.
Composed of a rich
set of analysis services, WA3S is a cloud-native innovation that leverages data
locality and ‘brings the analysis to the data’ by conducting weather mission
assessment where the data resides. WA3S will offer machine-to-machine
(M2M) services to request analysis products based on a variety of trusted
algorithms across the following categories:
- Threshold Evaluation – Determine potential mission impacts based on
known flight hazards, such as icing, turbulence, thunderstorms, and reduced
visibility
- Physics-Based Models – Use high-resolution weather grids to perform more
accurate analysis of electromagnetic (EM) and Radio Frequency (RF) propagation
- Cloud Free Line of Sight (CFLOS) – Leverage new cloud/dust forecast
models to determine visibility for Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance
(ISR) use cases
- Mitigation – Recommend mitigation solutions (e.g., re-routing,
time-shifting) to lessen potential impacts for on-going or planned missions
based on weather conditions
“WA3S shifts the focus from data dissemination services to data exploitation services that support intelligent mission analysis, providing clients with actionable answers to mission weather queries and mitigation options for potential weather impacts,” said Jeremy Loomis, NextGen’s Principal Investigator.
Source: NextGen
By Loren Blinde
April 1, 2019
