Weather Hazards Integrated Display System (WHIDS)

There are significant costs associated with hazardous weather encounters that are exacerbated by the lack of integration of real-time and forecast weather products and the lack of focus on pilot-centered hazard metrics and computer support. Current approaches to providing weather information to the flight deck have focused on individual products, targeting specific hazards. Even systems trying to provide many products to pilots have not yet addressed the issues of intelligently integrated data into information. Solving this problem begins with an integrated, pilot-centered approach to presenting weather information. By considering the temporal, spatial and accuracy characteristics of the weather sources as well as the information needs of pilots, our Weather Hazards Integrated Display System (WHIDS) will help pilots manage the presented information in order to maintain situation awareness and make better decisions. In Phase I, we will specify potential algorithms and display designs to help pilots understand the weather situation with respect to the decisions to be made. The emphasis will be on integrating real-time and forecast information in a pilot-centered way and on providing pilots the ability to support the types of decisions they have to make. In Phase II we will prototype and evaluate WHIDS.