Modern air traffic management requires custom-oriented weather monitoring and prognosis techniques as basis for proper decision making. The prognosis system should provide high spatial and temporal accuracy and the products must be tailored for the time horizons and decision criteria of air traffic control and management, airline operation centres, and flight crews. These specific products need specific sets of weather measurement and prediction data, which, in turn, require a combination of tools and methods to measure, nowcast, and forecast adverse weather, and, finally, inform the stakeholders.
The impact of adverse weather on air transport, especially in the Terminal Manoeuvring Area (TMA), shall be minimised by building an Integrated Terminal Weather System (ITWS) for the air traffic control and airports of Frankfurt and München with the components wake vortex, thunderstorm, and winter weather. An ITWS concatenates all monitoring and forecast data in the TMA, produces tailored products according to the stakeholders’ needs and delivers simple but accurate and unambiguous output. This approach guarantees that all involved partners possess the same information as a basis for their cooperative decision making. In line with the work on the ITWS, also new operational concepts will be developed. The ITWS prototypes will be tested at the two most frequented German airports, Frankfurt and München, and the value-added chain will be assessed technologically as well as monetarily.