The Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) is sponsoring a conference focusing on the integration of weather into the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). The event takes place Feb. 12-13, 2008, 8:30 am-5 pm (Registration begins at 8:00 am) at the National Transportation Safety Board Conference Center, 429 L’Enfant Plaza, SW, Washington, DC 20594

The NextGen Concept of Operations requires integrated operations and decision-making to increase capacity and reduce delays. This conference will provide a top-level review of the document primarily concerning trajectory-based and super density operations, and assimilating weather information into future decision-making tools and processes. At the conference, facilitators will lead small work groups to discuss what operational and technical actions must be accomplished by the aviation and weather communities to ensure synchronized integration of weather information into operational decision support tools.

Listed below are the title and a brief explanation of the four work groups:

Operating and accessing network-enabled weather information. The challenges of making network-enabled weather available to all users, how      information will be accessed, and where industry can be involved in operating and populating the weather information.

Improving airport operations through proactive use of weather information. How non-ANS operations at an airport could be improved through proactive use of weather information including ramp operations, deicing and runway snow removal.

Enhancing tactical and strategic trajectory-based operations through the proactive use of real-time weather information. How trajectory-based operations (including ground, terminal and en route) must assimilate weather information into flight planning, rerouting and flow decision support tools, and the challenges of integrating updated weather and flight status into the cockpit.

Enabling super density operations. The challenges of accomplishing super density operations in terminal environments including how to use weather and safety information to set separation distances, and how to design decision-making tools.

Each work group will address the following questions:

What policy changes and organizational innovations need to occur to make this happen?
What specific research efforts are needed to implement the NextGen concepts?
What kinds of simulations would be useful to test theories or to do trade-off analyses before moving to demonstrations or trials?
What types of demonstrations or trials would be useful for either reducing risk or increasing confidence levels in the required new capabilities?
What planning and programming needs to be accomplished to begin the transition to NextGen systems and operations that use the common weather picture?
What metrics should be used to measure success?

Please register as soon as possible as attendance is limited. You may be requested to join another work group based on the balance of expertise in each of the groups.

To prepare for the conference, please review the documents listed below:

NextGen Concept of Operations, Version 2.0
http://jpdo.gov/library/NextGen_v2.0.pdf
NextGen Weather Concept of Operations, Version 1.0 http://jpdo.gov/library/Weather_ConOps.pdf
National Aeronautics Research and Development Policy, December 2006
http://www.ostp.gov/html/NationalAeroR&DPolicy12-19-06.pdf

A computer will be provided for each work group. If you need paper copies of the documents, please be sure to bring them to the conference.

The conference agenda will be posted in early January.

1500 K Street, NW Suite 500 Washington, DC 20005 TEL: 202-220-3487