The FAA’s Weather Camera Program is about to get a new upgrade that aims to greatly enhance flight safety.
The new Visibility Estimation through Image Analytics (VEIA) algorithm has been approved by the FAA and is expected to be available by the fall of 2023 for use in areas covered by the FAA’s Weather Camera Program.
VEIA uses existing FAA weather camera infrastructure to provide visibility estimates based on an automated comparison of current conditions to clear day images. This provides pilots with an easy-to-use online planning tool incorporating real-time visual information to mitigate the effects of weather, according to FAA officials.
According to FAA officials, VEIA can have a significant impact on the safety of the aviation community by providing measurements of flight-critical weather information that is currently unavailable, increasing situational awareness in regions with available surface operations, and system monitoring of the weather camera installations.
VEIA was developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory and was installed and tested on the Weather Camera website through collaboration with the FAA Weather Camera Program, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Systems Laboratory, FAA’s Aviation Weather Demonstration and Evaluation (AWDE) services team, and AvMet Applications.
During the program’s testing phase, information was published on an experimental version of the FAA Weather Camera Program website. Pilots then used VEIA, along with other approved tools, to plan their flights. Flight dispatchers and meteorologists also used VEIA to support them.
“The display the Weather Camera program created for VEIA makes the data very easy to read and interpret,” said FAA engineer Jenny Colavito, who is leading the program. “The camera images are always displayed too, so any user can give VEIA data a sanity check.”
“The feedback from the users was overwhelmingly positive,” Colavito said. “The users all agreed that VEIA would enhance safety by providing greater situational awareness for flight planning. In particular, the users really liked to see the trend line of the last six hours of estimates.”
For more information: WeatherCams.FAA.gov.