NextGen Weather Processor Architecture Study

The long-term objectives for the NextGen Weather Processor NWP include consolidation of todays multiple weather systems, incorporation of recent and emerging Federal Aviation Administration FAA infrastructure Federal Telecommunications Infrastructure FTI, System Wide Information Management SWIM, NextGen Network-Enabled Weather NNEW, leveraging National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA andor commercial weather resources, and providing a solid development and run-time platform for advanced aviation weather capabilities. These objectives are to be achieved in a staged fashion, ideally with new components coming on-line in time to replace existing capabilities prior to their end-of-life dates. As part of NWP Segment 1, a number of alternative implementations for the NWP as it might exist in the 2013 time frame have been proposed. This report examines the alternatives from a top-down technical perspective, assessing how well each maps to a high-level NWP architecture consistent with the long-term NextGen information sharing vision. Technical challenges and opportunities for weather product improvements associated with each alternative are discussed. Additional alternatives consistent with the high-level NWP architecture, as well as a number of suggested follow-on analysis efforts are also presented.