AWARE: Technologies for interpreting and presenting aviation weather information

NASA recently initiated a large multi-year program to develop technologies that will reduce aviation accidents and fatalities attributable to weather. Weather is a substantial contributor to many general aviation (GA) accidents. A large percentage of GA accidents are caused by non-instrument-rated pilots inadvertently flying into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), or instrument-rated pilots flying into catastrophic weather conditions such as thunderstorms, severe downdrafts, and low-level windshear. A team led by Rockwell Science Center is working on a project to facilitate weather awareness for the GA pilot. AWARE is an enhanced weather briefing and reporting tool that integrates text-based and graphical aviation weather data for superior situational awareness in the context of a mission and equipment profile. AWARE is designed to benefit GA pilots who, due to cognitive overload, may not absorb and retain all flight-critical weather information from a vast stream of data they are legally required to review.