Aircraft hazard evaluation for critical weather avoidance

In terms of airliner's safety, fuel economy and pollution reduction, a timely and objective evaluation of the external situation is a major task in the assessment of the weather related hazards. Nowadays, despite the pilot can be equipped with an Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) and he can rely on a Decision Support System (DSS), he still lacks in weather-related information. In fact, generally he has available only preflight-loaded forecasts and periodic updates data, usually in text format (such as METAR bulletin, NOTAM and PIREP messages, etc.) from the competent authorities. To increase the amount of information available to the pilot, perhaps by upgrading the avionic weather radar (AWR) to a polarimetric AWR and by introducing and integrating next generation avionic sensors (for humidity, pressure, wind shear, etc.) by itself does not directly help the pilot's decision-making process. In other words, the amount of heterogeneous data gathered in real time by the avionic systems need to be processed together with the stored information and to be provided to the pilot in a fast-interpreting format. In order to accomplish this task, a continuously updated risk map is necessary both to the pilot, through direct display, and to the DSS, which evaluates and suggests alternative routes. In this paper, we outline a method for determining the risk map related to weather phenomena encountered by the aircraft. Such method, based on the processing of heterogeneous information from multiple source (in particular from an advanced, polarimetric AWR with improved functionalities and increased performances), is conceived to provide the input to algorithms suggesting to the pilot the optimum path in terms of safety and emission reduction.