Effectively Communicating Aviation Hazards through Modernized Web Products

Abstract

Effectively communicating hazardous weather conditions to the general aviation (GA) community is acontinuously evolving effort of US National Weather Service (NWS) Aviation Weather Center (AWC)operations. AWC has started to transition text heavy products in favor of easily interpreted dynamicgraphics that provide additional information that was never fully realized through text alone.AWC provides domestic and international aviation weather forecasts and warnings, disseminatedthrough traditional product dissemination as well as directly to end users through AviationWeather.gov.The web site is currently undergoing a complete rewrite, in order to both modernize and improveconsistency. Customer feedback has been gathered over multiple years and the rewrite is intended toaddress a number of issues in a comprehensive manner.Many products that were previously available in multiple formats are now presented through a moreintegrated framework, allowing for the user to combine different datasets as desired. The GraphicalForecasts for Aviation (GFA), first developed as a replacement for the traditional text Area Forecast,now spans a wide variety of weather information in a one stop Geographic Information Systems (GIS)interactive web framework. The site is designed to adjust to available screen real estate, making thesame data and interface available on a variety of platforms from desktop computers to tablets andphones.The new site has been in an experimental status since spring of 2022, while AWC collects feedback onthe new design and performed a social science user assessment in partnership with the US FederalAviation Administration’s (FAA) Aviation Weather Demonstration and Evaluation service group. Thispresentation will discuss the design and features of the new site, as well as lessons learned from theaviation weather user community during the development and evaluation.