Using human language technologies in aviation weather applications

Abstract

Flying over Africa can often be exciting and dangerous. More airline accidents per takeoff occur in Africa than anywhere else in the world. The paper investigates the use of human language technologies (HLT) in assisting the aviation industry in Africa. The CSIR recently investigated one aspect of aviation in Africa: the availability of terminal aerodrome forecasts (TAFs) for unmanned aerodromes. Although the South African Weather Service does release TAFs for many unmanned aerodromes, because of the lack of facilities, pilots (especially pilots flying into the bush) cannot obtain these TAFs timeously. The CSIR has developed an application which automatically translates TAFs into one or more human languages. The prototype dispenses TAFs in English, Afrikaans, Setswana, and Zulu for nearly 30 aerodromes in southern Africa. Both audio and textual output is available via normal telephone land line, cell phone and SMS. The audio output is provided by limited domain voices created especially for the TAF vocabulary and includes the correct pronunciation for aerodromes in southern Africa. In addition, a special, non-aviation version of the output is generated for residents living in the vicinity of an aerodrome. The CSIR developed a specific plug-in for the application which translates the TAF into a weather report which can be understood and used by people who are not involved in aviation. All of the software was developed using open source tools and utilities in order to provide a low cost solution to the problem