2013 is shaping up to be a big year for worldwide exchange model development and interoperability. While 2012 saw some major advances in AIXM development and strengthening through the OGC experiments, NextGEN and SESAR – this year has already seen the release of iWXXM Release Candidate 1.0 of the AvXML Model and November sees a key milestone reached in the form of ICAO Annex 3 Amendment 76. Adoption of XML as the preferred open exchange schema is really taking off in Aviation (of all the markets that Snowflake operates in, aviation is the best for puns). In a typically formal and understated fashion, Amendment 76 of ICAO Annex 3 states that:
“states in a position to do so … may exchange METAR, SPECI, TAF and SIGMET in XML.”
Amendment 76 of ICAO Annex 3
ICAO Annex 3
To actually enable states to publish Air Navigation Meteorological Service data in XML, the WMO and ICAO are developing an Aviation Meteorological Exchange Model (AvXML – current working title). In February 2013, release candidate 1.0 of AvXML was released for initial review by both the Meteorological and software vendor community.
As a keen advocate of XML, GML and open exchange models, Snowflake was invited to review and test AvXML release candidate 1.0; we presented and demonstrated our ability to load and publish METARs and TAFs using the GO Loader and GO Publisher COTS products at the ‘4th Workshop on the use of GIS in meteorology’ hosted at ECMWF, Reading. UK. Current customers should note that if they have a valid maintenance contract they will inherit the ability to load and publish all these new XML/GML exchange models – and even those without maintenance have a strong chance that support is already present.
During our testing of AvXML release candidate 1.0 we fired back some issues which have been taken into consideration and shall be addressed in AvXML release candidate 2.0, to be released on 26th April 2013. We are looking forward to undertaking further testing of release candidate 2.0 and plan to set up some freely accessible demonstration services to assist the meteorological community review the specification and test the next generation of web services that can be used to improve access and use of Aviation meteorological data.
Timelines for AvXML 1.0 and WXXM 2.0
If you are interested in understanding more about AvXML 1.0 and how it relates to WXXM 2.0 in development by FAA/Eurocontrol, would like to run an integration trial/experiment or would like further information about meteorological data exchange web services please feel free to contact the consulting team here at Snowflake.
