The Recipe for Safer Skies: 5 Role-Based Dashboards for Aviation Weather

Running an airport with the wrong decision support software is like trying to prepare a gourmet five-course meal with a dull knife and a camping stove.

Technically, it’s possible.

Operationally, it’s risky, inefficient, and far more stressful than it needs to be. 

Trusted by airports around the globe, CampbellAero™ is like having access to an entire professional kitchen. It’s a feature-rich, integrated platform that pulls weather data and critical alerts into one place, in real time. No juggling systems. No clunky workarounds. Just reliable, daily support you can trust, whether it’s a clear-sky morning or a storm-closing-in kind of day.

In this blog article, I’ll take you around our data “kitchen” to show you five role-based interfaces that can improve decision-making at your airport when it matters most. But before we get into all that, let’s talk about what CampbellAero is.

The Kitchen Floorplan: What Is CampbellAero?

At the core of a great kitchen setup is the layout; everything is streamlined to help you prepare a meal efficiently. Similarly, at the core of an excellent Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS) is the software that delivers accurate, real-time weather data to support informed safety decisions. CampbellAero is just that: a highly flexible, scalable, and compliant solution that gives you the right insights at the right moment.

CampbellAero is compliant, customized, sensor agnostic, full of advanced insights, and ready when you are:

• Complies with and often exceeds both International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) safety requirements
• Features unique workspaces for different roles (more on this later!)
• Uses new or existing AWOS architecture, regardless of manufacturer; future-proofs your system by reducing dependency on just one supplier, giving you the flexibility to grow and scale
• Gives you remote diagnostics for actionable early maintenance
• Offers everything you need for your aviation weather monitoring needs (because it’s a turn-key, project-delivered solution)
• Provides the ability to integrate non-AWOS measurement instruments such as solar radiation, ground temperature, or snow depth

Five CampbellAero Dashboards, Mise en Place

Going beyond just ingesting your data, CampbellAero gives your team the right information for making critical decisions. Like every great French chef's credo to mise en place, or have everything in the right spot, there are five curated, user-specific interfaces that come with every CampbellAero software purchase. These interfaces are designed to cut through the noise and give your team the information they need when they need it.

#1 - ATC Screen

Just as one appliance can combine a stovetop and oven into a single easy-to-use unit, CampbellAero’s ATC screen unites views from a single or multiple runways into a real-time dashboard, giving air traffic controllers the clarity to make fast safety decisions. Because it’s easily configurable, it’s a perfect fit for aerodromes of all sizes.

Click the dashboard for a larger image.

#2 and #3 - METAR and MET REPORT Screens

Click the dashboard for a larger image.

The METAR and MET REPORT screens are like having a double-basin sink fed by a single faucet, giving you two complementary, but distinctly separate, data-ingestion workspaces. Operationally, this means aviation observers can see, verify, modify, and report conditions for the entire airport (manually, automatically, or semi-automatically), and they can focus on a specific runway’s conditions. This approach allows users to make more informed aviation decisions based on both big-picture data and hyper-local, runway-specific conditions.

Click the dashboard for a larger image.

#4 - MET Overview

The MET screen is a powerful tool for extracting meteorological data, viewing charts, and analyzing recent trends from both AWOS sensors and your other sensors, customized to your workflows. Think of it as your data refrigerator, keeping essential information fresh and accessible for a minimum of 30 days (in line with ICAO requirements), and often longer depending on your operational needs. This ensures your team can quickly reference current and past conditions to support audits, investigations, and long-term planning.

Click the dashboard for a larger image.

#5 - Technician Screen

The Technician screen is akin to a high-tech smoke detector. It is always working in the background and keeps your team informed of AWOS sensor maintenance needs. In addition, the Technician screen supports cost-savings by integrating remote diagnostics and scheduled maintenance, meaning that your maintenance team can spend their time where it matters most.

Click the dashboard for a larger image.

Cooking with Appliances, Deciding with Dashboards

Some kitchens have an extra appliance or two (such as a rice cooker or toaster) designed to make your job easier. Just as extra kitchen gadgets can help with cooking efficiency, CampbellAero offers additional, optional dashboards to improve your operations. With nearly a dozen thoughtfully designed dashboards already created and custom dashboards available, Campbell Scientific has you covered—no matter what nature serves for dinner!

Permanent Menu Item: High-Quality Data

When the stakes are high, aviation professionals around the world turn to Campbell Scientific for solutions to empower data-driven decision-making. With CampbellAero, we deliver the (proverbial) fully stocked kitchen every time. Because when safety and efficiency are on the line, there is no room for failure.

Serve up safety and operational efficiency with our CampbellAero software. Explore this feature-rich solution or send an inquiry to an aviation expert to start putting your AWOS data to work for you.

Credits: Collin Daly of Campbell Scientific, Inc. contributed to this article.