Propuesta de mejora operativa para el radar meteorológico Vaisala WRM200, integrado a la red de radares meteorológicos de la Aeronáutica Civil para la prestación del Servicio Meteorológico Aeronáutico en Colombia.

Abstract

In Colombia the provision of the Aeronautical Meteorological Service in the civil area is carried out by the Special Administrative Unit of Civil Aeronautics (Aerocivil). This service is essential to maintain the operational safety of flights using Colombian airspace and, therefore, guarantees the safety of passengers using air transportation. Likewise, the Aerocivil has at its disposal a network of meteorological radars that provides information on the behavior of different atmospheric phenomena. This network is made up of 4 of the entity's own radars distributed in the following locations: El Tablazo-Bogotá, San Andrés, Corozal-Sucre and Pasto-Nariño. These radars are connected to each other forming a national network of radars that transmit their meteorological information through the Internet Protocol (IP), which consists of a communication by sending digital data, stored and updated in Telnet servers. Within the radar network of the Civil Aeronautics is specifically the Vaisala WRM200 radar located in El Tablazo and whose capacity was not being used to the maximum by the Entity due to the lack of personnel resources and specific knowledge of the equipment and its integration to the network, according to the coordinator of the Systems Group for Aeronautical Meteorology of the Aerocivil. This underutilization directly affects the performance of the radar, the quality of the Aeronautical Meteorological Service and the integration of the equipment with the National System of Meteorological Radars, which is a technical network that interconnects meteorological radars of other entities in the country (IDEAM, SIATA and IDIGER). Although this network is operating technically, it is not yet constituted as a formal network due to administrative gaps that, at present, February 2022, are still being addressed. In this sense, an analysis of the technical and operational performance of the National Weather Radar System was carried out, as well as to identify the operational capabilities of the Vaisala WRM200 and its applicability in the Colombian airspace according to its specific conditions, conditions that are mentioned in section 7.3.1 in the description of the specific objectives of the new task proposed for the radar. All of the above was done with the purpose of building an operational improvement proposal for the use of the radar. Specifically, a change was made in the scanning and meteorological reception strategy of the radar. With the intervention it was possible to observe that the performance and capabilities of the radar were improved, impacting on a higher temporal and spatial resolution in the collection of data on meteorological targets, also managing to amplify the amount of samples collected from the atmosphere, which allows the radar to be more accurate and its products less ambiguous. Therefore, it was concluded that the implementation of the new strategy was a success, as demonstrated in the results section of the document and supported by the acknowledgement prepared by the Director of Telecommunications and Aids to Air Navigation, which can be evidenced in the Annexes section. As for solving the main problem of underutilization of the tool, it was possible to efficiently exploit the capabilities of the equipment, thus increasing the technical tasks it performs and, therefore, the quality in the provision of the Aeronautical Meteorological Service in Colombia.