A clustering approach for analysis of convective weather impacting the NAS

By the year 2025, the number of aircraft operations in the U.S. will significantly increase [1]. In order to address the safety, capacity, and environmental needs that this situation will generate, the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) is transforming the National Airspace System (NAS) by including 21^st Century technology [1, 2]. NASA´s NextGen Systems Analysis, Integration, and Evaluation (SAIE) project, under the Airspace System Program (ASP), assesses the cost and NAS performance benefits of these technologies. One of these new near-term technologies is Dynamic Weather Rerouting (DWR), which is being developed by NASA. DWR has the capability to provide rerouting information for flights to efficiently avoid severe convective weather situations. The objective of the research documented in this paper was to design and implement a sampling process for the selection of representative days that best reflect the yearly patterns of convective weather impact to the NAS, which will be used for testing the DWR technology.