The main duty of the Operation Centres during the field phase will be the best possible exploitation of the very large observational network that has been set up for the experiment. Surface and upper air observations will be available in real time at a very high time and spatial resolution, as well as radar and satellite imagery. Therefore, there will be enough detailed information to efficiently guide in situ measurements by aircraft and radio-soundings, and remote sensing observations by other mobile instrumentation, like experimental radar with very fine resolution capacities and sophisticated measuring characteristics. A lot of information of this type is planned to be directly available at the Project Operation Centre (POC), being set up in Milan by the Italian Meteorological Service and hosted in the CMR building in the airport area of Linate Airbase. Planned are direct links to the main mo
bile radars (Ronsard and S-Pol), which will be deployed in the Lago Maggiore target area, and real-time transmission of radar imagery from all the operational radars in the North-Italian regions as well as from Monte Lema.
Whereas MAP Operation Centre (MOC) in Innsbruck has the responsibility for the general direction of SOP, for declaring start and end of intensive observation periods (IOP) according to the general short and medium range forecasts, and for the definition of the general strategy for each IOP, POC will be mainly in charge of the real time control and guidance of airborne and mobile radar operations. Its proximity to all the southern slopes of the Alps, especially to the Lago Maggiore and Toce-Ticino areas gives POC a unique advantage in collecting information in this large and relevant region of the experiment domain.
The set up of an operation centre for such an important project as MAP is obviously hard work and a similarly very large number of issues have to be solved in Innsbruck as well as in Milan. Common and important items are:
At POC further problems arise because of the necessity of collecting information from a large number of different data providers, which up to now have operated mainly on a regional basis and almost without any data exchange. MAP has been a unique opportunity to start a strong and effective co-operation, giving momentum toward an enlarged and integrated national meteorological service. Important achievements have already been made in organising and establishing common procedures and metadata, in defining a unique format for surface observations and radar images exchange, and setting up an efficient network using Rome (CNMCA) and Milan (CMR) as telecommunication hubs. Both centres are directly linked by high-speed data transmission lines and use a common H/S system of the Italian NMS. At the end of March POC was already operationally collecting surface data and radar images of the North-Italian regions.
On the international side, a preliminary installation of the SOP operational database and telecommunication software has been done at POC by H. Hirter (MDC), allowing tests and experience in exchanging information with the MDC and the MOC. For this purpose, the co-operation of the Milan University (Physics Department) and INFN has been crucial as they provide an efficient communication link to the Internet (2Mb/s GARR backbone) at no other cost than the necessary CDN urban connection planned for tests and SOP, which will be supplied by the Italian NMS.
Two other important items especially relevant for POC are:
During the SOP the POC Oracle database, which is installed on an Alpha Workstation/Windows NT Server, will be regularly updated through a mirroring process with the MDC and MOC servers. Therefore the same information will be available to the MAP community in Milan and Innsbruck. Graphical model outputs from ECMWF, DWD, MeteoSwiss, Aladin and MC2 (as selected by the MAP forecasting working group), satellite pictures, and radar composites will allow the forecasters to prepare well-documented reports and short/medium range weather forecasts. At the POC there will also be a variety of radar images from the operational as well as from the special mobile radars. Pictures in GIF formats will be made available to the MOC, but high-resolution data from Ronsard and S-Pol will probably be available only locally on dedicated workstations. This information will be of extreme interest and will constitute the principal source of information for real-time decisions on flight tracks to be transmitted to the aircraft crews.
A small team of dedicated POC forecasters (1-2 persons) working mostly separately from the CMR shift forecasters (there will be anyway some form of co-operation at fixed times) is expected to give daily briefings to POC scientists in the morning and late afternoon, to prepare meteorological documentation, and to assist the POC staff in defining plans and operations. During IOPs a reinforced team (2-3 persons) has to assure continuous monitoring of the weather situation especially over the target and mission areas, and to produce special nowcasting reports in order to guarantee the best possible guidance to aircraft and mobile radar groups. The working place will be the POC Operation Room, together with the field observation coordinator, the ATC coordinator, scientific director, and POC director.
The detailed schedule has still to be worked out, especially for information exchange between scientists operating at MOC and POC. During normal non-IOP days the routine will be based on the following:
If an alert has been issued or an IOP has been declared, the POC operational team has to start a 24 hours monitoring phase, prepare and issue hourly special reports and assure real-time guidance of the aircraft via the VHF link. In this case forecasters from different North-Italian meteorological agencies who are on call during the SOP can join POC within a few hours.
The Project Operation Centre will be hosted by the 1° Centro Meteorologico Regionale (CMR - Italian Meteorological Service) in Milano – Linate (Military Airbase of the Italian Air Force). Address and phone numbers are:
Centro Meteorologico Regionale,
Viale Aviazione 1 - I-20138 Milano (Italy)
Phone: +39 02 7010 2389/7390 4298
fax: +39 02 740821/7390 4576
e-mail: poclin@mi.infn.it
Contact persons: S. Fiacconi, D. Nappi, G. Alessio, F. De Nile. Director: Giuseppe
Frustaci
phone: +39-02-7390 4310
e-mail: giuseppe_frustaci@rcm.inet.it
The CMR is an operational centre of the Italian Meteorological Service. Among its duties: 24 hourly meteorological assistance to civil and military flights in the Milano FIR, SIGMET and AIRMET for the same area (1999 planned extension to all the other Italian FIRs), forecasts for Norht-Italian seas and for the Alpine regions, four radio-soundings a day (WMO 16080), regional meteorological telecommunication hub connected to the national meteorological centre (CNMCA) in Pratica di Mare-Roma. Located on the west part of the Linate Airport Forlanini, the POC is close to the airport buildings as well as to the Milan eastern highway, and is easy to reach in less than half an hour from downtown Milan and in about an hour from Malpensa International Airport.
