Audio-visual situational awareness for general aviation pilots

Weather is one of the major causes of general aviation accidents. One possible cause is that the pilot may not absorb and retain all the weather information she is required to review prior to flight. A second cause is the inadequacy of in-flight weather updates: pilots are limited to verbal updates via aircraft radio contact with a ground-based weather specialist. We propose weather visualization and interaction methods tailored for general aviation pilots to improve understanding of pre-flight weather data and improve in-flight weather updates. Our system, Aviation Weather Environment (AWE), utilizes information visualization techniques, a direct manipulation graphical interface, and a speech-based interface to improve a pilot's situational awareness of relevant weather data. The system design is based on a user study and feedback from pilots.