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BL Choy edited this page Sep 10, 2019 · 8 revisions

Alignment with the ATM Information Reference Model (AIRM)

I. Introduction

At the 4th meeting of the Meteorological Panel (METP/4) in September 2018, a decision had been made on AIRM alignment:

Decision 5/2 – ATM Information Reference Model (AIRM) alignment
That the MET Panel affirms its commitment to the ATM Information Reference Model (AIRM) alignment and interoperability and include this activity in the work plan for the Working Group on Meteorological Information Exchange (WG-MIE).

Discussions were subsequently made with the AIRM Change Control Board (CCB) and it was agreed that a volunteer from TT-AvXML will make a first cut of the change requests to bring the IWXXM AIRM is referencing so far from version 1 to the latest version 3.

The requests are targeted to be finalized in November 2019 after WMO has approved the final version of IWXXM 3.0.0.

II. Requirement analysis

The AIRM has three components, viz. the Contextual Model, Conceptual Model and Logical Model. The AIRM Logical Model provides a (semantic) reference model of the data concepts for service architects and system implementers. It contains the information elements necessary to model the shared information of ATM. The following are examples from the conceptual and logical models on the same meteorological phenomenon turbulence:

Meteorology Terminology - Turbulences

Turbulence

To facilitate semantic interoperability, the definitions used in XMs and in the AIRM have to be aligned through semantic correspondence, which takes the form of a mapping to AIRM concepts based on their meanings, an “out-of-scope declaration”, a “declaration that no semantic correspondence has been established” or a “reference to a change request” (see diagram below). Only AIXM is compliant to AIRM at the moment.

Untitled

The SWIM Information Definition Handbook gives guidance to help information definition authors and AIRM conformance report authors to satisfy the requirements.

Wilson Scott of the AIRM CCB had conducted a compliance check of IWXXM version 1.1 against AIRM version 4.1.0 back in 2016. The results (AIRM_Compliance_IWXXM_Common.xlsx, AIRM_Compliance_TAF.xlsx and AIRM_Compliance_METAR.xlsx) suggested that there are significant differences between IWXXM and AIRM. In fact, Julia Sieland of DWD had submitted a change request in Mar 2019 to complement AIRM based on the latest version of IWXXM (viz 3.0.0).

III. Proposed Implementation

To prepare deliverables in the form of a compliance list above and a change request, it is proposed to create a new UML model linking up IWXXM features with AIRM features (and artifacts as place holders on AIRM, to indicate new AIRM feature to be introduced/deprecated for example). Using stereotype and tagged values of a directed association, one can indicate the kind of mapping and other information like partial match, etc. We can then use XSLT scripts to prepare the deliverables from the exported XMI file, or if Sparx System's Enterprise Architect is being used the document generation feature may be able to help in preparing the deliverables. To summarize the actions to take:

  1. Develop a UML profile for the mapping of IWXXM features with AIRM features
  2. Create the links between the two models in UML
  3. Develop the XSLT script or EA document template or otherwise to automatically generate the deliverables
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