A runway at the Bhubaneswar airport. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, Feb. 17: Biju Patnaik Airport is set to have a digital weather forecasting system installed near its runway so that the weather data required for safe flying is easily available to the air traffic control (ATC).

This will smoothen the air traffic service on the two runways. At present, the weather data from the local Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) is manually delivered to the ATC when required.

Airports Authority of India (AAI) officials are in touch with the IMD because they will installing the machine called the current weather instrument system (CWIS). Once the AAI gives the green light, the IMD will install it near the two runways.

Airport director Sharad Kumar said: “More than 90 per cent of accidents in the aviation sector are linked to weather-based situations. For better passenger safety, we need to have a digital weather forecasting system and it would be functional in the next six months.”

The data generated through the digital weather forecasting system will automatically be displayed on a screen at the ATC so that the officials managing the air traffic need not depend on manual data coming from IMD office. This will save time and be more accurate.

Officer on special duty at the airport H.J. Parmar said: “The data generated at the ATC can be in sync with the computer systems so that a pilot who needs to check out the weather conditions in Bhubaneswar can get it through his computer before taking off from a run way in a different city.”

Director of IMD, Bhubaneswar, S.C. Sahu, said: “The digital weather forecasting system will consist of several sensors mounted on two platforms near the two runways so that the real-time data from the local environment can be translated into numbers on a screen near the ATC.”

Senior IMD officials said while there were airports using CWIS over the past five or 10 years, an even more advanced digital weather forecasting system called AWOS (automated weather observing system) has already been introduced in eight major airports across India. Several more airports are to be upgraded to the AWOS-level shortly.

After using the CWIS platform, the Bhubaneswar airport will eventually upgrade itself to the next-level with an AWOS platform. The AWOS consists of a data logger in the field connected to meteorological sensors for temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction and atmospheric pressure. The data logger collects data from the sensors on real time basis and converts them to digital signals.

The signals are sent to the meteorological briefing room at the ATC through landline or Wi-Fi communication network and get displayed on screens. The computers connected to the AWOS can also store data and use them for analysis later.