EUROCONTROL is an intergovernmental organisation with 41 Member and 2 Comprehensive Agreement States.
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- IWXXM SIGMET Subscription and Request Service
The IWXXM SIGMET Subscription and Request Service provides the service consumer with SIGMETs for weather that may affect the safety of aircraft operations. The service consumer can subscribe to the service, specifying the airspaces that are of interest, and receive information as it becomes available. It is also possible to send a direct request, using a request-reply mechanism, to the service to get the relevant meteorological information. The meteorological information is issued by the designated Meteorological Watch Office. The meteorological information is only intended to be used by service consumers within the aviation domain.
EUROCONTROL is an intergovernmental organisation with 41 Member and 2 Comprehensive Agreement States.
ATM needs to know about the occurrence or expected occurrence of specified en-route and approach weather phenomena that may affect the safety of aircraft operations, and of the development of those phenomena in time and space. A list of operational needs that this service contributes to satisfying is available in Appendix B. This service satisfies these by offering meteorological information as regulated by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/373 of 1 March 2017 and ICAO Annex 3.The scope of the meteorological information satisfies the EU Implementing Regulation 2021/116 - Common Project One.
IER 1 - The information currently included in the SIGMET as defined in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/373, ICAO Annex 3 and PANS-MET. IER 2 - Information about radioactive clouds.
The service provides high quality, up-to-date, trusted, regulated meteorological information in digital form for use by service consumers within the aviation domain.
The service consumer shall be able to request the currently valid SIGMET for an FIR/UIR/CTA or group of FIR/UIR/CTA.
The service consumer shall be able to subscribe/unsubscribe in order to receive SIGMETS based on the ICAO identifier of FIR/UIR/CTA.
The service shall distribute the SIGMETs when they are available.
There shall be a service policy to ensure that only service consumers within the aviation domain can use the service. The service policy shall include a requirement that service consumers cannot pass the information obtained from the service to non-aviation users without prior authorisation from the service provider.
The service shall ensure consumer authentication in accordance with EUROCONTROL Specification for SWIM Technical Infrastructure (TI) Yellow Profile requirement SWIM-TIYP-0042. The service shall ensure provider authentication in accordance with EUROCONTROL Specification for SWIM Technical Infrastructure (TI) Yellow Profile requirement SWIM-TIYP-0042.
The service shall ensure that satisfactory authorisation is put in place according to EUROCONTROL Specification for SWIM Technical Infrastructure (TI) Yellow Profile requirement SWIM-TIYP-0070.
The service shall ensure point-to-point confidentiality in accordance with EUROCONTROL Specification for SWIM Technical Infrastructure (TI) Yellow Profile through the use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 or above.
The service shall ensure point-to-point integrity in accordance with EUROCONTROL Specification for SWIM Technical Infrastructure (TI) Yellow Profile through the use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 or above.
The service shall achieve a quality that is sufficient to ensure the service is fit for purpose.
The service shall achieve a quality that is sufficient to ensure the service is fit for purpose.
The service shall achieve a quality that is sufficient to ensure the service is fit for purpose.
The service shall achieve a quality that is sufficient to ensure the service is fit for purpose.
The service shall ensure confidentiality by using SWIM Technical Infrastructure (TI) Yellow Profile bindings.
The service shall ensure integrity by using SWIM Technical Infrastructure (TI) Yellow Profile bindings.
The meteorological information offered by the service shall be verified by the service provider. The meteorological information offered by the service shall be encoded according to the rules of the IWXXM standard.
Advanced Message Queuing Protocol
Application Programming Interface
Control area
Environmental Data Retrieval
European Union
Flight information region
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
International Civil Aviation Organization
ICAO Meteorological Information Exchange Model
JavaScript Object Notation
Message Exchange Pattern
Meteorological Watch Office
Open Geospatial Consortium
ICAO Procedures for Air Navigation Services - Meteorology
Information concerning en-route weather phenomena which may affect the safety of aircraft operations.
System wide information management
Technical Infrastructure
Technical Infrastructure Yellow Profile
Transport Layer Security
Upper flight information region
Web Feature Service
World Meteorological Organization
Extensible Markup Language
The IWXXM SIGMET Subscription and Request Service Request Interface shall support filtering based on the ICAO location indicator of the FIR/UIR/CTA of interest. The IWXXM SIGMET Subscription and Request Service Subscription Interface shall allow for the selection of subscription based on clearly defined criteria. The service may support other filters based on the operators defined in the OGC Filter Encoding 2.0 Encoding Standard on a case by case basis.
A service monitoring mechanism shall be made available to service consumers.
The service behaviour shall be in accordance with the patterns detailed in the Message Exchange Patterns: Identification Guidelines. The typical service behaviour, is:
- The service consumer subscribes to the service
-The service sends the latest SIGMETs to subscribers when they are available and match their subscription.
The interfaces have different behaviour. A combination of an AMQP 1.0 implementation and an OGC implementation shall be used for the basic behaviour. The typical behaviour for PUBLISH_SUBSCRIBE means that:
- The subscription is handled by either:
- a request-reply implementation (see IWXXM SIGMET Subscription and Request Service Subscription Interface) or
- an email request to the service provider.
- The distribution of the messages is handled by an AMQP 1.0 implementation (see IWXXM SIGMET Subscription and Request Service Distribution Interface).
The typical behaviour for REQUEST_REPLY (as used in IWXXM SIGMET Subscription and Request Service Request Interface) is as follows: Synchronous Request/Reply
- The request message is sent from the service consumer to the service
- The service consumer remains blocked while awaiting the reply
- The service remains blocked while processing the reply
- The SIGMET, the reply message, is sent from the service to the service consumer.
Allows the service consumer to request the currently valid SIGMETs. Note: This interface is used to group the operations offered by the chosen OGC standard.
Explanatory note: The OGC Web Feature Service Interface Standard and OGC API - Environmental Data Retrieval Standard are used to implement the service operations. It is not the intention to repeat the standardised operations here. However, the table below illustrates how the WFS GetFeature operation would look in the context of this service.The GetFeature operation returns a selection of features from a data store. It responds to a GetFeature Request message with a En-route Significant Weather Information Message that satisfies the query expressions specified in the request.
The WS Light Interface Binding as detailed in the EUROCONTROL Specification for SWIM Technical Infrastructure Yellow Profile, edition 1.1
The service shall use the network bindings of the SWIM TIYP. The interface shall use at least one of the following OGC standards:
- for services that exchange the meteorological information as resources:
- OGC API - Environmental Data Retrieval Standard;
- for services that exchange the meteorological information as features:
- OGC Web Feature Service 2.0 Interface Standard;
- OGC API - Features. Note: it is a best practice for new services that exchange meteorological information to implement the OGC API - Environmental Data Retrieval Standard. Existing services based on the OGC Web Feature Service 2.0 Interface Standard should indicate an end-of-life date.
Allows the service consumer to select and subscribe to SIGMETs for airspaces that are of interest. It allows the service consumer to manage the subscriptions e.g. to unsubscribe. Note: This is an optional interface. Many service providers will prefer to receive subscription requests by email.
The standard operations for subscription and subscription management. The following operations shall be implement at a minimum:
-subscribe
-unsubscribe.
The WS Light Interface Binding as detailed in the EUROCONTROL Specification for SWIM Technical Infrastructure Yellow Profile, edition 1.1.
The service shall use the network bindings of the SWIM Technical Infrastructure (TI) Yellow Profile.
Allows the service provider to distribute SIGMETs meeting the need of the service consumer that has subscribed for updates.
The AMQP_MESSAGING Interface Binding as detailed in the EUROCONTROL Specification for SWIM Technical Infrastructure Yellow Profile, edition 1.1
The service shall use the network bindings of the SWIM TIYP. AMQP 1.0 shall be used to distribute messages as explained in the Publish/Subscribe Push MEP: Implementation Guidance.