THE AVIAN HAZARD ADVISORY SYSTEM

The Air Combat Command (ACC) Bird Hazard Working Group (BHWG), in conjunction with Geo-Marine Inc., has developed a system to use NEXRAD weather radar data, weather forecasts, and known bird distributions, to identify bird hazards to military aircraft conducting low altitude, high speed training, and provide aircrews with hazard advisories. The paper presented here describes Phase I of AHAS implementation, the demonstration and validation phase, conducted during the fall 1998 migratory season in the Northeast U.S. Forecasts of bird activity for the next 24 hours, observations of current migratory conditions and historic data from the US Bird Avoidance Model (BAM) were provided to aircrews via the Internet. Phase II will expand coverage to the entire East Coast of the U.S. in 1999. The Avian Hazard Advisory System (AHAS) was designed to pinpoint actual bird movement to allow for more effective risk management than is possible from historic data alone