1. Product Specification

1.1 Overall Description

This document describes the Weather Information Service (WIS) for U-Space Applications by Unisphere. The WIS is a service in development at Unisphere providing EASA compliant weather and supplemental information and will be accessed by USSPs and UTMs via API. Although the WIS is not yet certified by EASA or any other regulatory body at the national level, Unisphere is working toward certification with continuous efforts applying aerospace standards for software development processes.

The intention of the document is to describe the functionalities of the WIS.

1.2 Product Scope and References

1.2.1 General Scope and Timeline

The scope of the WIS is to provide EASA compliant weather information for U-Space - as a service. The information will be provisioned via HTTP API through multiple endpoints at Unisphere.

The product development process is performed to achieve compliance according to EASA regulation (EU) 2021/664 of 22 April 2021, Article 12. Independently of the actual certification the WIS will be operational before. The desired date for entry into service is 28.02.2023.

1.2.2 High Level Product Functions

The WIS will provide basic weather information and forecasts,

1. to maintain safety and support operational decisions of other U-space services.

2. provide the UAS operator with weather forecasts and actual weather information either before or during the flight.

The WIS will be based on authoritative weather sources. An authoritative source may be a Member State, or an organisation formally recognised by the Member State to originate and/or publish weather information which meets the data quality requirements in accordance with Annex III to the EASA regulation (2021/664).

Even though non-authoritative sources may be used according to regulation, Unisphere at this stage does not intend to use non-authoritative sources for weather information.

1.3 Product Perspective Functions & EASA Compliance

With the current regulation and todays´ technical means in place the WIS API will provide (weather) information of three types ways:

1. METAR / TAF information of nearby airports

2. Unaltered weather model data of from authoritative weather data service providers

3. Supplemental information (e.g. sunrise, sunset, elevation, kp-index)

In order to assure compliance to EASA it is recommended to always provide access to nearby METAR observations to the downstream users of the WIS in clear text.