Adverse meteorological conditions are one of the
major causes of accidents in aviation, resulting in substantial human and
economic losses. For this reason, it is crucial to monitor and early forecast
high impact weather events. In this context, CIRA (Italian Aerospace Research
Center) has implemented MATISSE (Meteorological AviaTIon Supporting SystEm),
an ArcGIS Desktop Plug-in able to detect and forecast meteorological aviation
hazards over European airports, using different sources of meteorological data
(synoptic information, satellite data, numerical weather prediction models
data). MATISSE presents a graphical interface allowing the user to select and visualize
such meteorological conditions over an area or an airport of interest. The
system also implements different tools for nowcasting of meteorological
hazards and for the statistical characterization of typical adverse weather
conditions for the airport selected.