Service definition for the Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information Subscription and Request Service 

00.00.05

2024-07-01

Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information Subscription and Request Service

The Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information Subscription and Request Service allows the service consumer to get Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information in accordance with ICAO Annex 3 Amdt 82 and PANS-MET.

The service consumer can subscribe to the service to receive notification when a new significant ash cloud occurs. It is also possible to send a direct request, using a request-reply mechanism, to the service to get the relevant Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information.

The meteorological information is issued by the designated Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC). The meteorological information is only intended to be used by service consumers within the aviation domain.

EUROCONTROL

EUROCONTROL is an intergovernmental organisation with 41 Member and 2 Comprehensive Agreement States.

swim@eurocontrol.int

The service shall offer Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information resulting from volcanic eruptions occurring in the service provider's area of responsibility, except when the responsibility of publishing this information has been transferred to another VAAC due to the ash cloud moving into the area of responsibility of this VAAC.

The service shall offer the equivalent Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information for the areas of responsibility for which the service provider acts as back-up during outages.

The service shall offer Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information resulting from volcanic eruptions occurring outside the service provider's area of responsibility, when the responsibility of publishing this information has been transferred by another VAAC due to an interruption of the operation.

Note: the back-up arrangements are based on mutual agreements between Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre service providers.

Note: the ash cloud may extend beyond the area of responsibility.

regulated information exchange

METEOROLOGICAL_INFORMATION_EXCHANGE

http://reference.swim.aero/information-services/service-categories/CodeRegulatedInformationExchangeType.html 

information domain

METEOROLOGICAL_INFORMATION

https://reference.swim.aero/information-services/service-categories/CodeInformationDomainType.html

business activity

INFORMATION_MANAGEMENT

http://reference.swim.aero/information-services/service-categories/CodeBusinessActivityType.html 

intended service consumer

• CIVIL_AIRSPACE_USER

• MILITARY_AIRSPACE_USER

• CIVIL_AIR_NAVIGATION_SERVICE_PROVIDER

• MILITARY_AIR_NAVIGATION_SERVICE_PROVIDER

• NETWORK_MANAGER

• REGULATED_METEOROLOGICAL_SERVICE_PROVIDER

• AIRPORT_OPERATOR

• AIR_TRAFFIC_SERVICE_PROVIDER

https://reference.swim.aero/information-services/service-categories/CodeStakeholderType.html

intended service provider

REGULATED_METEOROLOGICAL_SERVICE_PROVIDER

http://reference.swim.aero/information-services/service-categories/CodeStakeholderType.html 

service type

• METEOROLOGICAL_FEATURE_ACCESS_SERVICE

• METEOROLOGICAL_INFORMATION_SUBSCRIPTION_SERVICE

• METEOROLOGICAL_COVERAGE_ACCESS_SERVICE

http://reference.swim.aero/information-services/service-categories/CodeServiceType.html 

ICAO Annex 3 Amdt 82 and PANS-MET requires that quantitative volcanic ash (QVA) concentration information is provided by designated Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres (VAAC) as part of the International Airways Volcano Watch (IAVW) framework overseen by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

The quantitative volcanic ash (QVA) concentration information is provided per volcano in the form of a high-resolution four-dimensional representation of a volcanic ash cloud based on 3-hourly timesteps.

New information is provided when there is a significant change in the erupting characteristics or at 6 hourly intervals until the ash is no longer present.

The information is intended for use in operator’s flight planning and decision support systems allowing, e.g., more efficient routes in accordance with their safety management programme during significant volcanic ash cloud events.

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 takes into account the following information exchange requirements:

Request list of volcanoes

The service consumer may be able to request a list of volcanoes for which there is information.

The service consumer receives the list of volcanoes to use in further functions.

Request Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information

The service consumer shall be able to request the latest Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information filtered by erupting volcano number, forecast timesteps and logical (e.g. severity threshold) operators.

The meteorological information is received and can be used in ATM and other systems.

Request the information in a specific format

The service consumer shall be able to request that the Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information be returned as polygons (IWXXM) and/or deterministic gridded data (NetCDF) and/or probabilistic gridded data (NetCDF).

The meteorological information is received in the specified format and can be used in ATM and other systems.

Subscribe to Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information

The service consumer shall be able to subscribe in order to receive notifications when a significant volcanic ash cloud occurs and unsubscribe when needed.

The service consumer subscribes to the service and will receive notifications as per the subscription or unsubscribes from the service.

Distribute notification

The service shall distribute a notification detailing how to access the Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information when a significant volcanic ash cloud occurs.

The service consumer receives notifications with details on how to access the relevant QVA information.

It shall be made clear to new service consumers that they must also enter an agreement with the back-up VAACs in case they need to revert to the back-up.

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.

There shall be a service consumption constraint to ensure that a service consumer does not impose undue loads on computer and network resources, for example, by polling it at a higher frequency than the status is normally provided.

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 in accordance with 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 should ensure that a single user is unable to monopolise a service or to degrade it below agreed service levels for others users.

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.

Note: the following factors must be used in deciding the fitness for purpose:

• the availability offered by the designated back-up VAACs

• the number of users likely to be delayed significantly by a loss of the service

• the acknowledgement that the availability is expected to be higher when a volcano is erupting

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 quality of Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information offered by the service shall be verified by the service provider.

Information on the quality of the QVA information offered by the service shall be reported annually to the ICAO Met Panel Met Operations working group relating to the IAVW who provide oversight of QVA data provision

The service provider shall ensure that the Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information offered by the service is based on data received from the appropriate authorised originating sources. This includes:

• Volcano observatory

• REGULATED_METEOROLOGICAL_SERVICE_PROVIDER acting as a designated VAAC.

Note: EUMETSAT may be used to make sure the ash plume corresponds to where it is already being detected by the satellites.

Note: atmospheric modelling techniques are used to generate the output.

• PUBLISH_SUBSCRIBE

• SYNCHRONOUS_REQUEST_REPLY

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 notifications to subscribers when QVA information is available that matches their subscription

• The service consumer requests the QVA information using the details contained in the notification

The interfaces that support the service 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 Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information Subscription and Request Service Subscription Interface) or

  • an email request to the service provider.

• The distribution of the notifications is handled by an AMQP 1.0 implementation (see Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information Subscription and Request Service Distribution Interface).

The typical behaviour for SYNCHRONOUS_REQUEST_REPLY (as used in Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information Subscription and Request Service Request Interface) is as follows:

• 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 Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information Message, the reply message, is sent from the service to the service consumer.

A service monitoring mechanism should be made available to service consumers and alert them when the service is unavailable so that they can switch to the back-up service.