Development Roadmap

The intention of this page is to record consolidated plans and activities with regard to development of IWXXM. Readers should note that items on this page may change from time to time. Furthermore, items and milestones indicated do not imply commitments by the development team. Always refer to the release notes for detailed and more accurate description of features of individual version of IWXXM.

New features (Group 2)

(The first Release Candidate is targeted to be published in 2020/21, with a view to merge into the mainstream in late 2022)

• Combine METAR and SPECI products to enable WFS dissemination (#15)
• Add Regional Hazardous Weather Products

New features (Group 1)

(The first Release Candidate is targeted to be published in late 2019, with a view to merge into the mainstream in late 2020/2021)

• Add a generalized representation for:
  • WAFCs SIGWX (high and mid levels) products (#42)
  • (Low level) area forecast products (#83)
• Add optional report ids for referencing cancellable, correctable, amendable, etc report types (#46)

IWXXM 3.1

(The first Release Candidate is targeted to be published after the approval of changes in Annex 3 in Mar 2020. Approval of the finalised version expected by Nov 2020)

• Add Amendment 79 changes

IWXXM 3.0

(Release Candidate 1 was published in July 2018. Release Candidate 2 was published in Oct 2018. Release Candidate 3 was published in Apr 2019. Approval of the finalised version expected by Nov 2019)

• [RC3] Fixed Volcanic Ash Advisory deficiencies (#153)
• [RC3] Added schematron rules in all reports to contrain the use of 2 dimensional coordinate systems that are compatible with WGS84 in spatial objects (#140)
• [RC3] Revised TAC-to-XML-Guidance.txt to improve readability
• [RC2] Fixed representation of 'NO VA EXP', etc. in VAA and SIGMET (#94 and #128)
• [RC2] Aligned element naming and ordering across different types of reports (#121 and #127):
  • TAF:
    • previousReportValidPeriod now located immediately after validTime
  • SIGMET:
    • volcanicAshMovedToFIR now moved from SIGMET to VolcanicAshSIGMET
    • cancelledSequenceNumber -> cancelledReportSequenceNumber and cancelledValidPeriod -> cancelledReportValidPeriod
  • AIRMET:
    • cancelledSequenceNumber -> cancelledReportSequenceNumber and cancelledValidPeriod -> cancelledReportValidPeriod
  • TCA:
    • expectedNextAdvisoryTime -> nextAdvisoryTime
    • The elements in iwxxm:observation and iwxxm:forecast describing the maximum 10-minute mean surface wind speed were aligned as maximumSurfaceWindSpeed
    • The multiplicity of iwxxm:forecast has changed from [4] to [1..*] to cater for upcoming relaxation of the interval and total duration of the forecast
  • VAA:
    • A significant revamp of the report to improve the representation
• [RC2] Modified the documentation for iwxxm:extremeClockwiseWindDirection and iwxxm:extremeCounterClockwiseWindDirection in METAR and SPECI to clarify the relationship with their TAC counterparts (#123)
• [RC2] Modified TropicalCycloneSIGMET and VolcanicAshSIGMET and associated schematron rules to better align with cancellation messages of their TAC counterparts (#122)
• [RC2] Fixed issues with regard to the placement of iwxxm:extension (#118)
• [RC2] Modified the documentation for attribute cloudAndVisibilityOK and iwxxm:windgustSpeed in METAR, SPECI and TAF and UML association target role in all reports (Items 4, 5 and 8 in #115)
• [RC2] Renamed iwxxm:seaState in METAR and SPECI to iwxxm:seaCondition (#106)
• [RC2] Removed the redundant iwxxm:previousReportAerodrom from TAF (#104)
• [RC2] Added attribute fromPreviousReport in METAR and SPECI to signify the condition identified by runway state code figure 99 (#101)
• [RC2] Removed iwxxm:geometryLowerLimitOperator and iwxxm:geometryUpperLimitOperator from SIGMET and AIRMET, iwxxm:windLowerLimit, iwxxm:windLowerLimitReference, iwxxm:windUpperLimit and iwxxm:windUpperLimitReference from VAA and iwxxm:locationLowerLimitOperator from SWA, all of them could be represented by the upper and lower limits descriptions in aixm:AirspaceVolume (#100)
• [RC2] Use entries in code list http://codes.wmo.int/common/nil for nilReason descriptions
• [RC1] Simplify representation with the removal of O&M (#27)
• [RC1] Add Amendment 78 changes (#49), including
  • Space Weather Advisory (#50)
  • TC ADVISORY changes in Amendment 78 (#72)
• [RC1] Add support for Amendment 77 AIRMET/SIGMET TC centre and CB positions (#57) and changes in Amendment 78 (#49)
• [RC1] Add nilReason for METAR and SPECI (#16, #23)
• [RC1] Mandate the use of UUID as gml:id with schematron rules (#31)
• [RC1] Make SIGMET sub-types (VA and TC) optional to allow cancellations with the SIGMET type (#18)
• [RC1] Add schematrons to check COLLECT bulletins and WMO Code Registry (#32, #60) and to ensure that extended content always has a web accessible schema definition (#29)
• [RC1] Ensure that minimum information content of failed translation messages is correct (#41)
• [RC1] Add issue times onto IWXXM messages in support of standalone IWXXM messages (#47)
• [RC1] Restructure element RunwayState (#48)
• [RC1] Simplify element names as per (#72)
• [RC1] Re-introduce iwxxm:AirspaceVolumePropertyType to allow nilReason to be used with AirspaceVolume (#94)
• [RC1] Add explicit TL/AT/FM to TAF and TREND (#7).
• [RC1] Improve TAF BECMG time support (#13)