Go, no-go: OAIRE's program could streamline weather data collection and consolidation
Tuesday, September 9, 2025
Media Contact: Sydney Trainor | Communications and Media Relations Specialist | 405-744-9782 | sydney.trainor@okstate.edu
For most, a sudden change in the forecast might mean a forgotten umbrella, but for the Oklahoma Aerospace Institute for Research and Education, it could be catastrophic.
As leaders in the unmanned aerial systems universe, weather plays an integral role in the day-to-day operations and success of the OAIRE team. As such, they constantly monitor weather data for numerous reasons, not the least of which is the feasibility of operating UAS at any particular place, date and time.
“We have strict guidelines that we follow as parameters for operating our systems,” said Jarrett Schwarz, a research and development engineer for OAIRE. “The weather greatly impacts what we do, as we have to think about the safety of the general public, our team and our equipment.”
The oversight process for the deployment of UAS is led by Chris Swan, OAIRE’s flight operations manager. Each possible deployment is submitted to Swan, who has final authority on whether conditions are safe for the test flights.
However, that system has an innate flaw due to the multiple outlets reporting conditions differently and not knowing which are the most accurate for the given place, date and time of a flight.
“For example, our flight field doesn’t have localized weather data,” Swan said. “The closest reports are from Cushing or Stillwater. I prefer to use Cushing because the conditions seem to be more similar to those at our flight field. However, our engineers and pilots might use Stillwater data to determine their flight capabilities.”
Schwarz recognized the potential discrepancies and incongruencies that using different outlets could cause for the OAIRE team. Thus, the concept of a weather consolidation tool was born.
With his computer coding knowledge, coupled with a production plan constructed using an AI knowledge base, Schwarz took a weekend to build a basic, first version of the UAS Weather Check tool.
“The coding part was fairly straightforward,” Schwarz said. “The most difficult part has been tweaking the interface and developing new add-ons for the program. The version we have now is capable of doing what we need it to, but there’s room for further development and implementation of features that could really help make it more robust.”
UAS Weather Check may seem simple in nature, but the process that takes the program a few seconds to complete would take Swan far longer to carry out. After a user inputs a flight site, date and time, the tool scrapes weather data from multiple sites. It determines whether the given flight falls within the safety parameters of visibility, wind speed, cloud level, etc. The program then returns a green, “Go” report or a red, “No-Go” report, as well as the sources used to determine that outcome, to the user.
“We plan to use this tool as a one-stop shop across our entire team for flight operations,” Swan said. “As things evolve, we can also easily implement other features to further help streamline our operations. It might not be the introduction of a new airfoil for an airliner, but the innovative thinking and ease of use of this tool will help take the variables out of the process and make it more efficient for all of us.”
“As things evolve, we can also easily implement other features to further help streamline our operations.”
The team hopes that by digitizing their regulatory documentation, they can seamlessly integrate the weather checking process into the documentation, which would provide a clearer and concise ruling on flight operations.
However, Dr. Jamey Jacob, OAIRE executive director, sees this as the first step to direct, measurable impact on the future of the UAS industry.
“I think there are two areas of impact for this project,” Jacob said. “The first is the research focus of using drones for better weather observation: collecting information that we wouldn’t have otherwise, and how that may impact weather forecasting or warnings. The second is much broader in scope as it pertains to impacts on delivery drones, using drones to support first responders, anti-drone detection systems, etc. All facets are impacted by weather on a very localized level.”
Whether it’s helping predict severe weather before it occurs or helping a delivery drone plot a new course due to changing weather conditions in an urban environment, the collection, consolidation and implementation of weather data by UAS will directly impact how society operates in the future.
“As we see more and more integration of UAS in different areas, it offers the ability to impact the way weather data is collected and used by the industry at large,” Jacob said. “What if we had a network of UAS systems that collect weather data and feed it into a consolidation tool like this and then we would have hyper-localized weather data for any location? I don’t think that reality is too far off.”
Photos By: Gary Lawson and Phil Shockley
Story By: Jeff Hopper | Research Matters Magazine