Weather Impact Analysis Using OLAP Cubes

THE CLIENT

NextGen Federal Systems (NextGen) is an innovative information technology and professional services provider specializing in advanced software solutions & comprehensive mission support services. Core areas of expertise include C4ISR Software Development, Modern IT Systems Engineering, Modeling and Simulation, and Cyber Security & Data Management.

THE CHALLENGE

NextGen was awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II contract by the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Under this contract, NextGen developed an IMPACT system to provide innovative ways of dynamically generating/assessing weather constraints on military operations. Specifically, the IMPACT system analyzes gridded weather forecasts to determine effects on planned aircraft missions and routes.

THE SOLUTION

IMPACT approaches the problem of high dimensionality and scalability by using icCube to build weather OLAP cubes that store weather forecast data at multiple resolutions using aggregate measures to provide rapid queries.

  • Programmatically loads fact tables and builds OLAP cubes via XMLA using the icCube Management API,
  • Queries the OLAP cubes using MDX.