AirAsia flight QZ8501: how cloud computing could help prevent air disasters

Grazed from TheConversation. Author: Yijun Yu.

While the full picture has yet to emerge, it appears that the reason for the loss of Air Asia flight QZ8501 is different from the losses of MH370 and MH17 earlier this year. MH17 was clearly a man-made disaster, QZ8501 appears to be weather-related. MH370 remains a mystery.

Even though cloud-computing could help advance the status of the black box in terms of the investigation after such incidents, as we are only too aware, nature – in the form of bad weather – often plays a significant role in airline disasters. Is there anything we can do, on the ground, to lower the risk of these weather-related incidents?…

Recently, Microsoft Research illustrated that combining real-time data from nearby flights, it is possible to predict the wind speed to an accuracy ten times better than the weather simulations by supercomputers. Augmenting the data collected from real-time sensors from the cloud, one can create a better simulation, thanks to the advances in the internet of flying things…

Read more from the source @ http://theconversation.com/airasia-flight-qz8501-how-cloud-computing-could-help-prevent-air-disasters-35818