Nowcasting

Overview

Nowcasting is turbulence prediction data issued by SkyPath. It is issued for up to 12 hours forecast. Nowcasting Flow orchestrates the retrieval and management of nowcasting predictions. This page provides a detailed understanding of the flow architecture and how to use it.

Startup and Initialization

Upon instantiation, Nowcasting Flow sets up initial configurations and prepares the system for data fetching based on provided map area polygon. It immediately subscribes to internal events to handle periodic updates and user-triggered fetches.

To crate Nowcasting Flow call createNowcastingFlow factory method from sdk object.

See example:

// Initialize SDK
const sdk = await createSkyPathSDK(...);

// Create Nowcasting Flow
const nowcastingFlow = sdk.createNowcastingFlow()

Lifecycle Management

• Start: Allocates resources, setting up intervals and listeners for data updates;
• Update: Triggers an update of the data, fetching new data for relevant map area polygon;
• Stop: Temporarily stops all operations, keeps resources, and pauses updates / intervals;
• Terminate: Completely stops all operations, releases resources, and removes all listeners, effectively shutting down the flow;

Data Retrieval Process

Under the hood, nowcasting flow abstracts the complexity for communication with SkyPath platform API in efficient way handling necessary data transformations, mappings and access management:

• Data fetching: The whole world-wide set of H3 hexagons is being checked if data needs updating it fetches new data accordingly. It handles concurrency and ensures that data fetching for the same hexagon is not duplicated;
• Data Merging: New data is merged into the existing set of H3 hexagon, appending it to the stored values;
• Data invalidation: Once new data is generated on the back-end side, the old data is invalidated and erased with the fresh;

info

Data update process is triggered automatically by the flow, but can also be triggered manually by the user by calling updateConfig() method.

Automatic updates are triggered periodically every 15 minutes.

To update the flow with new map area polygon, call updateConfig method:

nowcastingFlow.updateConfig({
  polygon: [
    [
      -143.6279359720371,
      54.91893678195086
    ],
    [
      -143.6279359720371,
      20.948470420620993
    ],
    [
      -56.37206402796207,
      20.948470420620993
    ],
    [
      -56.37206402796207,
      54.91893678195086
    ],
    [
      -143.6279359720371,
      54.91893678195086
    ]
  ],
})

The updateConfig(config: Config) method takes the following arguments where the polygon is a custom area on a world map and settings are the configuration for the flow:

Property	Description	Type	Default
polygon	Map viewport rectangle or a route corridor polygon	Polygon	null

Once update is triggered and successfully completed, the flow emits data update event, which can be listened to by the user to update the UI or perform any other necessary actions. This can be done by subscribing to the event using onData method that takes a callback function as an argument and returns NowcastingData data object:

nowcastingFlow.onData((data) => {
  // Use the data to update the UI
})

info

Use utility functions to facilitate the interaction with the data retrieved from the Nowcasting Flow and represent it on a map. For more information, please refer to the dedicated Nowcasting section in utilities documentation.

Examples

Basic usage

// Import the SDK
import createSkyPathSDK from "@yamasee/skypath-sdk-web";

// Initialize SDK
const sdk = await createSkyPathSDK({
  // Your auth parameters here
});

// Create Nowcasting Flow
const nowcastingFlow = sdk.createNowcastingFlow()

// Subscribe to the data update event
nowcastingFlow.onData((data) => {
  // Use the data to update the UI
})

// Start the flow when needed
nowcastingFlow.start()

// Later in the code update the polygon
nowcastingFlow.updateConfig({
  polygon: [
    [
      -143.6279359720371,
      54.91893678195086
    ],
    [
      -143.6279359720371,
      20.948470420620993
    ],
    [
      -56.37206402796207,
      20.948470420620993
    ],
    [
      -56.37206402796207,
      54.91893678195086
    ],
    [
      -143.6279359720371,
      54.91893678195086
    ]
  ],
})

// Later in the code terminate the flow when jobs are done
nowcastingFlow.terminate()

Advanced usage

For advanced examples check the React Demo Application.