✈️ AeroSentry

AeroSentry is a two-system, trusted weather intelligence platform designed to enhance aviation safety by providing pilots and ground control with real-time, dynamic, and predictive weather analysis.

It acts as a digital co-pilot, transforming raw, complex aviation weather data into an interactive 3D visualization with actionable insights, including automatic hazard detection and route adjustments.

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Core Features

AeroSentry is built as a two-part system, ensuring that both the flight crew and ground control have access to synchronized, role-specific intelligence.

👨‍✈️ Pilot’s System (Frontend)

• Interactive 3D Globe: A fully interactive globe that visualizes dynamic flight paths and weather conditions in a rich, intuitive interface.
• Real-time Weather Integration: Seamlessly integrates with the aviationweather.gov API to fetch and decode live METAR, TAF, and SIGMET reports.
• Intelligent Checkpoint Analysis: An advanced algorithm that evaluates weather conditions at multiple calculated checkpoints between the departure and destination airports, not just at the endpoints.
• Dynamic Rerouting: Automatically detects when a flight path intersects with high-risk thunderstorm zones (SIGMETs) and calculates a safer, alternative route.
• Visual Weather Dashboard: A clean, heads-up display of critical weather statistics that updates in real-time as flight conditions change.
• AI-Powered Assistant: An integrated chatbot providing pilots with instant, context-aware weather summaries, regulatory information, and safety suggestions.

🖥️ Admin’s System (Ground Control)

• Secure Authentication: A robust, JWT-based authentication system that provides distinct, permission-based access for pilots and administrators.
• Comprehensive Monitoring Dashboard: Access to deeper weather analytics and monitoring tools for a fleet-level overview.
• Data Integrity: Includes logic for weather spoofing detection to flag suspicious or manipulated data transmissions (future implementation).
• Enhanced Intelligence Access: Full, unfiltered access to all weather intelligence data to support critical decision-making from the ground.

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🛠️ Technical Architecture & Stack

The backend of AeroSentry is built on a modern, high-performance Node.js stack chosen for its asynchronous nature and robust ecosystem.

Core Framework: Express.js

The application uses Express.js, a minimal and flexible Node.js web application framework that provides a robust set of features for web and mobile applications.

• Asynchronous by Nature: Node.js and Express excel at handling I/O-bound operations, such as making multiple simultaneous network calls to fetch METARs, TAFs, and SIGMETs. Using Promise.all, we can fire off all data requests concurrently, dramatically reducing response times.
• Middleware Architecture: Express uses a powerful middleware system, which is perfect for creating reusable logic for authentication, logging, and error handling. Our verifyTokenMiddleware is a prime example, protecting routes by checking for a valid JWT before any other logic runs.

Supporting Libraries (The Toolbox 🧰)

• axios: A promise-based HTTP client for making requests to the external aviation weather APIs.
• jsonwebtoken (jwt): Used to create and verify the secure JSON Web Tokens for our authentication system.
• bcryptjs: A library to hash passwords for secure storage and comparison (recommended over plain text).
• csv-parser: A streaming CSV parser used for high-performance, in-memory loading of the airports.csv database at startup.
• geographiclib-geodesic & @turf/turf: A powerful duo for geospatial analysis:
  • geographiclib-geodesic calculates the true geodesic path (shortest line on Earth's surface) for accurate route plotting.
  • @turf/turf provides the computational geometry engine to represent flight paths and hazardous weather zones as GeoJSON objects, enabling the core intersection logic for rerouting.

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⚙️ How It Works

The application logic follows a secure and efficient flow from user authentication to final data delivery.

1. Authentication (/login):

   • A user (pilot or admin) submits their credentials.
   • The server validates them against the user database.
   • If successful, the server generates and returns a secure JWT (JSON Web Token).

2. Mission Briefing (/mission-briefing/:departure/:destination):

   • The pilot makes a request, including the JWT in the Authorization header.
   • The verifyTokenMiddleware guard intercepts the request to verify the JWT's validity and the user's role before allowing the request to proceed.
   • Concurrent Data Fetching: The server uses Promise.all to fire off axios requests for all necessary data (coordinates, METAR, TAF, SIGMETs) at once.
   • Analysis & Rerouting:
     • The route is calculated and broken down into segments using geographiclib.
     • SIGMETs are parsed into GeoJSON Polygon objects using Turf.js.
     • The code iterates through each flight segment, checking if it intersects with a SIGMET polygon using turf.booleanIntersects.
     • If a hazard is detected, the findSigmetReroute function calculates a detour by creating a new waypoint.
   • Response Assembly: All processed data—departure/destination weather, the final (potentially rerouted) flight path, and overall risk—is compiled into a single JSON response for the frontend.

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🚀 Getting Started

Follow these instructions to get the AeroSentry backend up and running on your local machine.

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v16 or higher recommended)
• npm (usually comes with Node.js)

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/your-username/aerosentry.git
   cd aerosentry

2. Create a .env file in the root of the project and add your secret key:

   PORT=8000
   SECRET_KEY="your_super_secret_jwt_key_that_is_long_and_secure"

3. Install the required dependencies:

   npm install

4. Download the Airport Database:

   • Download the airports.csv file from OurAirports.com.
   • Place it in the root directory of the project.

5. Run the application:

   node server.js

   The API will now be running at http://localhost:8000.

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📖 API Endpoints

The API provides the following core endpoints:

Method	Endpoint	Description	Access
POST	/login	Authenticates a user and returns a JWT access token.	Public
GET	/mission-briefing/:departure/:destination	Provides a full weather briefing for a route. Requires a valid JWT.	Pilot/Admin
GET	/admin/analytics	(Example) An endpoint for fetching administrative data.	Admin

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you'd like to improve AeroSentry, please feel free to fork the repository and submit a pull request.

1. Fork the Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

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📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more details.

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🙏 Acknowledgements

• Weather Data: aviationweather.gov
• Airport Data: OurAirports.com
• Framework: Express.js
• 3D Globe: Globe.gl