The Weather Company Brings Forecasts to Military Planning with Cesium
Defense and other government agencies rely on current weather information, forecasts, and historical data for situational awareness and effective decision-making. The Weather Company (TWC) improves military training and planning by pairing its detailed weather data with geospatial context in apps using Cesium for Unreal and CesiumJS.
WeatherverseTM provides accessible, accurate, and actionable government weather forecast data and visualizations to improve outcomes, reduce costs, and help protect lives. Courtesy The Weather Company.
TWC was founded in the 1980s, addressing needs across various industries, and began serving government agencies in 2022. Sudden changes in weather conditions affect personnel and equipment, even with otherwise meticulous planning.
Weatherverse Sim prepares warfighters with accurate 3D visualizations of environments and conditions—such as strong wind, more rain, or less cloud coverage—simulating weather they might face in the field. With recording and playback, trainees can experience and memorize scenarios for anywhere in the world, and trainers can adjust future sessions. Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles are streamed with data from TWC’s SUN Spatial Data Services and other sources for a comprehensive picture. Weatherverse Sim has used Cesium for Unreal since 2023 to bring realistic weather elements and geospecific terrain to these simulations, increasing operational effectiveness.
Weatherverse Sim uses Cesium for Unreal to combine weather elements and terrain. Courtesy The Weather Company.
Weatherverse Planner monitors the forecast for locations important to planning teams and their missions, so they know what impacts weather will have on aviation, communications, infantry, and more. Users set thresholds and alerts for conditions like lightning, wind, or precipitation, for example, to make better informed decisions. Weatherverse Planner can be used as a stand-alone solution or integrated as a widget within any CesiumJS-based app for reliable performance on the web, streaming Bing Maps Aerial imagery for the view from space. Fusing weather data and geospatial context instead of managing multiple separate systems concurrently saves time and lives. Weatherverse Planner has used CesiumJS since 2024.
Weather risk, based on user-defined parameters, in Weatherverse Planner. Courtesy The Weather Company.
Precipitation in Weatherverse Planner. Courtesy The Weather Company.
Weather conditions in Singleton, Australia, in Weatherverse Planner. Courtesy The Weather Company.
SimCentric’s CesiumJS-based SAF-Foresight app for planning and safety for live fire exercises will deploy Weatherverse Planner as a plugin for Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025. Exercise Talisman Sabre is the largest combined military training activity between Australia and the United States, with other partner nations joining, and this year it will incorporate real-time weather information to improve readiness.
The Weather Company has built on top of CesiumJS as a plugin to further support and integrate Weatherverse Planner. The TWC-Cesium Plugin includes the protocols for acquiring, storing, querying, and filtering weather data from its SUN weather and spatial data services and integrates with existing Cesium-based apps. It is in an experimental phase.
“Cesium provides a deep and rich set of capabilities, especially with regards to 3D orientation and geospatial data visualization. The framework is also well documented, approachable, and performant,” said J.R. Cottingham, senior director for The Weather Company’s Weatherverse.
Weatherverse Planner deployed as a widget in CesiumJS-powered SAF-Foresight. Courtesy The Weather Company and SimCentric.
Weatherverse Planner deployed as a widget in CesiumJS-powered SAF-Foresight. Courtesy The Weather Company and SimCentric.
Weatherverse Planner deployed as a widget in CesiumJS-powered SAF-Foresight. Courtesy The Weather Company and SimCentric.
TWC is working to improve Weatherverse Planner with additional weather visualizations, such as wind streams.
Built on open standards to support interoperability and with commitment to rapid innovation, Cesium powers mission-critical applications to better understand the operational environment. Read more federal and defense-related stories.