I was recently talking to the FAA Academy students about NextGen and some of the new technologies that will be coming in the years ahead. The students asked me some great questions. In fact – some of their questions were so good, that I did not have the answers for them.
Someone asked me about SWIM and what it stands for. That’s easy, SWIM stands for System Wide Information Management, but what is SWIM and what will it do for me or you. So I reached out to some of my peers and gathered some additional details on SWIM. This is what I found out.

Follow up:

First off, there is a wealth of information about NextGen on the web: http://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/nextgen/. There is also an official webpage that describes SWIM in detail is located here: www.swim.gov.
But here is my own take on SWIM. As y’all know - there are many custom-designed and custom-managed systems in today’s NAS. Our future, however, demands an infrastructure with common standards and guidelines, so that IT systems and users can share information more easily. SWIM does exactly that. It establishes common standards and guidelines. Those standards lead to a common infrastructure which allows for easy information-sharing across various IT systems and the NAS.
Once it’s in place, SWIM will make the NAS much easier and safer to operate. It will simplify the addition of new systems and connections. It will greatly improve information-sharing, because all of these systems will use common interfaces, processes and procedures.
I think of SWIM as being similar to a TV Guide channel. We use the TV Guide to select programs that we want to watch and when we want to watch them. The FAA and its customers will use SWIM-compliant systems to select the services they need, and then they will get the information to the right people at the right time.
The whole concept of NextGen is about collaborative air traffic management and SWIM is one of the keys to its success. Once implemented SWIM will greatly benefit the consumers, the flying public, and the aviation industry as a whole!
One last thing before I sign off; to view a really cool demo of SWIM, you can check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-gynj6bJxw. This is just one aspect of how this system can track weather and keep us all informed. Just keep in mind that the video is BYOP - Bring Your Own Popcorn!
Happy Holidays,