CONCURRENT Computer has announced an international joint marketing agreement with Lockheed Missiles and Space Company to sell both weather and air traffic control systems. Hongkong's Royal Observatory and the Provisional Airport Authority have expressed interest in buying the technology. The re-focusing by Concurrent on core businesses, such as weather and air space management systems, has come at a good time for the company. In the past nine months, with the melting of the Cold War, the United States Government has given the go ahead for data from its strategic weather satellites to be sold worldwide. ''It's become easy to get a licence to commercialise some of the military solutions we and Lockheed have developed,'' said former Brigadier General George Chapman, now director for business development in Concurrent's Weather and Air Space Management division. Last September, he had initial meetings with Hongkong's Royal Observatory which is responsible for the territory's weather forecasting. During his recent visit, he also had talks with the Civil Aviation Department, Kai Tak's air traffic controllers and the new airport authority. The kind of system that Concurrent and Lockheed offer uses various kinds of data to build up a weather picture and these areas of data can be linked together, so buyers do not have to spend millions of dollars on a complete system for themselves. Both weather systems, and the broader term of air space management which incorporates air traffic control, often use similar information. Such systems are complex in the extreme and can involve handling information from satellite imaging, radar products, conventional weather observation (such as high altitude balloons) and other data. Following criticism last year of typhoon warning systems, the Royal Observatory has become increasingly interested in better forecasting. Kai Tak is interested not only in better forecasting and more sophisticated radar solutions for Hongkong's busy skies , but smaller weather systems, too. ''The time element in forecasting is becoming more important,'' said Dr James Hatch, Lockheed's chief scientist of environmental systems. ''An air traffic controller is not looking at tomorrow's forecast, but what is happening in the next 30 minutes, when he has incoming aircraft.'' Kai Tak is interested in ''wind sheer'' systems which use a Doppler radar and software to measure how the wind is performing at differing heights. This information can be critical for pilots landing at an airport as difficult as Kai Tak. The demand for the systems is growing worldwide but Mr Chapman said many Asian countries recognised the value now. Several factors have fuelled the expansion of the industry. In no small part, the expansion is due to the massive increase in cost-effective computing power. Concurrent uses real-time Unix processing as a solution. ''The trend was to centralise all the gathered information at a Cray super-computer,'' said Mr Chapman. ''We now have better 'site' forecasts because the increase in computing power can run the solutions more cost effectively.'' The lifting of restrictions on certain military applications means that countries in Asia will be able to buy data from the Mark IVB tactical weather satellite, which gives real-time imagery and mission sensor data. The costs of weather and air space management systems vary enormously. PC-based weather analysis systems exist to perform localised weather analysis using data collected elsewhere but, as Dr Hatch pointed out, buying just one radar system to enhance local data can cost up to US$1 million.
