In meteorology, visibility is a measure of the distance at which an object or light can be clearly discerned. It is reported within surface weather observations and METAR code either in meters or statute miles, depending upon the country. Visibility affects all forms of traffic: roads, sailing and aviation. Meteorological visibility refers to transparency of air: in dark, meteorological visibility is still the same as in daylight for the same air.

Definition

ICAO Annex 3 Meteorological Service for International Air Navigation contains the following definitions and note:

Annex 3 also defines Runway Visual Range (RVR) as:

In extremely clean air in Arctic or mountainous areas, the visibility can be up to 70 kilometres (43 mi) to 100 kilometres (62 mi). However, visibility is often reduced somewhat by air pollution and high humidity. Various weather stations report this as haze (dry) or mist (moist). Fog and smoke can reduce visibility to near zero, making driving extremely dangerous. The same can happen in a sandstorm in and near desert areas, or with forest fires. Heavy rain (such as from a thunderstorm) not only causes low visibility, but the inability to brake quickly due to hydroplaning. Blizzards and ground blizzards (blowing snow) are also defined in part by low visibility.

Visibility develops Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, which targets small to mid-sized Engineer-to-Order (ETO), Make-to-Order (MTO), Mixed-Mode and Project-Oriented Manufacturing companies.

History

Visibility Corporation was formed in 1987 and incorporated in 1988 as a privately held enterprise software and technical services company. Headquartered in northern Massachusetts, Visibility currently has operations in North and South America and Europe. As of January 31, 2009, VISIBILITY solutions were licensed and in use by more than 20,000 users in over 10 countries.

Visibility solutions

In computer science, information hiding is the principle of segregation of the design decisions in a computer program that are most likely to change, thus protecting other parts of the program from extensive modification if the design decision is changed. The protection involves providing a stable interface which protects the remainder of the program from the implementation (the details that are most likely to change).

Written another way, information hiding is the ability to prevent certain aspects of a class or software component from being accessible to its clients, using either programming language features (like private variables) or an explicit exporting policy.

Overview

The term encapsulation is often used interchangeably with information hiding. Not all agree on the distinctions between the two though; one may think of information hiding as being the principle and encapsulation being the technique. A software module hides information by encapsulating the information into a module or other construct which presents an interface.