CASA’s North Texas Urban Aviation Weather Testbed Apoorva Bajaj, Brenda Philips (CASA Engineering Research Center) Ernest Huffman, Molly McFadden (North Central Texas Council of Governments) September 3, 2020 This research supported through NSF award numbers 1700967 and 1632193.
Addressing an important weather observation gap NEXRAD coverage at 1 km (~3200 ft) AGL. E.g. Radar height at McKinney, 60 miles from KFWD is 1 mile AGL. 72% of atmosphere <10,000 ft goes CASA radars (blue) fill the gaps. undersampled
CASA DFW Living Lab for Severe Weather Warning Systems ❑ Sensors-to-People Real-Time Severe Weather Warning System covers 7+ million people ❑ Centered around X-band CASA radars & other sensors ❑ Multidisciplinary research in live environment (physical, technical, social/behavioral sciences) ❑ Co-Creation and technology transfer with users through a public private partnership CASA network covers approximately 32,000 sq. km. Radar range is 40 – 100km. Overlapping coverage improves data quality
SENSORS PRODUCTS/ USERS DISPLAY
Public-private partnership with North Central Texas cities, National Weather Service for installation and operations of radar network. • 10 year agreement with North Central Texas Council of Governments • Deep rooted community connections (EMs across 50 cities in N. Texas, Public) • Data used by National Weather Service and DFW Airport. • NASA SIO Weather Avoidance partner for Bell • NCTCOG UAS Task Force
On-Going Research: High Resolution Rainfall data QPE System Blends X- and S-Band Radars
Ongoing Research: Multi-Organizational Coordination & Public Response
Benefits of Urban Scale Data: NWS, EMs, Stormwater NWS Issues Tornado Fort Worth EMs & Stormwater Warning Using CASA data Case Study 9/8/18: CASA rainfall products gave 45 min lead time of flood risk
Dallas Fort Worth Airport DFW DFW DFW Airport Airport Airport Hurst Rain Arlington Hail
Alerts delivered on mobile app or via email/text messages Users can decide what they want to be warned about, when and over what locations.
CityWarn: Context-Aware, Targeted Warning Threat Extraction, Environmental & People, locations,contexts, Contextualizing & Alert Infrastructure Threats preferences Generation Alerts Surveys
Why establish an ‘Urban Aviation Weather Testbed ’ in North Texas? ❑ Region is motivated, lots of UAS/UAM stakeholders ❑ Growing number of public safety and commercial operators ❑ Mix of urban and rural flying environments ❑ Interesting weather throughput the year ❑ Lots of weather sensors; but also lots of sensing gaps! ❑ Large research community ❑ Builds on CASA’s existing urban severe weather testbed - Infrastructure, products, stakeholder relationships
Growing usage of drones in North Texas for public safety May 2015: Support for flood rescue June 2019: Dallas crane collapse • Hazardous weather response “Can I fly higher or lower / • Search and rescue, accident response differently and complete my mission? What are the winds at • Structure and brush fires different heights ?” • SWAT missions Photo credits: North Texas Public Safety Unmanned Response Team
Commercial usage of drones in North Texas • Real estate photography • Agriculture and construction “Rain will ruin photos/ videos.” • Roof moisture inspection “Tell me if rain fell in the last 24 • Hail damage inspection hours ; if surfaces are wet (roof/ • Bridge inspections solar panel inspections).” • Solar panel inspections • Railway/ airport surveillance Photo credits: Tarillo Vue, Industrial UAV Photography
North Texas: Launch market for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) Frisco Skyport Mobility Hub concept DFW Airport (Gensler) Uber Air route (concept), 2019 Uber Elevate Summit Dallas - One of three launch • cities world-wide • Commercial shared air transportation services within three years (2023) Source: WFAA, Sep 18, 2019
‘Severe Weather’ & Urban Unmanned Operations Public Safety operations • Identify hot spots for response activities • Keep rescue personnel safe Commercial UAS operations • Targeted services – Hail damage, roof assessments RECON and Damage Assessment Urban Air Mobility (Dallas crane collapse) • Passenger and Cargo safety Frisco • Vehicle and Vertiport safety • Efficiency and diversion planning DFW Airport Hail Winds P/C Fox4 News P/C Fox4 News
Availability of Wind Data across the Dallas – Fort Worth Metroplex Wind Data availability KAFW KF46 KDFW ASOS/AWOS stations (METARS) KDAL KFTW - Surface winds only KHQZ - Update hourly KRBD KGKY - Only at airports KLNC Commercial Weather stations ASOS/AWOS surface stations - Surface winds only - Not integrated into drone apps - Apps do provide wind forecasts based on model data North Central Texas blind to real- time observations of wind between Earth Networks weather stations 10 and 1500 feet!
Need a Test Bed for New ‘Clear - Air’ Atmospheric Sensors NRG Systems ‘ Spidar ’ Direct Vaisala (Leosphere) ‘ Windcube ’ MetroWeather Doppler Lidar Detect Lidar Scanning Wind Doppler Lidar Wind measurement volume: 10 m resolution Wind Vertical Profiles 12km x12km x 300m, 2-3 hour wind Measurement height range: 20- Resolution: 200m x 200m x 50 m predictions 200 m Lidars can provide real-time measurements of low-level winds! Photo credits: NRG Systems, EKO Instruments, Metro Weather
30 dbZ thunderstorm (light green contour) CASA City Warn™ Alerting System 45 dbZ thunderstorm (dark green contour) NDFD Forecast Winds (grid arrows) CASA Alert NWS Severe METAR reported wind speed and gust Thunderstorm Warning (latest, reported hourly) (Yellow)
North Texas Ecosystem Enablers Transportation • UAS Safety & Integration Task Force • 130+ organizations • Integration of UAS into the DFW regional airspace • Has identified ‘ UAS Weather Detection & Avoidance ’ as a prioritized initiative Emergency Preparedness • Public Safety Unmanned Response Team : 50 members from 25 public safety agencies
North Texas Ecosystem Enablers Bell Dallas Fort Worth International Airport • Headquartered in Fort Worth • Has its own UAS program • Bell Flight Training Academy, Bell • Testbed for weather sensors, UAS Flight Research Center activities • Local test and demonstration flights Alliance Mobility Innovation Zone • Multimodal transportation testbed • Aerial proving ground for drone and VTOL use case applications • Home to FedeX, UPS, BNSF, Amazon Air P/C: Smart Cities World, June 11, 2019
Current Urban Aviation Weather Testbed Research Activities (CASA) ❑ Weather support for Bell during NASA SIO demonstration later this month. - Bell, NASA, Xwing, CASA ❑ Design of weather display interface and alerting ❑ Incorporates inputs from NASA NASA SIO ❑ Develop Best Practices ❑ Participants in NASA AAM National Campaign Univ. of North Texas, ResilienX, OneSky, Frequentis, - Unmanned Experts, Lone Star Center of UAS NASA AAM National Campaign Excellence & Innovation ❑ Simulations ❑ Uses NTX weather ❑ Communication of weather risk ❑ Standards
Cost-optimized Routing of Drones through Adverse Weather (CASA) ❑ How do you continue to operate safely in adverse weather? ❑ Use historic and real-time data to model weather impacts on future operations.
FlyNet: Edge computing for workflow management of drone operations ❑ $750K NSF project (UMass Amherst, Univ. of Southern California, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Missouri)
Some CASA Collaborators • Multifunction sensor network • Air Traffic Management • ‘ Vertiport-in-a- Box’ New airspace entrants require new infrastructure for intra-city/region – “Vertiport in a box” • Micro-data sets • Micro-weather predictions • “ TruFlite Alerting” platform 26
Growing List of Engaged (or Interested) Testbed Partners • • University of Massachusetts Amherst Bell • • Colorado State University Uber • • University of North Texas TruWeather Solutions • • NASA North Texas Research Station Raytheon Technologies • • Lone Star Center of UAS Excellence & NRG Systems • Innovation, TAMUCC Vaisala Leosphere • • MIT Lincoln Labs Metro Weather • • National Center for Atmospheric Research Understory • (NCAR) Meteodrone • • Dallas Fort Worth International Airport ResilienX • • Alliance Texas Mobility Innovation Zone OneSky • • Mineral Wells UAS Innovation Zone Frequentis • Unmanned Experts • North Central Texas Council of Governments • • North Texas UAS Safety & Integration Taskforce EWR Weather Radar • • North Texas Public Safety Unmanned Response Ridgeline Instruments • Team (PSURT) Furuno • • AUVSI Lone Star Chapter EEC Radar Contact: Apoorva Bajaj, Innovation Manager Bajaj@ecs.umass.edu
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