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.
NEXRAD coverage at 1 km (~3200 ft) AGL.
Addressing an important weather observation gap
E.g. Radar height at McKinney, 60
miles from KFWD is 1 mile AGL.
72% of atmosphere <10,000 ft goes
undersampledCASA radars (blue) fill the gaps.
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/
DISPLAY
USERS
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
Case Study 9/8/18: CASA rainfall products
gave 45 min lead time of flood risk
Fort Worth EMs & StormwaterNWS Issues Tornado
Warning Using CASA data
Dallas Fort Worth Airport
DFW
Airport
Hail Arlington
Hurst
DFW
AirportDFW
Airport
Rain
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,
Contextualizing & Alert
Generation
Environmental &
Infrastructure Threats
People, locations,contexts,
preferences
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
• Search and rescue, accident response
• Structure and brush fires
• SWAT missions
Photo credits: North Texas Public Safety Unmanned Response Team
“Can I fly higher or lower /
differently and complete my
mission? What are the winds at
different heights?”
Commercial usage of drones in North Texas
Photo credits: Tarillo Vue, Industrial UAV Photography
• Real estate photography
• Agriculture and construction
• Roof moisture inspection
• Hail damage inspection
• Bridge inspections
• Solar panel inspections
• Railway/ airport surveillance
“Rain will ruin photos/ videos.”
“Tell me if rain fell in the last 24
hours; if surfaces are wet (roof/
solar panel inspections).”
North Texas: Launch market for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM)
DFW Airport
Frisco
Uber Air route (concept), 2019 Uber Elevate
Summit
Source: WFAA, Sep 18, 2019
Skyport Mobility Hub concept
(Gensler)
• Dallas - One of three launch
cities world-wide
• Commercial shared air
transportation services within
three years (2023)
RECON and Damage Assessment
(Dallas crane collapse)
‘Severe Weather’ & Urban Unmanned Operations
DFW Airport
Frisco
WindsP/C Fox4 News
HailP/C Fox4 News
Public Safety operations
• Identify hot spots for
response activities
• Keep rescue personnel safe
Commercial UAS operations
• Targeted services – Hail
damage, roof assessments
Urban Air Mobility
• Passenger and Cargo safety
• Vehicle and Vertiport safety
• Efficiency and diversion
planning
KDALKDFW
KAFW
KRBDKGKY
KFTW
KLNC
KHQZ
KF46
Availability of Wind Data across the Dallas – Fort Worth Metroplex
ASOS/AWOS surface stations
Earth Networks weather stations
Wind Data availability
ASOS/AWOS stations (METARS)
- Surface winds only
- Update hourly
- Only at airports
Commercial Weather 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
10 and 1500 feet!
Vaisala (Leosphere) ‘Windcube’
Scanning Wind Doppler Lidar
Need a Test Bed for New ‘Clear-Air’ Atmospheric Sensors
Wind measurement volume:
12km x12km x 300m,
Resolution: 200m x 200m x 50 m
NRG Systems ‘Spidar’ Direct
Detect Lidar
MetroWeather
Doppler Lidar
10 m resolution
2-3 hour wind
predictions
Wind Vertical Profiles
Measurement height range: 20-
200 m
Lidars can provide real-time measurements of low-level winds!
Photo credits: NRG Systems, EKO Instruments, Metro Weather
NDFD Forecast Winds (grid arrows)
30 dbZ thunderstorm (light green contour)
45 dbZ thunderstorm (dark green contour)
METAR reported wind speed and gust
(latest, reported hourly)
NWS Severe
Thunderstorm Warning
(Yellow)
CASA Alert
CASA City Warn™ Alerting System
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
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
Dallas Fort Worth International Airport
• Has its own UAS program
• Testbed for weather sensors, UAS
activities
Bell
• Headquartered in Fort Worth
• Bell Flight Training Academy, Bell
Flight Research Center
• Local test and demonstration flights
North Texas Ecosystem Enablers
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
❑ Develop Best Practices
❑ Participants in NASA AAM National Campaign
- Univ. of North Texas, ResilienX, OneSky, Frequentis,
Unmanned Experts, Lone Star Center of UAS
Excellence & Innovation
❑ Simulations
❑ Uses NTX weather
❑ Communication of weather risk
❑ Standards
NASA SIO
NASA AAM National Campaign
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)
26
Some CASA Collaborators
New airspace entrants require new infrastructure for intra-city/region – “Vertiport in a box”
• Multifunction sensor network
• Air Traffic Management
• ‘Vertiport-in-a-Box’
• Micro-data sets
• Micro-weather predictions
• “TruFlite Alerting” platform
Growing List of Engaged (or Interested) Testbed Partners
• University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Colorado State University
• University of North Texas
• NASA North Texas Research Station
• Lone Star Center of UAS Excellence &
Innovation, TAMUCC
• MIT Lincoln Labs
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR)
• Dallas Fort Worth International Airport
• Alliance Texas Mobility Innovation Zone
• Mineral Wells UAS Innovation Zone
• North Central Texas Council of Governments
• North Texas UAS Safety & Integration Taskforce
• North Texas Public Safety Unmanned Response
Team (PSURT)
• AUVSI Lone Star Chapter
• Bell
• Uber
• TruWeather Solutions
• Raytheon Technologies
• NRG Systems
• Vaisala Leosphere
• Metro Weather
• Understory
• Meteodrone
• ResilienX
• OneSky
• Frequentis
• Unmanned Experts
• EWR Weather Radar
• Ridgeline Instruments
• Furuno
• EEC Radar
Contact: Apoorva Bajaj, Innovation Manager [email protected]