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 Bajaj@ecs.umass.edu