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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / OCTOBER 6, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 40
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Applications:
UMASS UNVEILS NEW WEATHER
CENTER
Revolutionary sensing technology that will enable earlier and more accurate
forecasts of weather emergencies will be at the heart of a new $40 million
research center announced at University of Massachussetts. Funded in part by
the National Science Foundation, the Engineering Research Center for
Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) is expected to
increase the warning time for tornadoes, flash floods and other severe weather
disturbances with far greater accuracy than existing systems.
UM will lead a multidisciplinary team that includes the University of
Oklahoma, Colorado State University and the University of Puerto
Rico-Mayaguez. CASA's industry partners include Raytheon, IBM, MA/COM,
Vaisala, Vieux and Associates, Telephonics and The Weather Channel. Government
partners include NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory and Oak Ridge
National Labs.
"This new Engineering Research Center is another example of how UMass-
Amherst's academic and scientific expertise has a profound, positive impact on
our society," said John V. Lombardi, UM chancellor. "As a result, this center
has the ability to save millions of dollars and protect many lives by
identifying severe weather systems much sooner than any system currently in
use."
Today's forecasting systems employ high-power, long-range radars that are
blocked from observing the lower part of the atmosphere by the earth's
curvature. This means, for example, that today's sensors cannot be used to
observe tornadoes that begin close to the ground.
CASA can overcome the blockage effects of the earth's curvature by
arranging
low-cost, dense networks of radars operating at short range. A new generation
of meteorological software will use this radar data to support organizations
that need weather data for decision making: government, emergency managers and
private industry.
The radars being developed by CASA are just three-feet by three-feet with
electronics that are about the size of a personal computer, in contrast to
today's high-power radars which have 30 foot antennas and are three stories
high. These new radars can also be placed on existing cellular towers.
"CASA will catch tornadoes and thunderstorms that can't be detected today,"
said David McLaughlin, director of CASA and Armstrong Professor in Electrical
and Computer Engineering. "We expect this system to reduce the financial
impact of weather-related transportation delays. Moreover, these new sensor
systems will be used for more than severe weather detection -- for example,
they could track low-level winds that transport pollutants throughout the
atmosphere."
UM and its partners will operate CASA aided by $40 million in funding over
a
five-year period. This funding includes a $17 million grant from the NSF, $5
million from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, contributions from academic
partners, plus nearly $6 million from corporations and in-kind donations. The
team includes engineers and computer scientists from UM as well as engineers,
meteorologists, atmospheric scientists and sociologists from the academic
partner institutions. "This is an essential partnership. We're tackling a
problem that just can't be solved without this essential mix of
multidisciplinary collaborators" said McLaughlin.
Input from IBM computer scientists and IBM's ebusiness on demand operating
environment -- including IBM software, eServer, storage and Grid computing --
provide the technology infrastructure supporting the ERC. Grid computing
involves pooling the computing power of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of servers
over a network to run programs more reliably and reduce the cost of
maintaining data centers. IBM servers and software integrate various processes
as numerous users around the country from the acedemic, public and private
sectors use multiple applications on the network. The IBM infrastructure also
virtualizes or reallocates computing power wherever its most needed on the
grid as activity fluctuates at the various test beds, enabling responsiveness
even with simultaneous storm systems at all four test beds.
"IBM's ebusiness on demand operating environment is the technology
infrastructure supporting the ERC," said Daniel Bonelli, vice president of
industry solutions marketing for IBM Software Group. "We are linking disparate
processes and harnessing computing power to make the United States more
responsive to weather and atmospheric threats. Imagine what this solution
could do for the energy and defense industries."
The first field test of CASA will be in mid-2005 in Oklahoma and will cover
roughly 20 percent of the state -- a region that experiences approximately 22
tornadoes per year. The second test will be in Houston, where CASA will deploy
a system to predict floods more accurately. A third test, in Puerto Rico, will
improve monitoring of hurricanes as they approach land.
CASA is one of four new centers created as a result of a recent proposal
competition, in which more than 100 teams competed for the prestigious
Engineering Research Center designation. The NSF currently funds 24
engineering research centers nationwide. The centers are designed to partner
university researchers with industry and government practitioners, in order to
tackle issues too complex and expensive for one sector alone.
All engineering research centers must also have a large educational
component.
CASA has plans to engage schoolchildren using the "hook" of weather to
introduce kids to engineering. University students will work in teams
alongside industrial practitioners and academic researchers, designing and
testing sensors in the field and working with end-users to interpret sensor
data.
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