Papers for the 40th Conference on Environmental Information Processing Technologies are solicited on the following:
A Review of Modern Drone Observations and the Need for Drone Platform Standardization and Autonomy
The development of drone technologies has led to new in situ and remote sensing methodologies. Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have use cases including weather modification, atmospheric observations, hydrological studies, general GIS, and greenhouse gas emissions monitoring. This technology has become more prevalent in these fields over the past decade (Miller 2023, Jung et all, 2022, Henneberg 2023, many more).
This presentation aims to provide a comprehensive review of modern drone observations in meteorological research and emphasize the need for drone platform standardization and autonomy. We will discuss the current state of drone technologies used in various meteorological applications, focusing on their capabilities, limitations, and potential for future improvements and standardization. By examining these case studies, we will showcase the diversity of drone platforms and the challenges associated with integrating data from various sources. The lack of standardization in drone platforms and autonomy can present challenges to data sharing, and the reproducibility of research findings at scale.
The development of autonomous drone systems can obtain airborne observations in novel ways. Autonomous drones can operate beyond visual line of sight collecting data for extended periods without human intervention. However, the lack of standardized protocols and regulations for autonomous drone operations poses challenges in terms of human safety, reliability, and data quality assurance.
By addressing these challenges, we can foster collaboration among researchers and support the reproducibility of data. This will be critical as drone studies and in field use continue to become more prevalent. The insights gained from this review will inform future research directions, policy recommendations, and technology development efforts in the field of meteorological drone applications.
References:
Henneberg et al, 2023, Seeding of Supercooled Low Stratus CLouds with a UAV to Study Microphsyical Ice Processes: An Introduction to the CLOUDLAB Project, BAMS, 104, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-22-0178.1
Miller et al, 2023, Two new multirotor uncrewed aerial vehiclesor glaciogenic cloud seeding and aerosol measurments within the CLOUDLAB project, European Geoscience Union, 12, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-601-2024
Jung, 2022, Progressive and Prospective Technology for Cloud Seeding Experiment by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and Atmospheric Research Aircraft in Korea, Advance in Meteorology, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/3128657
Advanced Products and Technologies That Can Be Used Now and Their Path to Quasi-Operational or Sustained Operations: The View from the Dry and the Wet Side
This session aims to bring attention to those applications, technologies, or techniques that are well advanced with respect to the Technology Readiness Level continuum. These applications, technologies, or techniques have not yet been made officially operational by organizations such as the National Weather Service or the National Ocean Service, but are being produced regularly in an "operational like" manner and made available as a sustained service for general use.
Applying GIS Techniques to Analyze and Communicate Weather and Climate Impacts
GIS technology gives the user almost limitless potential to gather, analyze, and contextualize data from different sectors to provide insight into weather and climate patterns and impacts. This session will focus on two areas: 1) using local and cloud-based tools for the analysis; 2) sharing those analyses in using Python notebooks or web applications to engage our communities.
Automated Vehicles & Meteorology
Weather (atmospheric conditions) and road weather (pavement conditions) can adversely affect vehicle and driver behavior. With the advent of automated vehicles (AVs), multiple entities have begun research and testing to identify how vehicles and drivers will detect and react to adverse weather and road weather conditions. AVs have sensors and perception systems to detect objects and events in their vicinity. Using this information, fully automated vehicles control the steering, speed, or both to move the vehicle along its selected path. The vehicle’s ability to properly perceive the situation and execute a maneuver can be affected by atmospheric and road weather. As more advanced automated vehicles are deployed, there becomes an even greater need to connect the vehicle and meteorology communities together to make sure solutions are identified for operational and safety activities, long-term planning, and policy making.
This session will consist of discussions on the meteorology needs for operating automated vehicles. We invite the road weather community and automated vehicle specialists to explore use cases on how road weather meteorology can support automated vehicles during adverse weather including:
Automated Vehicle Testing: results of automated vehicle testing during adverse weather and test track scenarios.
Meteorology Forecasting and Observations: available technologies and forecasts that can or could support automated vehicles (all levels).
AMS Automated Vehicles & Meteorology Summit: share key findings and lessons learned from the Summit held Jun 25-27, 2024, in Ann Arbor, MI.
AWIPS System Updates
This session consists of oral presentations on the status of AWIPS development, implementation and use. Development organizations are encouraged to present the status of their own work as it applies to the overall program. We would also like to invite presentations from the user point of view.
Clean Energy and Equitable Transportation Solutions
Transportation emissions have increased long-lasting greenhouse gases (GHGs), deteriorated air quality, and adversely increased climate change and extreme weather impacts. In turn, extremes like heatwaves threaten public transit users, damage roads, disrupt travel, and pose health and safety risks for vulnerable communities in summer. Similarly, winter snowstorms lead to traffic disruptions, multiple vehicle accidents, and fatalities. Reducing transportation emissions will not only enhance health outcomes and visibility but also optimize road conditions, thereby increasing road safety. Additionally, it will decrease vulnerability to environmental hazards such as heatwaves and flooding. This session invites studies based on observations, modeling, or a combination of both that focus on (i) strategies for decarbonizing transportation to attain carbon neutrality and climate change goals, (ii) crafting emission inventories for the transportation sector to inform climate modeling for climate scenario models, and (iii) exploring topics concerning road safety and infrastructure resilience amidst local and regional climate, air quality, and hydrometeorological shifts.
Cloud Computing for Big Data in Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate
Weather imposes constraints on human activity. As a consequence, most decision-makers/planners seek awareness to mitigate or eliminate weather impacts. As datasets become larger and larger, new and improved tools to work with Big Data are critical. This session welcomes contributions from research fields such as scientific visualization, information visualization or visual analytics that are applicable to large data sets from climatology, meteorology or related disciplines. Presentations on using cloud computing for analyzing satellite and model data for weather, ocean, or climate relevant applications will also be welcomed.
Cloud-Based User Services to Support Data Use in the User Community
Environmental data, from historical observations to upcoming missions and field campaigns, is becoming increasingly more accessible in the cloud. Cloud access supports the broader community goal of open science as data are more readily accessible and can be accessed across organizations. Operating within the cloud still primarily supports experienced users and is difficult for new users to navigate. This session encourages submissions that address the challenges faced by new users to systems and tools that have been created to enhance the user experience with these data whether for data discovery, visualization, or analysis. The presented work may include, but is not limited to: data recipes, data and information curation efforts, data processing (transformation/subsetting) and analysis tools/APIs, science notebooks, structured document database development, data discovery tools, and software tips among developers.
Data Quality and Provenance for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning(ML) Applications
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) usage in weather, water, and climate applications increases, the quality and provenance of data used for model training and application are also evolving to become increasingly important. We explored tough questions with a panel session at the 2023 AMS Washington Forum, such as: What ground truth is used in model training? Are the limitations of ground truth data considered? The Annual Meeting provides an opportunity to continue and add further definition and guidance to the conversation. Specific items to be considered include, but are not limited to: 1) What kinds of filtering, processing, or transformations are applied to the data between original observations or model runs and ingest/usage by the AI/ML user, and where these changes are best applied; 2) Measures of quality and context surrounding a given data set, including whether the associated metadata are sufficiently complete to understand these aspects; 3) Measures of the appropriateness for a given type of data to solve a given type of problem. This session will explore how we ensure traceability and selection of the best data possible for a given AI/ML application to maximize accuracy and effectiveness to the respective end users.
Decision Support Systems used for Transportation
In the transportation sector, adverse weather and road weather events pose a significant impact to the safety of the traveling public and affects the productivity and economic stability to commerce. Adverse weather and road weather events include, but are not limited to, flooding, high winds, low visibility, freezing rain, snowstorms, tornadoes, tropical storms, and hurricanes. To support managing the transportation system, decision support systems are being researched, piloted, and used operationally in transportation agencies or by their consultants/vendors. With these decision support systems, research continues as new technologies are added to the systems. The research activities are conducted by Federal agencies (i.e., Federal Highway Administration, National Weather Service), transportation agencies, academia, non-profits, private sector, etc.
This session will consist of discussions on decision support systems that support road weather management activities. We invite road weather professionals and decision support system owners/users to share best practices and lessons learned from road weather-related management strategies that use the systems.
Democratizing Data: Environmental Data Access and Its Future
One of the tenets of big data is the idea of the (2,4, 7) V’s - Volume, Velocity, Variety, Variability, Veracity, Visualization, and Value. With the increase in the volume and velocity of data, access becomes ever more challenging. Users have access to more types of data and they can become overwhelmed by the possibilities. In the past, data access has been confusing but now there is more user engagement in building friendlier and more usable interfaces. Discovery is now more flexible and all encompassing - for example using schema.org to enable data discovery and via Google search. This increased use of data is not limited to scientists and other professionals. Citizens use data more than they realize (maps, elevation charts, tides, etc.) so they are constantly accessing data from a variety of sources.
There remains a broader community goal to have improved data access with the aim of democratizing data by removing gatekeepers so that data are unrestricted and available in a meaningful way to all. Improved access to data also supports data equity - “The term “data equity” captures a complex and multi-faceted set of ideas. It refers to the consideration, through an equity lens, of the ways in which data is collected, analyzed, interpreted, and distributed.” By making data more easily accessed and used we also make the ability to use data more equitable.
We want to gather a set of papers that bring together all aspects of the data access process with a focus on improving data access for a wide range of users. We propose the following structure:
data discoverability
data access
data and service equity
data usability
user interface/engagement/input
visualization tools
reproducibility and tracing - after access
Platforms for reproducible research and reusable tools will accelerate the analytics enterprise and build the salience, credibility, and legitimacy required to effectively inform policy. This session will highlight emerging open-science tools and platforms for weather and climate-security analysis.
Developing Cloud-Based Tools for Data Analysis and Archiving
Cloud-based technologies continue to evolve and mature in their use and application. This session will delve into the growing use of cloud hosting solutions applied to benefit the environmental sciences and specifically applications for data analysis, visualization and archiving of environmental information. This session encourages submissions on these topics, focusing on how submitters are incorporating cloud-based applications into their work, what they have done, and what advantages this approach has provided to their efforts.
FAIR and Open Data and Software within the Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences to Support Transparent, Reusable, and Efficient Research and Operations
The need to understand linkages between climatic extremes and security outcomes such as displacement/migration, public health, and food/electricity production has never been higher. Analysis of these linkages requires integration of the Earth, social, economic, and political sciences as well as equitable access to community datasets, data proximate compute, community developed data analysis workflows and open source software tools. In this session, we invite submissions that discuss research, applications and initiatives that build upon the principles of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) Open Data and Software within the atmospheric and related sciences to drive new discoveries. We welcome technical, policy, and community-focused submissions on a range of topics related to facilitating transparency of science and leveraging community supported open science capabilities to drive research and operational outcomes. Examples include:
Research, operations and industry uses that employ a combination of public cloud compute, cloud hosted datasets such as those provided through NOAA’s Open Data Dissemination Program, and open source data analysis tools and workflows.
Solutions for data and software discoverability, metadata creation and management, provenance tracking, and other relevant topics.
Platforms for reproducible research and reusable tools will accelerate the analytics enterprise and build the salience, credibility, and legitimacy required to effectively inform policy. This session will highlight emerging open-science tools and platforms for weather and climate-security analysis.
Interagency Coordination within the Federal Weather Enterprise
Federal government agencies active in meteorological services and supporting research have worked together for decades using existing programs, projects and coordination mechanisms, which involve multiple government agencies and aim to increase overall effectiveness within the Federal Weather Enterprise (FWE).
This session will begin with a description of the new Interagency Council for the Advancement of Meteorological Services (ICAMS), the first significant reorganization of the Federal meteorological enterprise since the 1960s. A 10-year charter established ICAMS as the formal mechanism by which all relevant Federal departments and agencies coordinate implementation of policy and practices to ensure U.S. global leadership in the meteorological services enterprise, from local weather to global climate. In doing so, ICAMS improves coordination, as mandated by the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017. This session will focus on the furthering and expanding work that has been done over the last two years to integrate a whole of government approach to Federal Weather Enterprise and Non-Federal partners, leveraging organizations across the country to institute end-to-end processes to advance weather services for the United States.
International Hazards –‘The UN’s Early Warnings for All (EW4All) Challenge
We live in a changing world. Our climate is changing, our populations are growing and constantly on the move and as evidenced by the COVID-19 crisis, our exposure to a range of socio, technological, political and environmental threats and shocks is ever changing too. On World Meteorological Day 2022, the UN Secretary General set the WMO a 5-year target of ensuring that everyone on the planet should be protected by an early warning service by the end of 2027. Responding to this challenge, this session is inviting presentations that explore good practices and exciting innovations that describe how environmental hazards, social sciences, last mile communication strategies and the latest technologies can be applied to and integrated with sectoral vulnerability and exposure datasets to deliver the next generation of multi-hazard impact-based forecasts and warnings.
Optimizing Data Flows with Edge Computing Technologies
Environmental information processing continues to become more challenging with the exponential growth and complexity of data. Downlinking and transmitting terabytes of data is no longer a viable solution to deliver data at the speed of decision relevance. Edge computing and processing, closer to where the data are created, is one solution to solve this voluminous data flow challenge. To synchronize across complex needs and services, the power of edge computing can’t be limited to specific systems, sensors, or devices. Organizations need to address edge computing as something that is open and API-driven to enable integration and interoperability. Edge computing optimizes data flows at an enterprise level to more rapidly get assimilated into numerical models or used directly for real-time decisions at the tactical level.
This session will consist of discussions on the exploration of edge-based computing and transformation of edge data that must occur. We invite data scientists, data and processing engineers, and other practitioners to explore use cases on how edge computing can support critical environmental information missions including:
Onboard satellite data processing: technologies and use cases of federal or commercial satellite data by pre-processing onboard and downlinking only the data needed
Next generation weather processing at the edge: technologies and use cases that demonstrate edge computing to optimize forward-deployed forecaster use (e.g., Incident Meteorologist) of large quantities of satellite, radar, and model data.
Disaster response at the edge: when disasters strike, emergency managers require uninterrupted connection to large volumes of data.
Other Topics in Environmental Information Processing Technologies
Phased Array Weather Radar and Applications
Weather radar is positioned to benefit from phased array radar (PAR) technology. With both Doppler, polarimetric, and agile scanning capabilities, PAR provides rapid updates of quickly evolving severe weather with greater spatial coverage compared with the reflector-based weather radar worldwide. Both the engineering and the meteorological communities have converged that the adoption of PARs has the potential to revolutionize how atmosphere is observed by radars and advance science and engineering frontiers (Palmer et al. 2021; Kollias et al. 2021).
NOAA developed a full scale, S-band, polarimetric, Advanced Technology Demonstrator (ATD) for evaluating the feasibility of PAR as a potential next generation radar system in the United States. The completion of fully digital, S-band, polarimetric, truck-mounted PARs, HORUS, (University of Oklahoma) have provided new insights into the rapid evolution of many high-impacts weather events such as supercells and squall lines. NSF’s decision to fund the develop an airborne PAR system (the Airborne Phased array radar, APAR, NCAR) will provide unprecedented concurrent 3-D winds and dual-pol/microphysics information within mesoscale convective systems over the open ocean serving as the building blocks of the earth’s climate systems (e.g., tropical cyclones, MJO, etc.). In addition, ground-based, gap filling, X-band PAR radar networks have been developed and installed in urban areas in Shanghai, China, and Osaka Japan.
The multi-discipline nature of the PAR research includes design of transmit/receive semiconductor chips, radar waveform design, radar signal processing, radar data quality control, and radar data analysis methodology. The rapid update capability of PARs has opened the door for assimilating of Doppler velocity into numerical models. One of the remaining challenges is to assimilate dual-pol data into numerical models. It is anticipated that integration of observations and numerical models will accelerate the validation and improvement of the microphysical parameterization schemes for better prediction of high-impact weather events.
In light of these exciting development activities of PARs and the potential for ground-breaking science discoveries and applications in improving weather prediction, it is timely to propose a PAR symposium at the AMS Annual Meeting to inform the broader AMS community on the current research and development activities on PAR. The primary goal of this symposium is to entrain and engage more AMS members into this exciting new technology and research opportunities to tackle future science and engineering frontiers.
The organizing committee members includes professors and researchers in leading PAR research institutions such as University of Oklahoma, Colorado State University, Stony Brook University, University of Massachusetts, National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Ball Aerospace (now BAE). Currently, the organizing group consists of senior professors and researchers. If this symposium is approved, it is the intent to entrain earlier career professors and researchers into the organizing committee in future years.
Two BAMS articles:
Palmer, R. , and Coauthors, 2022: A primer on phased array radar technology for the atmospheric sciences. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 103, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0172.1.
These sessions are devoted to current and next generation weather radars, with emphasis on radar meteorology science, weather radar applications, weather radar signal processing, weather radar prototype developments, experimental weather radar data collections, and essentially all radar meteorological algorithms. Presentations about advanced radar technologies, including phased array radars, polarimetry, multi-function scan strategies, retrieval algorithms, signal processing for clutter rejection, etc. will be a focus of these sessions.
Services Update for Weather Agencies
This session allows federal agencies with weather-related activities and missions to present the current state of their operations and development. Priority will be given to authors contacted by the Conference Committee
Special Session on Innovative Applications of Aerial-based Image Collection and Use for Natural Disaster Response
Since 1980, the United States has sustained 378 one-billion dollar weather and climate disasters. Beyond the financial implications of such events, these disasters have varied and long-lasting impacts on human and natural systems across the country. Often these impacts are greatest in socioeconomically marginalized communities that may not have access to resources to recover from such events. Analyses suggest that the number and costs of such weather and climate disasters is increasing due in part to increased exposure, vulnerability, and frequency of extreme natural disasters. Fortunately, many Federal, state, local, and tribal government sectors have established protocols for responding to such events, often while leveraging resources from industry and academic partners.
Although the specific missions vary across the disaster response spectrum and from event to event, an accurate account of damage assessment from aerial image collection has proven to serve as a critical starting point for many of these functions. Particularly as it relates to weather related natural disasters, for emergency managers, rapid collection and analysis of such information aids in determining the need for disaster declarations and mobilization of critical resources for efficient response and recovery. During severe storm and flood events, National Weather Service offices can use the same data to document the cause and severity of damage, then relay important impact-based information to the public. For researchers, accurate, high-fidelity data can be used to diagnose sub-storm scale processes after the fact, and use the information to improve the science of forecasts and warnings for future events.
Regardless of the specific application, innovative use of aerial-based platforms and the development of efficient procedures for their deployment are essential to effectively prepare for future disasters and adaptively enable quality data collection for damage assessments.
This special session aims to bring together developers and operators of novel aerial image collection methods (e.g., uncrewed aircraft) for storm damage assessment, and combine them with relevant stakeholders and decision makers, to share the current state of research and operational applications, and to spark collaboration and innovation for greater societal and environmental benefit.
Tending the Treasure Trove: Airborne & Field Data Stewardship in Support of NASA’s Earth System Observatory (ESO)
NASA’s Earth System Observatory (ESO) will provide a holistic, 3-D view of the planet focusing on multiple core study areas including aerosols; clouds, convection, and precipitation; mass change; biology and geology; and surface deformation and change. As scientists look forward to ESO, many are formulating ways to use suborbital (ie: non-satellite, airborne and field) Earth-based measurements to inform the development and maximize the value of both current and future Earth observing missions. We look to ESO as a new era of use and reuse of airborne and field-based data, with a keen awareness that many satellite-borne instruments begin development as ground- and/or aircraft-based analogs, as well as practical considerations that essential satellite calibration/validation work relies on observations collected by sensors on non-satellite platforms.
This session encourages contributions on the use, combination, and stewardship of data from previous airborne and field campaigns as well as concepts currently in development for ESO-relevant future efforts. Particular attention will be granted to presentations that demonstrate alignment with and support for the NASA Earth Science to Action Strategy vision and mission to collaboratively explore and understand Earth systems and enable solutions that benefit humanity. Example presentation topics include but are not limited to: multi-scale and multi-platform science applications aligned with NASA ESO priorities; suborbital data stewardship methodologies and workflows (including cloud architectures); coactive and distinct metadata standards across multiple science domains; challenges and solutions for the integration of airborne and field data for AI-based science applications; and discovery, access, and reuse of airborne/field data for new science inquiries.
Weather and the Roads
Adverse weather conditions have a major impact on the safety and operation of our nation's roads, from low volume rural roads and signalized arterials to interstate highways. Weather affects driver behavior, vehicle performance, pavement friction, and roadway infrastructure. Weather events and their impacts on roads can be viewed as predictable, non-recurring incidents that affect safety, mobility and productivity. Weather affects roadway safety through increased crash risk, as well as exposure to weather-related hazards. Weather impacts roadway mobility by increasing travel time delay, reducing traffic volumes and speeds, increasing speed variance (i.e., a measure of speed uniformity), and decreasing roadway capacity (i.e., maximum rate at which vehicles can travel). Weather events influence productivity by disrupting access to road networks and increasing road operating and maintenance costs.
This session will consist of discussions on road weather technologies, infrastructure, observations, and forecasting. We invite road weather professionals and other practitioners to share best practices and lessons learned from road weather-related management strategies including:
Road Weather Technologies: systems that include road weather components.
Road Weather Infrastructure: deployed infrastructure that captures weather/road weather and infrastructure that utilizes road weather (i.e., signal systems).
Road Weather Observations: weather/road weather observations that are captured from infrastructure and how they are used for operational and maintenance activities.
Road Weather Forecasting: new innovations and best practices in road weather forecasting.