A Network of Radars and the Science of Forecasting Tornadoes

The devastation in the South, and especially in Alabama, following the tornadoes this past week is horrifying.

According to CNN.com: By early this morning, emergency management officials tallied 252 deaths in Alabama, 34 in Tennessee, 33 in Mississippi, 15 in Georgia, 5 in Virginia and 1 in Arkansas. Since 1680, there has been only one other date in U.S. history on which more people died during a severe weather outbreak, according to weather experts, when on March 18, 1925, a severe storm system swept across seven states killing 747 people, according to the National Weather Service.

Immediately when I heard the news this past week, I contacted colleagues at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa (the tornado hit 5 miles from their home) and colleagues at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (they are OK, too). I was personally affected, even though located miles away, since my flights were cancelled on Thursday and I missed a memorial service and symposium at Cornell.

The media had been reporting that it was difficult to forecast such major weather events and I was thinking about the research that is being conducted by the NSF Engineering Research Center known as CASA, which is headed by UMass Amherst. CASA (which means "home" in Spanish) stands for the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere and this center is involved in the designing of technology, specifically, radars, and their placement in networks, to forecast major weather events, including tornadoes.

CASA's Director at UMass Amherst is Professor David McLaughlin (who is also now the Associate Dean of Engineering) and, would you believe, that almost on the same date (but a few years before the recent tornadoes in Alabama and 5 other states), McLaughlin spoke in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series?! His talk, Chasing Interdisciplinarity while Chasing Tornadoes: An Overview of the CASA Engineering Research Center was fantastic (and you can see his abstract and find more info here).

Lo and behold, now The New York Times is reporting on the research of CASA, which is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in a ten year project. The article notes how CASA is a collaboration among several universities with expertise in radars, weather forecasting, and focuses also on emergency preparedness and management. The other universities, in addition to UMass Amherst, are: the University of Oklahoma, Colorado State, and the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez.

Specifically, this group works on designing and building radars (my husband spent his sabbatical at CASA plus the researchers there I consider as colleagues) and setting them up as a network in order to predict weather more locally and quicker. Every year a group from UMass travels to the tornado-ridden areas to, literally, gather data while chasing tornadoes. The group includes students who drive the trucks with the radar gear in back, and, believe me, you should hear their "war" stories.

Of course, it is important to be able to produce the necessary radars in a cost efficient way so that they could be deployed on a scale to help.

Indeed, as The Times stated in the article:

Emergency managers said the radar network would provide more detailed pictures of smaller areas, and could have applications for traffic control and fire protection.

You can read more about chasing tornadoes in the VORTEX2 project here.

What a critical time now to get such radars deployed! Just imagine if the huge losses in terms of lives and property could have been avoided!

Chasing Tornados and Searching for a Dean

Photo - Tornado from Vortex - courtesy NOAA

This year my husband is on sabbatical at the NSF (National Science Foundation) ERC (Engineering Research Center) at UMass Amherst, known as CASA, which stands for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere. The Center's Director is Dr. David McLaughlin, a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UMass Amherst. This center involves other universities, including University of Oklahoma and the University of Puerto Rico, that conduct research in the science of the atmosphere and in the prediction of weather, including tornados. Today's Boston Globe had a feature article on the science of predicting tornados, which noted the work at UMass Amherst; see:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/04/08/scientists_hoping_for_better_look_at_twisters/

I enjoy hearing the stories that my husband comes home with -- from the students driving the truck with the radars from Amherst to Oklahoma and back -- to the logistics involved in finding housing for the researchers as they literally chase tornados in real-time. The research that is conducted under the auspices of this ERC is critical and is fascinating from scientific and practical perspectives. Weather affects everything that we do and the precise prediction of dangerous weather can literally save lives. Plus, the decision-making surrounding extreme weather events involves many stakeholders from government planners to news agencies to citizens. Hence, projects that CASA undertakes also stimulate research in optimal distributed/decentralized decision-making and networks, which is one of my research passions.

As academics, we teach, we conduct research, and we do service to our universities and professions plus communities. This semester I am serving on the Search Committee for the new Dean of the Isenberg School of Management. Dr. Tony Butterfield has been serving as the Interim Dean of the Isenberg School for the past two years and the school is poised for new levels of achievement in research and education. The Search Committee has members not only from the Isenberg School but also from other departments at UMass Amherst, as well as administrators, students, including one of my doctoral students, Patrick Qiang, and a representative from our Business Advisory Council, Mr. Paul McDonald, who is also an alum. The committee is chaired by the Dean of the College of Engineering, Dr. Mike Malone. The committee is terrific and we have been very busy identifying finalists for the position who have already started to come to campus to meet with the students, faculty, staff, members of the Business Advisory Council, and committee. We are all very excited about identifying our new Dean and leader.