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At least 181 records · Page 10

Fire Front Detection and Tracking for Autonomous sUAS in STEReO

The Scalable Traffic Management Emergency Response Operations (STEReO) project aims to incorporate unmanned aerial systems (UAS) into wildfire incident response to safely quicken response times, improve operator awareness, and scale-up aircraft operations.Autonomous UAS can be used to relieve human operators of dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks such as checking for re-ignitions and geo-locating fires. To geo-locate fires, the UAS must be able to detect whether a fire is present and also have the necessary information to stamp a location. Furthermore, the UAS should be able to track the fire front to determine the extent of the fire. This study presents a fire front detection and tracking methodology for an autonomous small UAS (sUAS). The methodology is evaluated in simulation.

Autonomous UAV,Wildfire,Detection,Tracking↗

TCL4 UTM (UAS Traffic Management) Nevada 2019 Flight Tests, Airspace Operations Laboratory (AOL) Report

The Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) research project has been developing and testing concept ideas for enabling small UAS (sUAS) operations in low altitude airspace (ground to 400 feet). To do this, NASA has organized a series of flight test demonstrations. Technology Capability Level-4 (TCL4) flight tests were conducted at a Nevada, USA test site, during June 2019. The testing resulted in over 300 data collection flights using eight live rotorcraft, 15 simulated vehicles, involving six flight crews and five Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Service Suppliers (USS). The TCL4 approach was designed to demonstrate five scenarios that set up five diverse sets of UAS events and activities. The Nevada test site focused on three of these scenarios: an incoming weather front, a concert event with an incident requiring an emergency response, and a scenario where multiple vehicles experienced Communication, Navigation, and Surveillance (CNS) issues. The test site created their scenarios to each have three phases and were required to complete three executions of each scenario, for a total of nine missions per Nevada vehicle per scenario. This document presents data collected from participants during the TCL4-Nevada flight test that provides information about how much and how well operators were able to make use of UTM functions and information, with the goal of exploring what the minimum information requirements and/or best practices might be in TCL4 operations. The driving enquiry was: how do UTM tools and features support (human) operators leading to safe and effective conduct of large-scale beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) sUAS operations in “urban canyon” environments? As with the data collected during previous similar tests (e.g., TCL3, Martin et al., 2019), the quality of the UTM information exchanged, and the meaningfulness and therefore usefulness of this information, were all focal points of the questions asked and the data collected. Data aligned with five human-system attributes to indicate that UTM provided information that contributed to users’ ability to operate safely and effectively within UTM, but that information was not always complete and was sometimes unclear.

UTM↗

Building a Real-Time Flood Prediction Model for Improving Early Warning Systems in Ellicott City, Maryland

As flood events in the United States grow in frequency and intensity, the use of applied remote sensing analyses is increasingly necessary for effective flood monitoring and warning systems. The NASA DEVELOP National Program partnered with the local government of Howard County, Maryland, to investigate the use of machine learning for advanced flood risk detection, and to test the feasibility of integrating this approach into the county’s flood early warning system. To strengthen the efforts of the Howard County Office of Emergency Management (OEM), the project developed a statistical model capable of hindcasting the two severe flash flood events that devastated Ellicott City and transitioned to a ‘Long Short-Term Memory’ based sequence-to-sequence deep learning model with 8-hour forecast capability. The team combined data inputs from public sources including river and precipitation gauges, NASA and NOAA Earth observations, and numerical weather model products using scripts written in the Google Colaboratory Python scripting environment. In addition to designing the deep learning architecture, the team trained and tested the model, and evaluated its performance using Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency. The final product, the Sequentially Trained Real-time EstimAted Model (STREAM) predicts stage height for the Hudson Branch gauge in Ellicott City using data products available in near real-time, including the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh model’s accumulated precipitation forecasts supplemented by stream gauge data from the OEM and the U.S. Geological Survey. STREAM was incorporated into an online dashboard in a user-friendly interface capable of triggering the alarms that initiate emergency response protocols up to 8 hours in advance of a predicted severe flood event. The project demonstrated the potential for the integration of open data and Earth observations into a flood risk forecasting tool capable of informing near real-time decision making.

NASA DEVELOP↗

Using NASA Earth Observations to Identify Wildfire Impacts on Hydrologic Functions and Recovery in the Gila National Forest

Wildfires can dramatically influence both abiotic and biotic components of a landscape, including soil stability and chemistry; vegetation health, density, and composition; and water flow and quality. In addition to the immediate hazards posed by wildfires, subsequent hazards such as flooding and debris flow can impact the area. In New Mexico’s Gila National Forest, wildfire events have occurred with increasing frequency and severity over recent years, notably including the Whitewater Baldy Complex Fire (2012) and Silver Fire (2013), which burned over 290,000 acres and 138,698 acres, respectively, according to the Burned Area Emergency Response Team Executive Summary reports. Following a significant wildfire, land and resource management decisions are made, including when and where to focus vegetation and stream restoration efforts. This research is the result of a collaboration between the NASA DEVELOP National Program and the US Forest Service, which aimed to utilize NASA Earth observations to help inform those critical land management decisions. The project had two main objectives: 1) assess the efficacy of post-fire vegetation restoration efforts and 2) analyze the impact of burn events on the hydrology at the watershed-scale. To accomplish this first goal, data from Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM), Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) were used to study the vegetation health over time of treated and non-treated burn areas. To accomplish the latter, various aspects of stream behavior were examined in relation to burn events, including the runoff coefficient and “flashiness” of streams based on USGS stream gauge data and Integrated Multi-satelllite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) precipitation data. This will allow land managers to better understand the complex ecological relationship between the cascading effects after wildfire and the greater forest ecosystem.

Madeline Allen↗

Remote Support of ISS Payload Operations During the COVID19 Pandemic

As part of the Human Health and Performance Contract (HHPC) with the NASA Johnson Space Center, the Human Research Program’s (HRP) Research Operations and Integration (ROI) element conducts the planning, implementation, and closing of human research operations on-board the International Space Station (ISS). These operations are supported out of the Telescience Support Center (TSC) located in the Mission Control Center at Houston’s Johnson Space Center (MCC-H). HRP ROI has an Emergency Response Plan in place to allow for remote operations to be completed in the case of inclement weather or other natural disaster; however, nominally, the remote support is only expected to last one to two weeks. In response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, HRP ROI was challenged to complete a quick transition to supporting on-orbit operations remotely and distanced for an indefinite amount of time. This shift in ground support required close collaboration with various external groups as well as the implementation or adaptation of various technologies and tools to ensure no loss of science data. Operational adjustments were put into place for ground commanding, telemetry monitoring, personnel staffing and private and public audio and video with the ISS. Adjustments were also put in place for communication and collaboration with MCC-H, the Payload Operation and Integration Center (POIC) at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), as well as between the various HRP ROI console team members spread across Houston, TX. The ability to successfully support a variety of on-orbit operations from any remote location is more in demand as the commercialization of low Earth orbit is expanding.

Operations↗

Mapping Inundation from Hurricane Florence (2018) with L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar, Commercial Imagery, and Ancillary Data via Machine Learning Classification

During and after flooding events, mapping the extent of floodwaters aids in the distribution of resources, recovery efforts, and damage assessment practices. Development of a land cover classification system focused on mapping inundation after major hurricane events using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data could allow for the production of near-real-time inundation mapping, enabling government and emergency response entities to get a preliminary idea of a developing situation. Complimentary optical and SAR images from domestic and foreign entities are brought together through activations of the International Charter: Space and Major Disasters to support response efforts, from true-color, near-infrared, and thermal remote sensing data obtained by NASA, NOAA, and international satellites to the collection of high-resolution true color aerial photography by NOAA and the National Geodetic Survey. In response to Hurricane Florence of 2018, NASA JPL collected numerous swaths of quad-pol L-band SAR data with the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) instrument observing the record-setting river stages across North and South Carolina. The resulting fully-polarized SAR images allow for mapping of inundation extent at a high spatial resolution with a unique advantage over optical imaging stemming from the sensor’s ability to penetrate cloud cover and dense vegetation. In this study, true-color NOAA aerial and commercial satellite imagery are used in conjunction with four UAVSAR data swaths centered on the Lumberton and Cape Fear River basins in southeastern North Carolina to develop a Random Forest classification model focused on mapping open water and floodwater otherwise obscured by vegetation or lingering cloud cover. Ancillary building footprint, transportation route, and population data will also be incorporated into the classification scheme to estimate the societal impacts of flooding based on the proximity of features to detected inundation. Preliminary results from the Hurricane Florence case study will be discussed in addition to the limitations of available validation data for assessment of the classifier’s accuracy.

Alexander M Melancon↗

Building a Real-Time Predictive Flood Model for Improving Early Warning Systems in Ellicott City, Maryland

As flood events in the United States grow in frequency and intensity, the use of applied remote sensing analyses is increasingly necessary for effective flood monitoring and warning systems. The NASA DEVELOP National Program partnered with the Howard County government in Maryland to investigate the use of machine learning for advanced flood risk detection, and to test the feasibility of integrating this approach into the county’s flood early warning system. To strengthen the efforts of the Howard County Office of Emergency Management (OEM), the project developed a prediction model capable of hindcasting the two severe flash flood events that devastated Ellicott City, and transitioned to an Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) based sequence-to-sequence deep learning model with 8-hour forecast capability. The team combined data inputs from public sources including river and precipitation gauges, NASA and NOAA Earth observations, and numerical weather model products using scripts written in the Google Colaboratory Python scripting environment. In addition to designing the deep learning architecture, the team trained and tested the model, and evaluated its performance using the Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE). The final product, called the Sequentially Trained Real-time EstimAted Model (STREAM), predicts stage height for the Hudson Branch gauge in Ellicott City using data products available in near real-time, including the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model’s accumulated precipitation forecasts supplemented by stream gauge data from the OEM and the U.S. Geological Survey. STREAM was incorporated into an online dashboard in a user-friendly interface capable of triggering the alarms that initiate the OEM’s emergency response protocols up to 8 hours in advance of a predicted severe flood event. The project demonstrated the potential for the integration of open data and Earth observations into a flood risk forecasting tool capable of informing near real-time decision making.

Ryan Hammock↗

Wildfire monitoring using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles operating under UTM (STEReO)

STEReO (Scalable Traffic Management for Emergency Response Operations) project at NASA Ames is designed to provide UTM (UAS Traffic Management) services to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used for natural disaster response scenarios like wildfire and hurricanes. This will facilitate the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in regions where UAVs are currently prohibited to fly. In this paper we describe a complete architecture of using UAVs for wild fire monitoring in this STEReO environment. We simulate a complete fire monitoring scenario in an high fidelity simulation environment. The simulation consists of a fire drill in the vicinity of Redding airport, one of the test sites for CAL-FIRE. The autonomous vehicle connects to the STEReO systems and gathers information of other operation in the vicinity. The vehicle then uses on-board path planners and decision making algorithms for fire monitoring and mapping. In this paper the vehicle on-board architecture is described in details and the requirements to fly and interact with the STEReO system is discussed.

UAV UTM↗

Applying Robotics to HAZMAT

The use of robotics in situations involving hazardous materials can significantly reduce the risk of human injuries. The Emergency Response Robotics Project, which began in October 1990 at JPL, is developing a teleoperated mobile robot allowing HAZMAT (hazardous materials) teams to remotely respond to incidents involving hazardous materials. The current robot, called HAZBOT III, can assist in locating, characterizing, identifying, and mitigating hazardous material incidences without risking entry team personnel. The active involvement of the JPL Fire Department HAZMAT team has been vital in developing a robotic system which enables them to perform remote reconnaissance of a HAZMAT incident site. This paper provides a brief review of the history of the project, discusses the current system in detail, and presents other areas in which robotics can be applied, thereby removing people from hazardous environments/operations.

robot↗

Characteristics of a high-power ion beam deflection system necessary to deflect the hypothetical asteroid 2017 PD

The July 2027 impact date for the hypothetical asteroid 2017 PDC, that is the subject of an emergency response exercise, leaves just over ten years to implement a deflection approach. The analyses herein allocates four years to the design, fabrication, assembly, test and launch of a notional high-power Ion Beam Deflection (IBD) vehicle to meet a launch readiness date no later than May 2021. Using this launch date along with estimates for the vehicle mass and performance characteristics of the electric propulsion system, low-thrust trajectory analyses indicate a 2.56-year flight time to rendezvous with 2017 PDC. This would leave 3.6 years to execute the actual deflection phase. A 160-kW IBD vehicle could deflect 2017 PDC by at least one Earth radius within this time provided the asteroid’s actual diameter was less than about 140 m and its density was 2 g/cm3 or less. Larger diameters and/or higher densities would require a higher power IBD vehicle, multiple IBD vehicles, or a longer deflection phase. Ion beam deflection is largely independent of the characteristics of the threat object, but its effectiveness, like all deflection approaches, is sensitive to both the asteroid mass and the time available for deflection. The characteristics of IBD, i.e., large standoff distance between the spacecraft and the asteroid surface, as well as ion beam divergence angles of a few degrees, facilitates the possible simultaneous use of multiple IBD vehicles to improve the performance and robustness of the asteroid deflection. The 65-cm diameter, 20-kW NEXIS ion thruster developed in support of the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter mission concept is particularly well suited for application to a high-power IBD system. It has demonstrated an ion beam divergence angle of approximately 2 degrees and operation at 20 kW for over 2,000 hours. Completion of the development and flight qualification of this technology would significantly reduce the risk and time necessary to respond to the discovery of potentially hazardous asteroid in the size range of 50- to 100-m diameter.

Reeves, David↗

Mapping Inundation from Hurricane Florence (2018) with L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar, Commercial Imagery, and Ancillary Data via Random Forest Classification

Mapping the extent of floodwaters following extreme rainfall aids in the distribution of resources, recovery efforts, and damage assessment practices. Development of a land cover classification system focused on mapping inundation after major hurricane events using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data could allow for the production of near-real-time inundation mapping, enabling government and emergency response entities to get a preliminary idea of a developing situation. In response to Hurricane Florence of 2018, NASA JPL collected numerous swaths of quad-pol L-band SAR data with the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) instrument observing the record-setting river stages across North and South Carolina. The resulting fully-polarized SAR images allow for mapping of inundation extent at a high spatial resolution with a unique advantage over optical imaging stemming from the sensor’s ability to penetrate cloud cover and dense vegetation. This study seeks to determine how accurately maps of inundation can be generated from L-band SAR imagery through Random Forest classification. Once the extent of water and inundated vegetation is classified, cleanup operations are performed using fuzzy logic to reduce false detections. Estimates of water extent are then combined with datasets describing the distribution of population, buildings, and roads throughout the domain to evaluate societal impacts. Results from the Hurricane Florence case study will be discussed along with the limitations of available validation data for assessment of the classifier’s accuracy.

Alexander Melancon↗

Generating Landslide Density Heatmaps for Rapid Detection Using Open-access Satellite Radar Data in Google Earth Engine

Rapid detection of landslides is critical for emergency response, disaster mitigation, and improving our understanding of landslide dynamics. Satellite-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can be used to detect landslides, often within days of a triggering event, because it penetrates clouds, operates day and night, and is regularly acquired worldwide. Here we present a SAR backscatter change approach in the cloud-based Google Earth Engine (GEE) that uses multi-temporal stacks of freely available data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites to generate landslide density heatmaps for rapid detection. We test our GEE-based approach on multiple recent rainfall- and earthquake-triggered landslide events. Our ability to detect surface change from landslides generally improves with the total number of SAR images acquired before and after a landslide event, by combining data from both ascending and descending satellite acquisition geometries and applying topographic masks to remove flat areas unlikely to experience landslides. Importantly, our GEE approach does not require downloading a large volume of data to a local system or specialized processing software, which allows the broader hazard and landslide community to utilize and advance these state-of-the-art remote sensing data for improved situational awareness of landslide hazards.

Alexander L Handwerger↗

Oregon Wildfires: Integrating ECOSTRESS to Map & Analyze Vegetation Moisture for Wildfire Modeling

Wildfire season in the western USA is starting earlier and gaining in intensity. The Bootleg Fire in Southern Oregon began on July 6th, 2021, and burned over 1675 km2 before it was fully contained on August 15th, 2021. Evapotranspiration (ET) is one indicator of vegetation moisture and there is interest in using high-resolution ET products from ECOsystem and Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) in future wildfire modeling. In partnership with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and US Forest Service, the team examined ECOSTRESS ET for the two years before the Bootleg Fire and assessed the relationship between ET, topography, and vegetation. Remotely sensed data from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) and Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) along with ancillary data from the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) and Landscape Fire Resource Management Planning Tools (LANDFIRE) were incorporated. The team examined data in relation to soil burn severity from the Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) program. From ET median composites for April 1st – July 5th, 2021 and 2019, the Bootleg Fire area showed a 7 mm/day decrease in ET and a relative 75% decrease in ET between 2019 and 2021. Approximately 6% of the Bootleg Fire area was identified as having a high soil burn severity and these areas were found predominantly in the evergreen forest land cover class and northward facing slopes with a mean ET decrease of 3 mm/day between 2019 and 2021. The team also analyzed ECOSTRESS Water Use Efficiency products as an additional vegetation moisture indicator of pre-fire conditions in the study area. The end products will allow the partners to assess if higher resolution vegetation moisture datasets from ECOSTRESS will improve wildfire modeling for other susceptible areas.

Brenna Hatch↗

Spectrum Research for Aviation Final Report

Task TO-G-026 was established to identify possible spectrum allocations to support the Scalable Traffic Management for Emergency Response Operations (STEReO) Project’s approach of applying Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) concepts to the management of disaster response. Both large and small unmanned aircraft have been found to provide significant benefits in disaster response. However, application of unmanned aircraft is limited by the difficulty in managing disaster area airspace. UTM concepts can greatly increase the ability to safely apply UAS to many disaster response requirements. The use of UAS requires communication links to provide command and control, telemetry, delivery of mission payload data, and situational awareness/navigation functionality to enable safe operations. The outcome of Task TO-G-026 research provides guidance in identifying appropriate potential spectrum bands required to support STEReO disaster response operations. This report presents these research results.

Robert J. Kerczewski↗

Formalized Reasoning of Operational Volumes for Wildland Fire Fighting

This work is focused on the formalized reasoning of operational volumes as it relates to the current and future technologies developed by NASA to aid in wildfire fighting operations. One such technology is the unmanned aircraft system pilot kit (UASP-kit) developed by the Scalable Traffic Management for Emergency Response Operations (STEReO) project at NASA, which is used to increase situation awareness for a ground operator in the field. The UASP-kit utilizes operational volumes which represent mission areas and alerting volumes, to alert when another aircraft is within one of these volumes from received ADS-B data. This work is focused on developing a rigorous foundation for the concept of operational volumes for modeling and prototyping operations in such a tool as the UASP-kit. This includes establishing a class of algorithms to detect when an object is in an operational volume, and when an operational volume is intersecting or contained within another. Additionally, this work is focused on providing rigorous proof in an interactive theorem prover that the algorithms work as intended. Scenarios are presented that model current UASP-kit operations and extend past the current capabilities of the technology to modeling more complex scenarios such as mission planning.

Operational Volumes↗

Formalized Reasoning of Operational Volumes for Wildland Fire Fighting

This work is focused on the formalized reasoning of operational volumes as it relates to the current and future technologies developed by NASA to aid in wildland firefighting operations. One such technology is the Unmanned Aircraft System Pilot Kit (UASP-kit) developed by the Scalable Traffic Management for Emergency Response Operations (STEReO) project at NASA, which is used to increase situational awareness for a ground operator in the field. The UASP-kit utilizes operational volumes to represent mission areas and alerting volumes; these volumes, in combinations with ADS-B data, can then be used to alert the ground operator when another aircraft has entered one of these areas. This work presents a rigorous foundation for the concept of operational volumes for modeling and prototyping operations in such a tool as the UASP-kit. This includes establishing a class of algorithms to detect when an object is in an operational volume, and when one operational volume intersects or is contained in another. Additionally, this work provides rigorous proof that the algorithms work as intended. Scenarios are presented that model current UASP-kit operations and extend past the current capabilities of the technology to modeling more complex scenarios such as mission planning.

Operational Volumes↗

Human Factors Research Considerations for Terminal Area Urban Air Mobility Operations

In this presentation, we discuss the human factors research challenges from introducing greater levels of automation in a future air transportation concept called Urban Air Mobility (UAM). UAM is an air transportation concept that aims to provide air transportation services to the daily commuter, as well as emergency response and package delivery. The principal innovation over current day large air transport system is the greater distribution of important safety functions to automated and human agents; these functions include air traffic management, traditionally an air traffic controller responsibility. A central aspect of UAM is the development of an automated air traffic manager, whose primary responsibility is to approve airspace access for vehicle operators. Vehicle operator roles may include onboard and remote pilots, as well as a human manager who will supervise an entire fleet. Alternatively, both fleet manager and vehicle operators can be merged into a single role – a feasible option if UAM aircraft are autonomous. In lieu of tower controllers, vertiport managers, with the assistance of automation, will manage arrival and departure schedules between vertiports, as well as supervise surface operations. Our approach here will be to introduce use cases currently being developed by NASA, and then provide preliminary definitions for each of the roles introduced above and how coordination between them can be configured to support the operations within the use cases described. Subsequently, we review the tools and interfaces being developed to support the various roles. To conclude, we present current human factors work related to defining the roles above and suggest future work to advance the UAM concept.

trial planning↗

Community Noise Impact of Urban Air Mobility Vehicle Operations

Advanced air mobility (AAM) missions, carried out by electrically driven air vehicles, are characterized by ranges of less than about 300-500 nm (about 500-900 km) and include both rural and urban operations. The missions may include public transportation, cargo delivery, air taxi, and emergency response. While the urban air mobility (UAM) subset of AAM is projected to have high economic benefit, it is also the most difficult to develop because it must overcome many barriers, including those associated with the airspace system, safety, and community noise. This presentation focuses on the utilization of UAM source noise data for assessment of community noise impact. Although a limited number of acoustic flight measurement campaigns have been made to characterize the source noise of prototype and preproduction UAM aircraft, prediction-based approaches are primarily considered herein. Following conceptual design, in which the vehicle is appropriately sized for its intended mission, a comprehensive analysis must be performed for a range of operating conditions spanning the flight envelope to determine the corresponding configurations of the vehicle, that is, the trimmed states. For each trimmed state, the noise produced by each source, for example, steady and unsteady rotor noise, may be computed and so-called source noise (hemi)spheres generated. These source data may subsequently be used in various community noise impact analyses. Several use cases are presented including those supporting noise certification and those for auralizations that may, in turn, be used as part of a perception-influenced design process. Land use planning tools for generating noise exposure maps, including those using simulation and integrated modeling approaches, are also presented. Finally, use cases supporting development of low noise flight operations, including an acoustic flight simulator and acoustically aware flight control, are considered.

aircraft community noise↗