Road Weather Management Program
photos of lightning, trucks plowing snow, an empty road before a storm, and an evacuation
Office of Operations 21st century operations using 21st century technologies

Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

Title:

Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA): A New Radar System for Improving Analysis and Forecasting of Surface Weather Conditions

Abstract:

An Engineering Research Center for the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) was formed in the fall of 2003 by the National Science Foundation for the purpose of developing a dense network of small, low-cost, low-power radars that could collaboratively and adaptively sense the lower atmosphere (0-3 km AGL). Such a network is expected to dramatically improve sensing near the ground through a process called DCAS, distributive collaborative adaptive sensing. The CASA network is a dynamic, data-driven application system whereby the strategy for scanning will be an optimized network solution among competing end-user needs and weather constraints. Data collected from the CASA network will be assimilated in real-time for use in detection algorithms, numerical weather prediction and transportation models, and output disseminated to a wide array of end-users. Because of the distinct advantages of such a radar network, significant improvements are expected from the system in the analysis and prediction of surface weather conditions.

Source(s):

85th Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting; Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms and Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere. For an electronic copy of this resource, please direct your request to WeatherFeedback@dot.gov.

Date: 2006

Author:

Brotzge, Droegemeier, McLaughlin

Keywords:


Forecast/Prediction
Observing network

PDF files can be viewed with the Acrobat® Reader®.

Office of Operations