GPS World

Tag: disasters

  • NASA’s GUARDIAN Tsunami Detection catches wave in real time

    NASA’s GUARDIAN Tsunami Detection catches wave in real time

    News from NASA

    A massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami off Russia in late July tested an experimental detection system that had deployed a critical component just the day before.

    A recent tsunami triggered by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula sent pressure waves to the upper layer of the atmosphere, NASA scientists have reported. While the tsunami did not wreak widespread damage, it was an early test for a detection system being developed at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

    Called GUARDIAN (GNSS Upper Atmospheric Real-time Disaster Information and Alert Network), the experimental technology “functioned to its full extent,” said Camille Martire, one of its developers at JPL. The system flagged distortions in the atmosphere and issued notifications to subscribed subject matter experts in as little as 20 minutes after the quake. It confirmed signs of the approaching tsunami about 30 to 40 minutes before waves made landfall in Hawaii and sites across the Pacific on July 29 (local time).

    “Those extra minutes of knowing something is coming could make a real difference when it comes to warning communities in the path,” said JPL scientist Siddharth Krishnamoorthy.

    Near-real-time outputs from GUARDIAN must be interpreted by experts trained to identify the signs of tsunamis. But already it’s one of the fastest monitoring tools of its kind: Within about 10 minutes of receiving data, it can produce a snapshot of a tsunami’s rumble reaching the upper atmosphere.

    Photo:
    The dots in this graph indicate wave disturbances in the ionosphere as measured between ground stations and navigation satellites. The initial spike shows the acoustic wave coming from the epicenter of the July 29 quake that caused the tsunami; the red squiggle shows the gravity wave the tsunami generated. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

    The dots in this graph indicate wave disturbances in the ionosphere as measured between ground stations and navigation satellites. The initial spike shows the acoustic wave coming from the epicenter of the July 29 quake that caused the tsunami; the red squiggle shows the gravity wave the tsunami generated.

    The goal of GUARDIAN is to augment existing early warning systems. A key question after a major undersea earthquake is whether a tsunami was generated. Today, forecasters use seismic data as a proxy to predict if and where a tsunami could occur, and they rely on sea-based instruments to confirm that a tsunami is passing by. Deep-ocean pressure sensors remain the gold standard when it comes to sizing up waves, but they are expensive and sparse in locations.

    “NASA’s GUARDIAN can help fill the gaps,” said Christopher Moore, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Center for Tsunami Research. “It provides one more piece of information, one more valuable data point, that can help us determine, yes, we need to make the call to evacuate.”

    Moore noted that GUARDIAN adds a unique perspective: It’s able to sense sea surface motion from high above Earth, globally and in near-real-time.

    Bill Fry, chair of the United Nations technical working group responsible for tsunami early warning in the Pacific, said GUARDIAN is part of a technological “paradigm shift.” By directly observing ocean dynamics from space, “GUARDIAN is absolutely something that we in the early warning community are looking for to help underpin next generation forecasting.”

    How GUARDIAN works

    GUARDIAN takes advantage of tsunami physics. During a tsunami, many square miles of the ocean surface can rise and fall nearly in unison. This displaces a significant amount of air above it, sending low-frequency sound and gravity waves speeding upwards toward space. The waves interact with the charged particles of the upper atmosphere — the ionosphere — where they slightly distort the radio signals coming down to scientific ground stations of GPS and other positioning and timing satellites. These satellites are known collectively as the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS).

    While GNSS processing methods on Earth correct for such distortions, GUARDIAN uses them as clues. The software scours a trove of data transmitted to more than 350 continuously operating GNSS ground stations around the world. It can potentially identify evidence of a tsunami up to about 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) from a given station. In ideal situations, vulnerable coastal communities near a GNSS station could know when a tsunami was heading their way and authorities would have as much as 1 hour and 20 minutes to evacuate the low-lying areas, thereby saving countless lives and property.

    Key to this effort is the network of GNSS stations around the world supported by NASA’s Space Geodesy Project and Global GNSS Network, as well as JPL’s Global Differential GPS network that transmits the data in real time.

    The Kamchatka event offered a timely case study for GUARDIAN. A day before the quake off Russia’s northeast coast, the team had deployed two new elements that were years in the making: an artificial intelligence to mine signals of interest and an accompanying prototype messaging system.

    Both were put to the test when one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded spawned a tsunami traveling hundreds of miles per hour across the Pacific Ocean. Having been trained to spot the kinds of atmospheric distortions caused by a tsunami, GUARDIAN flagged the signals for human review and notified subscribed subject matter experts.

    Notably, tsunamis are most often caused by large undersea earthquakes, but not always. Volcanic eruptions, underwater landslides, and certain weather conditions in some geographic locations can all produce dangerous waves. An advantage of GUARDIAN is that it doesn’t require information on what caused a tsunami; rather, it can detect that one was generated and then can alert the authorities to help minimize the loss of life and property. 

    While there’s no silver bullet to stop a tsunami from making landfall, “GUARDIAN has real potential to help by providing open access to this data,” said Adrienne Moseley, co-director of the Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre. “Tsunamis don’t respect national boundaries. We need to be able to share data around the whole region to be able to make assessments about the threat for all exposed coastlines.

  • GPS: The environment’s unsung hero

    GPS: The environment’s unsung hero

    J. David Grossman
    J. David Grossman

    Can GPS support a greener, more sustainable planet? The answer is an emphatic “yes,” and it is already doing so today.

    GPS has become a fundamental technology across nearly every sector of the U.S. economy, including agriculture, transportation, construction and municipal services. In each of these industries, the use of GPS has produced substantial environmental benefits, such as lowered carbon emissions, increased water efficiency, decreased use of environmentally sensitive inputs, and reduced waste.

    Agriculture

    Let’s take a closer look at how GPS is protecting our nation’s critical environmental resources. We begin with agriculture where it is estimated that the absence of GPS during peak planting season could result in an economic loss of more than $15 billion, according to a National Institute of Standards and Technology report.
    During the past two decades, GPS has transformed American farming, enabling increased crop yields, cost efficiencies, and environmental sustainability through the precise application of seed, water, fertilizers and pesticides and the efficient use of fuel. In sum, precision agriculture lets farmers do more with less wasted seed, less fertilizer, less fuel, less pesticide, and more crop yield.

    GPS Innovation Alliance (GPSIA) founding member Deere & Company reports that precision agriculture technologies can have a huge impact on resource efficiency and sustainability. By 2030, GPS-enabled precision agriculture implemented globally could save 180 billion cubic meters of water, says the World Economic Forum.
    Similarly, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), if “[GPS] guidance systems were used on 10 percent of the planted acres in the United States, fuel use would be cut by 16 million gallons, herbicide use by two million quarts, and insecticide use by four million pounds per year.” For a single Midwest row crop farmer, with 6,500 acres using precision agriculture techniques, Deere & Company estimates that more than 1,600 gallons of fuel could be saved, and more than 400,000 kg CO2 equivalent emissions could be avoided, over the course of a production cycle — the equivalent of nearly a million (992,000) passenger car miles driven per year.

    Infographic: GPS Innovation Alliance
    Infographic: GPS Innovation Alliance

    Construction

    Construction is another industry that has been revolutionized by GPS. Today, high-precision GPS is used to support the building of roads, bridges and other significant infrastructure projects. In 2019, testimony before the U.S. House Small Business Committee, an executive of GPSIA founding member Trimble described several examples of how digital construction technologies, including GPS, can more efficiently plan and execute complex construction projects.

    In one such example from Southern California, the improvements “reduced the wetland impact by 58 acres; reduced the impact to sensitive species; reduced landslide risk; reduced residential displacement; and minimized the impact on existing utilities (resulting in few utility relocations to undisturbed areas).”
    GPS receivers are also embedded in many bulldozers, excavators and graders, resulting in reduced waste and lower fuel consumption. They can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with an estimate from Trimble suggesting that the use of machine control technologies can cut more than one billion pounds of CO2 usage per year.

    NextGen Air

    GPS is also at the heart of the Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen, of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Capt. Sully Sullenberger, during a 2020 GPSIA-sponsored event, described air traffic control modernization as depending “massively on the ubiquity and reliability of GPS.”

    Along with the safety benefits of knowing the precise location of an aircraft, GPS enables optimized flight paths that the FAA says can reduce “flying time, fuel use, and aircraft exhaust emissions.” These efficiencies have already resulted in $1.2 billion in fuel savings, according to the FAA.

    During a 2010 test flight over Puget Sound, Washington, Alaska Airlines found that the use of GPS-aided flight procedures reduced emissions by 35% compared to a conventional landing. Other airlines have also quantified these benefits, finding substantial savings in fuel consumption simply by cutting a single minute from each flight.

    Weather and Disaster Forecasts

    No one can argue the fact that weather events like hurricanes, floods and droughts have a huge impact on the environment and public safety. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in 2020 such events cost $95 billion in damages. You may not realize, however, that NOAA uses GPS signals to support three-dimensional meteorology, space weather and geophysical applications throughout the United States.

    Even NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) use GPS signals to enhance their ability to provide the data we all receive in each morning’s TV weather forecast, improving weather predictions and our own storm situational awareness. GPSIA member Lockheed Martin manufactures both the GOES-R series of weather satellites and the U.S. Space Force’s more powerful, next-generation GPS III satellites that are now being launched to modernize the GPS constellation.

    Municipalities

    Lastly, we examine the environmental benefits for municipalities that use GPS for key government services, including the real-time tracking of garbage trucks, snowplows and buses. Throughout the country, towns and cities have seen substantial savings in dollars, fuel and time from implementing GPS-enabled technologies.
    In Niles, Illinois, for example, the Department of Public Works partnered with GPSIA founding member Garmin to optimize the routing of snowplows. Using GPS technology, drivers reduced the use of salt by as much as 40%, resulting in more than 700 tons saved. In 2020, in recognition of its innovative use of GPS, the department received the Management Innovation Award from the American Public Works Association. Similarly, GPSIA member CalAmp found that GPS use for vehicle tracking can result in fuel savings of $90 per vehicle per month.

    Ensuring GPS

    Ensuring these environmental benefits can continue to be realized requires that the spectrum used by GPS be protected from harmful interference. It will also depend on continued funding by Congress to modernize the GPS constellation and ground control. Additionally, as Congress considers a major infrastructure bill, including funding for states and localities, we would encourage projects to make use of GPS and other innovative technologies that can drive down costs, reduce carbon emissions, and eliminate waste — including advanced digital-construction management systems that use GPS data to reduce project costs and speed project delivery.
    GPS has changed our everyday lives for the better, and as our dependence on this technology continues to grow, so will its impact on environmental sustainability efforts.

    J. David Grossman is Executive Director of the GPS Innovation Alliance.

  • Predictive analytics: A helping hand for first responders

    Last month I raised my anxiety level by writing about a revenant threat from terrorist-initiated biological attacks.

    The same concerns were also cited by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper during recent Congressional testimony. These “poor man’s nukes” could potentially be more devastating than 9/11 and reach into every community and even our own homes. Additionally, the threats are not easy to ferret out and just as difficult to stop in our very complex and interconnected world.

    From bioterrorism to natural disaster emergency management, predictive analytics used with geospatial tools and big data is proving to be a powerful new intelligence tool that may help counter global threats.

    TransVoyant Predictions

    TransVoyant CEO Dennis Groseclose.
    TransVoyant CEO Dennis Groseclose.

    Last year there was a lot of buzz at GEOINT surrounding a relatively new company in this field called TransVoyant. Several weeks ago, I visited TransVoyant’s Alexandria, Virginia, headquarters to learn more about their capabilities first hand. I was fortunate to be able to speak with TransVoyant CEO Dennis Groseclose, an Air Force Academy graduate who, with Tim Fleischer, a Naval Academy graduate and successful entrepreneur (Radian, PD Systems), co-founded TransVoyant.

    Previously, Dennis led industrial base optimization restructure for the $37 billion dollar unmanned space launch program for the U.S. Air Force; directed and implemented Worldwide Supply Chain Optimization for IBM; and served as vice president at Lockheed Martin. These experiences built his expertise to solve complex supply chain and global risk management problems using advanced analytical intelligence. In 2011, Dennis and Tim put their collective experience together to form TransVoyant, a company that specializes in creating live and predictive insights from real-time big data.

    The Internet of Things (IoT) has been a key component of their operation. In the mid-80s, connected remote sensors numbered in the thousands. In 2016 that number is expected to reach 6 billion connected “things” worldwide with estimates of 30 billion by 2020.

    TransVoyant collects, cleanses and analyzes over 200,000 external events around the world every minute (such as severe weather, natural disasters, labor strikes, inventory locations, news, terrorism incidents, disease outbreaks and energy prices) from real-time IoT data sources such as sensors, radar, GPS, satellites, smartphones and meters. It then continuously applies advanced data scientist-crafted analytics to these data streams to assess important current and future behaviors, impacts, correlations, patterns and exceptions that deliver live and predictive insights ranging from forecasts of port disruptions and precise shipment arrival times to forecasts of economic flows to real-time and predicted threats to people and assets. The resulting insights — provided via cloud services, system API connections, email and mobile applications — improve mission-critical decision making.

    The geospatial grid connection

    This was all sounding like science fiction and black magic until an “aha moment” for me, as Dennis explained how they use a “multi-dimensional grid cell mathematics” based data structure to apply complex algorithms to real-world data and events. This put the very complex process of continuous real-time machine analysis that “understands” normal and abnormal behavior, both current and future, into something that was familiar to me.

    Decades ago, I used the first release of ArcINFO GRID, now called ArcGIS Spatial Analyst, to complete my master’s thesis. For those of you that haven’t used a grid-cell-based GIS, let me highlight the differences between that and traditional GIS software.

    Traditional GIS software describes our world as points, lines or polygons with topology describing the mathematical spatial relationship between each geographic element and its linked record in a database. This topological model is somewhat cumbersome and slow because the shapes and topological relationships are complex.

    Grid: David Kidner, Mark Dorey & Derek Smith, University of Glamorgan, Wales, U.K. CF37 1DL
    Grid: David Kidner, Mark Dorey & Derek Smith, University of Glamorgan, Wales, U.K. CF37 1DL

    The other kind of GIS is a grid cell or raster-based GIS. The data model is significantly simpler because — unlike a traditional GIS of points, lines and polygons — the grid-based GIS world is broken up into simple uniform grid cells.

    The big advantage is that the data structure and tools lend themselves to very fast processing. Almost any mathematical formula can be used to operate on the individual or collective grid cells. Most grid-based systems use predefined mathematical operations such as shortest path analysis, interpolation including Kriging or very complex formulas using map algebra.

    So, very similar to the famous Napoleon Hill quote, “Whatever the mind can conceive… it can achieve.” With a grid cell GIS, if an analyst can think of a way to describe an analytical process and predictive results as a mathematic expression or formula, it can be done very quickly in the grid cell environment. (See two previous columns for more in-depth information — “GRID Cell Modeling” and “Topology is not Topography”.)

    So what does grid cell GIS look like in action?

    Evacuations during a flood.
    Evacuations during a flood.

    Proactive Emergency Response

    In my discussions with Dennis, a TransVoyant customer segment that caught my attention was support of first responders. Emergency responders are using TransVoyant to help with very early disaster response. One specific example is evacuation of invalid patients before a flooding disaster becomes life threatening.

    A hospital evacuation.
    A hospital evacuation.

    Using TransVoyant’s analytics on an extensive network of satellite imagery, 911 and 311 calls, water-stage sensors, street closures, weather forecasts, registries and more, responders can predict areas that are at high risk for flooding hours before flood waters rise. Among other essential emergency management actions, these early warnings provide emergency responders with the ability to identify specific neighborhoods and homes that have disabled residents who can be easily evacuated, increasing the safety and efficiency of their operations.

    Here is a screen capture of TransVoyant Continuous Decision Intelligence (CDI) predicting a flood event.

    TransVoyant Continuous Decision Intelligence (CDI) predicts a flood.
    TransVoyant Continuous Decision Intelligence (CDI) predicts a flood.

    Other Clients

    TransVoyant’s live and predictive insight solutions have attracted customers ranging from large multinational corporations to National Security and Intelligence agencies.

    I know that one hears echoes of Minority Report when reviewing the tools and capabilities of TransVoyant. However, given the serious threat we face for a situation far worse than 9/11, I have no reservations about using open-source data aggregation and brilliant analytics that correlate and uncover patterns of life and global anomalies to divine a threat.

    So, will predictive analytics be the tool that stops a bio terrorist or saves lives in critical emergency situations? I don’t know, but the potential threat is too grave not try every tool, including continuous precognition, in our collective toolbox.

    TransVoyant will be an exhibitor at GEOINT 2016 this month, so stop by and learn more.

    Since we are approaching Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, I’d like to call your attention to my May 2014 column. It’s the best column I ever wrote.

  • Group on Earth Observations Convenes 11th Plenary

    Under the theme “Taking the Pulse of the Planet,” 275 members of the GEO community from more than 45 countries will chart the next steps in creating and implementing a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) during the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Eleventh Plenary Session. The session will be held November 12-14 in Geneva, Switzerland.

    A highlight of the conference will be announcement of the winners of the GEO Appathon, a global app development competition built on the 80-million-plus resources available through GEOSS. The Appathon attracted 250 competitors from 50 countries, and will generate easy-to-use decision tools for mobile devices and computers.

    GEO’s mandate is to harness the power of Earth observations from sources across the globe to provide more and better information to leaders in government, industry, and civil society confronting fundamental decisions affecting people and societies worldwide. One key GEO initiative that will be highlighted during the meeting is developing a comprehensive system to monitor the availability and quality of fresh water, in partnership with the World Health Organization, the UN Environmental Programme and other UN agencies as part of the UN Sustainable Development agenda.

    GEO is leading the creation of an Africa-wide technological and human infrastructure so decision makers have the capacity to access and use Earth observations in making key decisions. To strengthen agricultural activity and reduce market volatility, GEO is coordinating the assessment of growing conditions of the world’s major crops through a combination of regional expertise, ground observations and analysis of meteorological and satellite data.

    GEO is a voluntary partnership of governments and organizations that envisions “a future wherein decisions and actions for the benefit of humankind are informed by coordinated, comprehensive and sustained Earth observations and information.” Members include 94 nations and the European Commission and 77 participating organizations comprised of international bodies with a mandate in Earth observations.

    GEO’s agenda spans nine Societal Benefit Areas, including agriculture, biodiversity, climate, disasters, ecosystems, energy, health, water and weather.