Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “No system information”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 379 records · Page 21

Continued implementation and testing of a Neighborhood Office Center (NOC) and integration of the NOC with an administrative correspondence management information system

The concept of decentralized (remote) neighborhood offices, linked together through a self-sustaining communications network for exchanging voice messages, video images, and digital data was quantitatively evaluated. Hardware and procedures for the integrated multifunctional system were developed. The configuration of the neighborhood office center (NOC) is explained, its production statistics given, and an experiment for NOC network integration via satellite is described. The hardware selected for the integration NOC/management information system is discussed, and the NASA teleconferencing network is evaluated.

Source record↗

Water quality modeling using geographic information system (GIS) data

Protection of the environment and natural resources at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is of great concern. The potential for surface and ground water quality problems resulting from non-point sources of pollution was examined using models. Since spatial variation of parameters required was important, geographic information systems (GIS) and their data were used. The potential for groundwater contamination was examined using the SEEPAGE (System for Early Evaluation of the Pollution Potential of Agricultural Groundwater Environments) model. A watershed near the VAB was selected to examine potential for surface water pollution and erosion using the AGNPS (Agricultural Non-Point Source Pollution) model.

Engel, Bernard A↗

The NASA-Goddard Multi-Scale Modeling Framework - Land Information System: Global Land/atmosphere Interaction with Resolved Convection

The present generation of general circulation models (GCM) use parameterized cumulus schemes and run at hydrostatic grid resolutions. To improve the representation of cloud-scale moist processes and landeatmosphere interactions, a global, Multi-scale Modeling Framework (MMF) coupled to the Land Information System (LIS) has been developed at NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center. The MMFeLIS has three components, a finite-volume (fv) GCM (Goddard Earth Observing System Ver. 4, GEOS-4), a 2D cloud-resolving model (Goddard Cumulus Ensemble, GCE), and the LIS, representing the large-scale atmospheric circulation, cloud processes, and land surface processes, respectively. The non-hydrostatic GCE model replaces the single-column cumulus parameterization of fvGCM. The model grid is composed of an array of fvGCM gridcells each with a series of embedded GCE models. A horizontal coupling strategy, GCE4fvGCM4Coupler4LIS, offered significant computational efficiency, with the scalability and I/O capabilities of LIS permitting landeatmosphere interactions at cloud-scale. Global simulations of 2007e2008 and comparisons to observations and reanalysis products were conducted. Using two different versions of the same land surface model but the same initial conditions, divergence in regional, synoptic-scale surface pressure patterns emerged within two weeks. The sensitivity of largescale circulations to land surface model physics revealed significant functional value to using a scalable, multi-model land surface modeling system in global weather and climate prediction.

cumulus schemes↗

Expansion of the Real-time Sport-land Information System for NOAA / National Weather Service Situational Awareness and Local Modeling Applications

The NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center in Huntsville, AL (Jedlovec 2013; Ralph et al. 2013; Merceret et al. 2013) is running a real-time configuration of the Noah land surface model (LSM) within the NASA Land Information System (LIS) framework (hereafter referred to as the "SPoRT-LIS"). Output from the real-time SPoRT-LIS is used for (1) initializing land surface variables for local modeling applications, and (2) displaying in decision support systems for situational awareness and drought monitoring at select NOAA/National Weather Service (NWS) partner offices. The SPoRT-LIS is currently run over a domain covering the southeastern half of the Continental United States (CONUS), with an additional experimental real-time run over the entire CONUS and surrounding portions of southern Canada and northern Mexico. The experimental CONUS run incorporates hourly quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) from the National Severe Storms Laboratory Multi- Radar Multi-Sensor (MRMS) product (Zhang et al. 2011, 2014), which will be transitioned into operations at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) in Fall 2014. This paper describes the current and experimental SPoRT-LIS configurations, and documents some of the limitations still remaining through the advent of MRMS precipitation analyses in the SPoRT-LIS land surface model (LSM) simulations. Section 2 gives background information on the NASA LIS and describes the realtime SPoRT-LIS configurations being compared. Section 3 presents recent work done to develop a training module on situational awareness applications of real-time SPoRT-LIS output. Comparisons between output from the two SPoRT-LIS runs are shown in Section 4, including a documentation of issues encountered in using the MRMS precipitation dataset. A summary and future work in given in Section 5, followed by acknowledgements and references.

Case, Jonathan L.↗

Central Atlantic Regional Ecological Test Site (CARETS): A prototype regional environmental information system

The author has identified the following significant results. Accomplishments have included: (1) completion of the research design for the USGS/CARETS demonstration project; (2) preparation of photomossics and land use maps at a scale of 1:100,000 for entire area; (3) demonstration of the feasibility of extracting several categories of land use information from ERTS-1 MSS data for a portion of the CARETS region; (4) demonstration of the feasibility of detecting some significant land use changes on ERTS-1 imagery; (5) demonstration of the feasibility of attaching environmental impact significance to the remote sensor-derived land use data; (6) delivery of land use information derived from high altitude aircraft data to the Maryland state planning agency for use in its statewide land use inventory; (7) demonstration of high interest by other use groups in the test region in products and services provided by investigation; and (8) determination of the viability of setting up a computerized geographic information system as part of the CARETS investigation, to facilitate handling of sensor-derived land use data in a variety of formats to suit user requirements.

Alexander, R. H.↗

Assimilation of SMOS Soil Moisture Retrievals in the Land Information System

Soil moisture is a crucial variable for weather prediction because of its influence on evaporation. It is of critical importance for drought and flood monitoring and prediction and for public health applications. The NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition Center (SPoRT) has implemented a new module in the NASA Land Information System (LIS) to assimilate observations from the ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite. SMOS Level 2 retrievals from the Microwave Imaging Radiometer using Aperture Synthesis (MIRAS) instrument are assimilated into the Noah LSM within LIS via an Ensemble Kalman Filter. The retrievals have a target volumetric accuracy of 4% at a resolution of 35-50 km. Parallel runs with and without SMOS assimilation are performed with precipitation forcing from intentionally degraded observations, and then validated against a model run using the best available precipitation data, as well as against selected station observations. The goal is to demonstrate how SMOS data assimilation can improve modeled soil states in the absence of dense rain gauge and radar networks.

Blankenship, Clay↗

Assimilation of SMOS Soil Moisture Retrievals in the Land Information System

Soil moisture is a crucial variable for weather prediction because of its influence on evaporation. It is of critical importance for drought and flood monitoring and prediction and for public health applications. The NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition Center (SPoRT) has implemented a new module in the NASA Land Information System (LIS) to assimilate observations from the ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite. SMOS Level 2 retrievals from the Microwave Imaging Radiometer using Aperture Synthesis (MIRAS) instrument are assimilated into the Noah LSM within LIS via an Ensemble Kalman Filter. The retrievals have a target volumetric accuracy of 4% at a resolution of 35-50 km. Parallel runs with and without SMOS assimilation are performed with precipitation forcing from intentionally degraded observations, and then validated against a model run using the best available precipitation data, as well as against selected station observations. The goal is to demonstrate how SMOS data assimilation can improve modeled soil states in the absence of dense rain gauge and radar networks.

Blakenship, Clay↗

Stennis Space Center Environmental Geographic Information System

As NASA's lead center for rocket propulsion testing, the John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC) monitors and assesses the off-site impacts of such testing through its Environmental Office (SSC-EO) using acoustical models and ancillary data. The SSC-EO has developed a geographical database, called the SSC Environmental Geographic Information System (SSC-EGIS), that covers an eight-county area bordering the NASA facility. Through the SSC-EGIS, the Enivronmental Office inventories, assesses, and manages the nearly 139,000 acres that comprise Stennis Space Center and its surrounding acoustical buffer zone. The SSC-EGIS contains in-house data as well as a wide range of data obtained from outside sources, including private agencies and local, county, state, and U.S. government agencies. The database comprises cadastral/geodetic, hydrology, infrastructure, geo-political, physical geography, and socio-economic vector and raster layers. The imagery contained in the database is varied, including low-resolution imagery, such as Landsat TM and SPOT; high-resolution imagery, such as IKONOS and AVIRIS; and aerial photographs. The SSC-EGIS has been an integral part of several major projects and the model upon which similar EGIS's will be developed for other NASA facilities. The Corps of Engineers utilized the SSC-EGIS in a plan to establish wetland mitigation sites within the SSC buffer zone. Mississippi State University employed the SSC-EGIS in a preliminary study to evaluate public access points within the buffer zone. The SSC-EO has also expressly used the SSC-EGIS to assess noise pollution modeling, land management/wetland mitigation assessment, environmental hazards mapping, and protected areas mapping for archaeological sites and for threatened and endangered species habitats. The SSC-EO has several active and planned projects that will also make use of the SSC-EGIS during this and the coming fiscal year.

Lovely, Janette↗

Information Systems Coordinate Emergency Management

The rescue crews have been searching for the woman for nearly a week. Hurricane Katrina devastated Hancock County, the southernmost point in Mississippi, and the woman had stayed through the storm in her beach house. There is little hope of finding her alive; the search teams know she is gone because the house is gone. Late at night in the art classroom of the school that is serving as the county s emergency operations center, Craig Harvey is discussing the search with the center s commander. Harvey is the Chief Operating Officer of a unique company called NVision Solutions Inc., based at NASA s Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, only a couple of miles away. He and his entire staff have set up a volunteer operation in the art room, supporting the emergency management efforts using technology and capabilities the company developed through its NASA partnerships. As he talks to the commander, Harvey feels an idea taking shape that might lead them to the woman s location. Working with surface elevation data and hydrological principles, Harvey creates a map showing how the floodwaters from the storm would have flowed along the topography of the region around the woman s former home. Using the map, search crews find the woman s body in 15 minutes. Recovering individuals who have been lost is a sad reality of emergency management in the wake of a disaster like Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But the sooner answers can be provided, the sooner a community s overall recovery can take place. When damage is extensive, resources are scattered, and people are in dire need of food, shelter, and medical assistance, the speed and efficiency of emergency operations can be the key to limiting the impact of a disaster and speeding the process of recovery. And a key to quick and effective emergency planning and response is geographic information. With a host of Earth-observing satellites orbiting the globe at all times, NASA generates an unmatched wealth of data about our ever-changing planet. This information can be captured, analyzed, and visualized by geographic information systems (GIS) to produce maps, charts, and other tools that can reveal information essential to a wide variety of applications including emergency management. Knowing precise, real-time information about the size, location, environmental conditions, and resulting damage of an event like a flood or wildfire as well as the location and numbers of emergency responders and other resources contributes directly to the effectiveness of disaster mitigation. The need for such information is also evident when responding to homeland security threats, such as a terrorist attack. Recognizing the value of its geospatial information resources for this and other purposes, in 1998 Stennis and the state of Mississippi partnered to form what became the Enterprise for Innovative Geospatial Solutions (EIGS) industry cluster, supporting the growth of remote sensing and GIS-based research and business. As part of EIGS, several companies partnered with NASA through dual use and Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts. Among those was NVision.

Source record↗

Toward a complete EOS data and information system

Based on NASA EOS data panel analyses, an architectural concept is described in terms of elemental composition, top-level functions, and external and internal interfaces. This concept has been evaluated through the use of realistic user-generated scenarios consistent with existing plans for the 1990s and the Space Station. Developmental approaches for the requisite EOS data and information system are presented and a hybrid methodology for implementing this system is discussed.

Chase, Robert R. P.↗

Improving Drought Monitoring for the Middle East and North Africa Region via Data Assimilation Using the NASA Land Information System (LIS)

Food and water security become an increasingly pressing concern for countries within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region under climate change. Droughts are among the most important issues facing this region in both economic and social terms, which have become much more severe in recent decades. An effective drought monitoring and early warning system is, therefore, critical to support drought impact assessment and risk management. This presentation describes the effort to improve the simulation of hydrological conditions for such semi-arid environment by Noah Multi-parameterization Land Surface Model within the NASA Land Information System (LIS) via assimilating remotely sensed leaf area index and soil moisture in the presence of irrigation. Multi-source satellite evapotranspiration products are used to evaluate the model performance under the impact of the choice of met-forcings, the presence of irrigation and data assimilation. The improved model configuration is aimed to deliver a better soil moisture estimation for the composite drought indicator (CDI) for drought monitoring and to provide a better initial condition in support for hydrological drought forecasting.

Wanshu Nie↗

Quantum Information Systems at NASA Glenn Research Center

NASA Glenn Research Center is focused on supporting NASA goals in several mission areas from Space Exploration and Aeronautics to Science. NASA GRC is exploring how quantum metrology, models, and free-space testbeds can be integrated with NASA’s aerospace competency needs to provide an understanding of how spaceflight components work together in Quantum Information Systems. In this presentation an overview of potential focus areas for quantum systems along with current efforts to enable research and analysis of quantum systems for NASA applications will be discussed. As such, we provide an overview of device measurement capability within NASA’s Quantum Metrology Laboratory (NQML), dynamic quantum network modeling via the NASA Quantum Communications Analysis Suite (NQCAS) simulation tool, and plans for instituting an aero quantum testbed platform.

quantum↗

Application of digital image processing techniques and information systems to water quality monitoring of Lake Tahoe

The Tahoe basin occupies over 500 square miles of territory located in a graben straddling the boundary between California and Nevada. Lake Tahoe contains 126 million acre-feet of water. Since the 1950's the basin has experienced an ever increasing demand for land development at the expense of the natural watershed. Discharge of sediment to the lake has greatly increased owing to accelerated human interference, and alterations to the natural drainage patterns are evident in some areas. In connection with an investigation of the utility of a comprehensive system that takes into account the causes as well as the effects of lake eutrophication, it has been attempted to construct an integrated and workable data base, comprised of currently available data sources for the Lake Tahoe region. Attention is given to the image based information system (IBIS), the construction of the Lake Tahoe basin data base, and the application of the IBIS concept to the Lake Tahoe basin.

Smith, A. Y.↗

Air System Information Management

I flew to Washington last week, a trip rich in distributed information management. Buying tickets, at the gate, in flight, landing and at the baggage claim, myriad messages about my reservation, the weather, our flight plans, gates, bags and so forth flew among a variety of travel agency, airline and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) computers and personnel. By and large, each kind of information ran on a particular application, often specialized to own data formats and communications network. I went to Washington to attend an FAA meeting on System-Wide Information Management (SWIM) for the National Airspace System (NAS) (http://www.nasarchitecture.faa.gov/Tutorials/NAS101.cfm). NAS (and its information infrastructure, SWIM) is an attempt to bring greater regularity, efficiency and uniformity to the collection of stovepipe applications now used to manage air traffic. Current systems hold information about flight plans, flight trajectories, weather, air turbulence, current and forecast weather, radar summaries, hazardous condition warnings, airport and airspace capacity constraints, temporary flight restrictions, and so forth. Information moving among these stovepipe systems is usually mediated by people (for example, air traffic controllers) or single-purpose applications. People, whose intelligence is critical for difficult tasks and unusual circumstances, are not as efficient as computers for tasks that can be automated. Better information sharing can lead to higher system capacity, more efficient utilization and safer operations. Better information sharing through greater automation is possible though not necessarily easy.

Filman, Robert E.↗

A Comparison of Geographic Information Systems, Complex Networks, and Other Models for Analyzing Transportation Network Topologies

This report reviews six classes of models that are used for studying transportation network topologies. The report is motivated by two main questions. First, what can the "new science" of complex networks (scale-free, small-world networks) contribute to our understanding of transport network structure, compared to more traditional methods? Second, how can geographic information systems (GIS) contribute to studying transport networks? The report defines terms that can be used to classify different kinds of models by their function, composition, mechanism, spatial and temporal dimensions, certainty, linearity, and resolution. Six broad classes of models for analyzing transport network topologies are then explored: GIS; static graph theory; complex networks; mathematical programming; simulation; and agent-based modeling. Each class of models is defined and classified according to the attributes introduced earlier. The paper identifies some typical types of research questions about network structure that have been addressed by each class of model in the literature.

Alexandrov, Natalia↗

The Payload Advisory Panel and the Data and Information System Advisory Panel of the Investigators Working Group of the Earth Observing System: A joint report

The Payload Advisory Panel of the Investigators Working Group (IWG) for the Earth Observing System (EOS) met 4 to 6 October 1993 in Herndon, Virginia. The Panel, originally composed of the Interdisciplinary Science Principal Investigators, was expanded to include all Principal Investigators and as such is now the IWG itself. The meeting also addressed directly a report from the EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Advisory Panel. The meeting focused on payload issues in the years 2000 to 2005; however, some subjects in the nearer-term, most significantly EOSDIS, were considered. The overarching theme of convergence in Earth observations set a backdrop for the entire meeting. Other themes included: atmospheric chemistry; remote sensing of the global cycles of energy, water, and carbon in EOS; ocean and land-ice altimetry; and the EOSDIS. The Totol Solar Irradiance Monitoring Report and results from the Accelerated Canopy Chemistry Program are included as appendices.

Moore, Berrien, III↗

Analysis of Summertime Convective Initiation in Central Alabama Using the Land Information System

During the summer months in the southeastern United States, convective initiation presents a frequent challenge to operational forecasters. Thunderstorm development has traditionally been referred to as random due to their disorganized, sporadic appearance and lack of atmospheric forcing. Horizontal variations in land surface characteristics such as soil moisture, soil type, land and vegetation cover could possibly be a focus mechanism for afternoon convection during the summer months. The NASA Land Information System (LIS) provides a stand-alone land surface modeling framework that incorporates these varying soil and vegetation properties, antecedent precipitation, and atmospheric forcing to represent the soil state at high resolution. The use of LIS as a diagnostic tool may help forecasters to identify boundaries in land surface characteristics that could correlate to favored regions of convection initiation. The NASA Shortterm Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) team has been collaborating with the National Weather Service Office in Birmingham, AL to help incorporate LIS products into their operational forecasting methods. This paper highlights selected convective case dates from summer 2009 when synoptic forcing was weak, and identifies any boundaries in land surface characteristics that may have contributed to convective initiation. The LIS output depicts the effects of increased sensible heat flux from urban areas on the development of convection, as well as convection along gradients in land surface characteristics and surface sensible and latent heat fluxes. These features may promote mesoscale circulations and/or feedback processes that can either enhance or inhibit convection. With this output previously unavailable to operational forecasters, LIS provides a new tool to forecasters in order to help eliminate the randomness of summertime convective initiation.

James, Robert S.↗

Application of thermal imagery to the development of a Great Lakes ice information system

Recent measurements and analysis have shown that thermal infrared imagery can be employed to delineate the relative thicknesses of various regions of freshwater ice and to differentiate new ice from both open water areas and thicker (young) ice. Thermal imagery was observed to be generally superior to visual (0.4 - 0.7 micron) and SLAR (3.3 cm) imagery for estimating relative ice thicknesses and delineating open water from new ice growth. In a real-time Great Lakes ice information system, thermal imagery can not only provide supplementary imagery but can also aid in developing interpretative methods for all-weather SLAR imagery.

Schertler, R. J.↗