Real-time Weather Awareness for Enhanced UTM Safety Assurance

This project addresses emerging needs in real-time weather forecasting to improve the safety of low altitude aircraft operations through the integration of real-time observations from autonomous systems with numerical weather prediction and flight management and safety systems. Through inclusion of diverse disciplines, this project will provide manned and unmanned aircraft improved situational awareness to enhance safety and efficiency, particularly for unmanned traffic management, urban air mobility, and airport operations. University of Kentucky team members are involved in two aspects of this work. Sean Bailey will be part of a group implementing of autonomous observation systems. This task focuses on deploying and validating the sensing systems and procedures that enable precise meteorological observations by providing accurate measurements of key environmental variables at the needed frequency and resolution. Suzanne Smith will be part of a group addressing system integration of real-time weather forecasting into Unmanned Aircraft Traffic Management (UTM). This task integrates predictive capabilities into the UTM and data assimilation framework, integrating UAS sensing strategies, data mining techniques and data assimilation to improve accuracy and fidelity of wind and turbulence predictions into UTM and atmospheric weather systems, providing a digital real-time reporting capability.