The Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) is a National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

 Engineering Center. The Center brings together a multidisciplinary group of engineers, computer scientists, meteorologists, sociologists, graduate and undergraduate students, as well as industry and government partners to conduct fundamental research, develop enabling technology, and deploy prototype engineering systems based on a new paradigm: Distributed Collaborative Adaptive Sensing (DCAS) networks.

Areas of expertise

CASA is investigating a concept in which networks of small, low-cost radars could be deployed on rooftops, communication towers, and other infrastructure elements to address coverage gaps in today’s radar infrastructure. The CASA Engineering Research Center is a partnership among nearly 20 institutions, configured into academic, government, and industrial arms. This configuration enables the participants of the center to: develop the concepts behind small radar networks; translate these concepts into new technologies; and commercialize and implement the best concepts in practice. Many of the center’s key concepts have been demonstrated in research trials, and development and commercialization of various technologies is underway.

Structure

CASA is a collaboration among four academic partners: the University of Massachusetts Amherst

University of Massachusetts Amherst

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public research and land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States and the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system...

 (lead institution), the University of Oklahoma

University of Oklahoma

The University of Oklahoma is a coeducational public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two became the state of Oklahoma. the university had 29,931 students enrolled, most located at its...

, Colorado State University

Colorado State University

Colorado State University is a public research university located in Fort Collins, Colorado. The university is the state's land grant university, and the flagship university of the Colorado State University System.The enrollment is approximately 29,932 students, including resident and...

, and the University of Puerto Rico

University of Puerto Rico

The University of Puerto Rico is the state university system of Puerto Rico. The system consists of 11 campuses and has approximately 64,511 students and 5,300 faculty members...

. Other collaborating academic institutions are: the University of Delaware

University of Delaware

The university is organized into seven colleges:* College of Agriculture and Natural Resources* College of Arts and Sciences* Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics* College of Earth, Ocean and Environment* College of Education and Human Development...

, the University of Virginia

University of Virginia

The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

 and McGill University

McGill University

Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

.

Achievements

CASA operates a network of four low-power, short-range, X- band, dual-polarized Doppler weather radars in southwestern Oklahoma. The system, known as Integrative Project 1 or IP1 for short, was installed in January 2006 and began operation April 1 of 2006. IP1 is the first CASA test bed to demonstrate DCAS and the value of low-level sensing, and a number of research opportunities will be made available by the system. Current plans are to expand the IP1 from 4 nodes to as many as 9 nodes within the next few years.