Closing in on Functionality: Weeks of January 28th and February 4th

The past couple of weeks have been quite busy with residual non-project related tasks. This is actually why there was no individual post for last week, as I was out of the state interviewing for graduate school positions for multiple days. For that reason, instead of omitting a weekly post all together as I was allotted, I have decided to mix the two week posts into one. This is actually quite beneficial as both my tasks these two weeks are related.

Task 1: Plan a Hypothetical Scenario

The first task, which was been completed in entirety,  was to complete a hypothetical scenario for my classmates to run through while I was absent for interviews. We had been planning a gaming scenario to create, plan, hypothetically execute, and assess a mission so that it would be easy to discover where additional work needs to be conducted as we approach the field season. My job was to come up with an environmental condition that would be beneficial for us to address for our project.This step was important for two reasons. The first reason is so that we can determine if we have the equipment and processing capability to collect data on a short duration event that could occur at any time. The second reason is to see if group members could come up with the correct means of collecting the proper type of information for a given condition. This is a critical skill to train or at least determine how well we can perform because there may be situations during the field season where we would like to collect data of an environmental event that can not be scouted ahead of time and require field teams and flight crews to successfully determine last minute how to fly, where to fly, and with what equipment to fly and collect data. Being that I am the individual with the most data experience, there may be moments where I can not be present to help select which sensor to use and individuals in the field may need to make the executive decision. The hypothetical scenario I tried to build would gauge this ability.

The scenario I planned involved a sudden warm day after significant snowfall (not uncommon in Indiana). This warming event rapidly melts local snow and creates a very significant flooding condition in the Wabash River near our field site. In the scenario, flood conditions were expected to decrease rapidly in a very short amount of time (in a few days) as well as general velocity was expected to decrease. Giving the group this information, a few keep conclusions were expected to be made. First, flooding area should be assessed as well as height and velocity. The hope was that they would also determine that recurring flights over a few days would be useful to determine how accurate the flood forecasting is for the river and to help train/compare flood models we made decide to make later in the semester. For flood area analysis, I would accept any possible type of data collect that could successfully delineate the feature. Geospatial video would be a good option as a UAV could overfly the flood perimeter to help determine how much of our site is flooding. Multi-spectral imagery would also be useful as the spectral difference between water and ground is immense in the near-infrared band. While these two techniques are what I would chose, I would welcome other ideas as this might inform me on other possibilities for the rest of the semester. I did not have any intended aircraft for them to use as this is mostly a topic for other crew members, plus there could hypothetically be any number of options or combinations of aircraft that could help complete this task. Because I did not specify how much area would be covered by the flood, I do not have an expectation for which flight area they should try to cover as long as it is logical and includes the river. I was also hoping they would at least consider flight areas and launching from the opposite side of the river from Tippecanoe park as this area would certainly be flooding in this scenario (lower laying homogeneous landscape). After determining all this, materials prepared by other group members would be included and used in the appropriate point of the scenario to determine if more documentation or information is needed. I was absent when they ran the scenario, so this upcoming week I am sure I will hear of the results.

Task 2: Finish a Data Post-Flight Document

The second task during this time period is still in production as it is time intensive and I had limited availability. By the next weekly report, the expectation is that a data post-flight checklist or guide will be produced. This guide will explain various aspects of data group members will need to interact with that we have already discussed, as well as some new features.

The First step in the document will sound like a continuation of the equipment guides Ryan and Ian's group are producing. It will involve how to manipulate and download data from the SD cards of the aircraft post mission onto the computers. It will detail where to save data so I consistently find it and how to name the information so that I can understand where the data is coming from and its importance. The details of how this will work is in previous posts involving naming convention of files and folders.

The second step will details to creating a metadata file inside of the data folder they are to produce. The specifics of this have also been discussed previously and I have already generated a document that will contain a guide for what needs to be included and how it should be structured for metadata purposes. If this step is done correctly in accordance with previous steps, data should be able to simply be moved from public drives into the correct folder on the research drive and will be ready for processing and analysis.

The final steps of the guide will again sound like a checklist. These steps will first discuss how to properly reformat the SD cards so that data is properly wiped. The rest of the list will involve placing the SD cards back into the aircraft or sensor. Lastly, how to store the aircraft depending on its specific schedule (should it be flying very soon or after a few days). This guide will be the final of the checklists and should complete our capability to begin data collection missions. With any luck and a change in the weather, we should begin flying data collection missions soon.