Precision twister tracking

UMass team leads project to develop a system of far more accurate warnings

June 13, 2011|By Marion Davis, Globe Correspondent

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Apoorva Bajaj, meanwhile, CASA’s industry liaison, is looking for new markets: electrical utilities, transportation companies, and especially weather data resellers who can create “value-added’’ packages for the media, consumers, and specialized sectors.

And Theodore Djaferis, the UMass Amherst engineering dean, is setting up CASA 2.0, a set of specialized projects to test further applications of the technology, such as one to detect low-flying aircraft or to help wind-power generators find the strongest gusts.

Already, Bajaj said, CASA has made an impact on the market, and some radar manufacturers are making X-band weather radars to sell to municipalities. Dense radar networks are also being built abroad, McLaughlin said, in Australia, France, Britain, and Japan.

Mark Russell, a vice president at Raytheon — a CASA partner from the start — said he thinks the system is “a fascinating and viable approach’’ to an important problem.

The key now, he said, is to implement it on the proper scale at an affordable price.

Raytheon could be interested in commercializing some of CASA’s work, he said — though he expects smaller companies to step in.

In Oklahoma, Kuhlman said, municipalities are trying to persuade a philanthropist to buy new radars to replace the ones they have been using, which will be sent to Texas to be used in the Dallas-Fort Worth project.

“I think we saved lives on May 24,’’ he said.

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