SBIR Phase I: The Use of Doppler Radar for Estimating the Areal Extent of Strong Winds in Thunderstorms

这项小企业创新研究第一阶段项目旨在开发一种新技术，利用新一代天气雷达（NEXRAD）多普勒数据对受强雷暴风影响的地区进行建模。除了飓风和龙卷风，雷暴是美国最大的直接风灾，也是美国大部分地区极端风气候的主因。这些局部强烈的风暴具有复杂的结构，风暴内部的地表风速和风向发生了重大变化。随着风暴在全国范围内移动，它们会造成大范围的破坏。目前，在风暴的气候学模拟中，涉及到使用相对稀疏的地面风速仪记录雷暴产生的风速的网络。这种稀疏的风速测量网络不允许对受破坏性风影响的总面积进行建模。这项研究将寻求用不同的方法模拟雷暴阵风锋和当地强风区域。该方法将结合地面风速计测量和NEXRAD数据，开发一种技术，根据NEXRAD数据估计地面风速。提案中描述的方法是独特的，如果成功，将产生唯一能够估计这些风暴造成的总风力损害的模型。该技术的潜在商业化领域主要是在保险和电力公用事业行业。这两个行业都对风险管理和改进评估和减少潜在损害的方法感兴趣。将雷暴模型与该公司已经开发的风害模型相结合，可能会产生对这些行业以及其他行业都感兴趣的独特产品。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is directed at developing a new technique to model the area affected by strong thunderstorm winds using the newly available NEXt generation weather RADar (NEXRAD) Doppler data. Other than hurricanes and tornadoes, thunderstorms are the largest producer of direct wind damage in the United States and dominate the extreme wind climate over much of the country. These locally intense storms have complicated structures with significant changes in the surface wind speeds and directions within the storms. As the storms move across the country they can cause wide spread damage. The current state of the art in the climatological modeling of the storms involves the use of the relatively sparse network of surface anemometer records of wind speeds produced by thunderstorms. This sparse network of wind speed measurements does not allow modeling of the total area affected by the damaging winds. The research will seek to model the thunderstorm gust fronts and regions of intense local winds using separate and distinct methods. The approach will couple surface level anemometer measurements and NEXRAD data to develop a technique to estimate surface level wind speeds given NEXRAD data. The approach described in the proposal is unique, and if successful will yield the only model able to estimate the total wind induced damage produced by these storms. The potential areas of commercialization for the technology are primarily in the insurance and power utility industries. Both of these industries are interested in risk management and improved ways for estimating and reducing potential damages. The integration of the thunderstorm model with wind damage models already developed by the firm could lead to unique products of interest to these industries as well as others.