Posts Tagged: "NOAA"

The day’s most withering criticisms, however, came from the House science committee’s ranking Republican, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). Smith contended that NOAA’s problems had been debated by the committee for years and focused on the delays and rising costs of the current JPSS program. “Congress should not continue to fund an over-budgeted program that has not performed to standards,” he said. He added that he wasn’t convinced that the NOAA is adequately addressing weather data gap risks and said they were “dragging their feet” on considering options. “If NOAA’s afraid of innovation, maybe they shouldn’t be in the business of deciding what technologies are needed to improve forecasting,” Smith said.

Some tech firms are trying to go all-in on AI solutions for snow removal by developing autonomous, self-driving snow plows that could be deployed without human operators. At the end of this January, autonomous plow developers will come together in St. Paul, MN, for the sixth-annual Institute of Navigation Autonomous Snowplow Competition. This year, there will be 11 student teams from the U.S. and Canada attending the event competing to see which of their autonomous snow plows performs best at navigating the competition’s course solely through computer control. Robotic, self-driving snow plows could be implemented for municipal snow removal in the future, although the current state of the tech hasn’t gotten far beyond prototypes that cost $4,000 to $12,000 per unit.

The most common type of severe weather emergency that affects American citizens and property owners is flash flooding, according to the National Flood Insurance Program. Flash floods, which can be caused by torrential downpours or the failure of man-made structures like dams or levees, causes rapid flooding of a low-lying area within six hours of the flood’s precipitating event. Half of all flash flooding fatalities are vehicle-related. With a coming El Niño that could dump a heavy amount of rainfall on southern California this winter, we wanted to revisit our Disaster Tech series to take a closer look at some flood management innovations being pursued to aid those in areas prone to flooding.