Unpiloted Aerial Systems (UASs) Application for Tornado Damage Surveys: Benefits and Procedures

The Northern Tornadoes Project: Uncovering Canada’s True Tornado Climatology

“…Unlike satellite imagery, drone imagery remains useful even with considerable cloud cover or haze/ smoke over the area of interest. Advances in drone technology now allow more extensive and semiautomated modes, with the stitching of thousands of images to create orthomosaic maps of storm damage having a spatial resolution down to 1 cm (Wagner et al 2019). Adjustments are made for topographic relief, lens distortion, and camera tilt so that the scale of the image is uniform and follows the given map projection [American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE); ASCE 1994].…”

Soil Moisture Observations From Shortwave Infrared Channels Reveal Tornado Tracks: A Case in 10–11 December 2021 Tornado Outbreak

“…In addition to human witness reports, radar observations, and labor‐intensive ground surveys, the improved remote sensing technology since the late 1990s has promoted tornado track assessments via satellite imagery (Jedlovec et al., 2006; Skow & Cogil, 2017; Yuan et al., 2002), which continue to this day. This further extends to analysis of remote sensing data collected by Unmanned Aerial Systems (Wagner et al., 2019) to perform damage surveys.…”

“…In addition to human witness reports, radar observations, and labor-intensive ground surveys, the improved remote sensing technology since the late 1990s has promoted tornado track assessments via satellite imagery (Jedlovec et al, 2006;Skow & Cogil, 2017;Yuan et al, 2002), which continue to this day. This further extends to analysis of remote sensing data collected by Unmanned Aerial Systems (Wagner et al, 2019) to perform damage surveys.The usage of remotely sensed imagery to detect tornado damage tracks is based on the physical principle that the tornado-associated winds will disturb the physical characteristics of the surface, thus resulting in abrupt changes in reflective properties at certain wavelengths detected by remote sensors. The altered spectral signature can be captured by comparing the imagery before and after the event to locate the tornado track (Jedlovec et al, 2006).…”

The Status and Future of Small Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) in Operational Meteorology

“…Specific examples of demonstrated capabilities include the use of UAS to perform detailed surveys of severe thunderstorm damage (e.g., Wagner et al 2019), to assess the impact of tropical systems and synoptic storms on coastal erosion (Kaamin et al 2016), and to monitor inland water body flooding (Imam et al 2020;Dyer et al 2020). UAS have also been used to collect measurements within volcanic plumes (Galle et al 2020;Schellenberg et al 2020) continue to be explored and augmented through testbed demonstrations that facilitate partnerships between researchers and NHMS.…”