Proposal to upgrade infrastructure and radars and stream data through UNIDATA back to NCAR.

R. T Bruintjes, M. Moncrieff, A Laing and others

Africa meetingJuly 2006

Africa Programs

Burkina Faso infrastructure

Radar installation on top of control tower and King Air B-200 and hangar facilities at the airport in Ouagadougou

Weather radar and project locations

Radar locations

Burkina Faso and Mali radar locations.

Local weather services and universities

Recent Work• Unstable and unreliable internet and local area network at the Programme

SAAGA offices in Ouagadougou. The network and internet connections went down several times during the day and once for a period of 24 hours. The problems were associated with wiring problems, router and firewall problems and not necessarily with the internet connection as such. The network and internet connections in Bobo Dialloso were found to be highly reliable and working fine. The problems in Ouagadougou could also be associated with frequent power outages at the Programme SAAGA office during my one-week stay.

• Unstable power supply and frequent power outages at the Programme SAAGA offices in Ouagadougou. Although a standby generator is available for power supply when normal electrical power outages occur it always took 30 seconds to a minute to change from normal to standby power. The UPS units that supply power to the radar and TITAN/CIDD computers during this transition are small and on days when several of these power outages occurred the UPS batteries were drained and were not able to continue to provide power to the computers and equipment. This resulted in systems losing power and rebooting after power was reinstated. This also resulted in loss of data.

Recent Work (cont.)

• Incomplete installation of Bobo Dialloso radar. Unfortunately, the EEC radar engineer conducting the installation of the new radar in Bobo Dialloso got sick and had to return to the U.S. before the installation of the radar was complete. We were thus not able to feed data from the new radar to the TITAN/CIDD computer in Bobo Dialloso and to Ouagadougou. We should be able to test this remotely from the U.S. when the installation is complete.

• Problems with the radar in Ouagadougou. The radar in Ouagadougou is not well calibrated and maintained. The reflectivity levels on the EDGE and therefore on TITAN/CIDD are underestimating reflectivity levels by somewhere between 10 to 20dBz according to our observations. In addition, no Doppler velocity data is received. A full calibration and evaluation of the radar is needed. It is essential that the radars are well maintained and calibrated in the future if they will be used for guiding operations and in the evaluation of the Programme cloud seeding experiments. The same applies for the new radar in Bobo Dialloso. Accurate time synchronization between the radars and all associated computers are also essential.

Proposed changes• Re-design and upgrade network and internet infrastructure at

Programme SAAGA offices in Ouagadougou. We would suggest obtaining the services of a qualified expert to assess and evaluate the current and future network and internet requirements of the Programme SAAGA offices in Ouagadougou and to re-design the network. I would suggest that the buildings are also re-wired because many of the current network connectors and some of the equipment are unreliable.

• Upgrade UPS units and electrical power infrastructure at the Programme SAAGA offices in Ouagadougou. In the short-term it is important to upgrade the UPS power units to able to provide sufficient power to the computers during frequent power failures. In the long-term we would suggest that the infrastructure be upgraded to provide a more reliable and stable electrical power environment for the Programme SAAGA offices in Ouagadougou.

• Maintenance and calibration of radars and computer equipment. It is essential that the radars are well calibrated and maintained to support the operations of Programme SAAGA. The current Ouagadougou radar is not well calibrated and seems to have problems with the Doppler velocities. It is recommended that a plan is developed for the maintenance and calibration of the radars and computers. This is extremely important for the operations of Programme SAAGA.

Africa Initiative ProposalActivities

• Finalize implementation of radars and software (Current funding)

• Provide expert in networking to evaluate and help design reliable network (New funding, travel and support, 1 month)

• Network Mali and Burkina Faso radars and potentially MIT Niger radar (new funding, software engineer, 1month)

• Stream data to UNIDATA (new funding, 1 month per year software engineer, UNIDATA)

Proposal Activities (cont.)

• Burkina Faso has recently purchased two EEC C-band radars. As part of a sub-contract with EEC, NCAR is already working with Burkina Faso to provide upgraded software for one of the radars.

• Propose to upgrade the two C-band weather radars by providing a new receiver with Doppler capability including analysis software (1 month radar engineer, 1 month software engineer, hardware (~50k).

• Education and training (3 people from Burkina Faso and Mali will visit NCAR for training, current funding; GLOBE, COMET, UCAR E&O, START, ASMET, etc?)

• Workshop in Fall or early winter in West Africa (Sahel other west African countries using existing networks).

Summary

Problem• Water resource management• Air Quality and health impacts• Flash and local flooding and human impacts• Seasonal (agriculture)Challenges• Infrastructure building• Low-tech approach• EducationOpportunities• Africa Initiative• UCAR capabilities

Water resources, Severe weather, agriculture, air quality, health impacts.