Aeronautics: Data Science - COVID-19 and Air Traffic Tracker (CATT)

July 2020

This year USRA has sponsored students from various universities to work on a NASA Aeronautics Research Institute (NARI) and U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) project. These students are working in multiple teams mentored by NASA and USRA PI (s). The goal of these projects is to develop concepts for small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to support various scenario-based mission concepts such search and rescue missions conducted by the US Coast Guard, using NASA technologies such as UAS Traffic Management (UTM), and supporting development of the U.S. Supply Chain for small UAS.

Project A: The COVID-19 & Air Traffic Tracker (CATT) is a data dashboard designed to look at regional COVID-19 and air traffic data, parse it, and provide useful analytics, information, and predictions to industry figures to help them make better informed decisions. COVID-19 has had a heavy impact on every facet of the world we know, aerospace included, and has made many scared to travel or proceed with business in the aero-world. We hope that those at NASA and in the industry will be able to use this tool to look at the risk presented by flights and study the patterns that the virus has spread throughout the United States and the world.
 
Team members include Gregor Limstrom (Senior, Santa Clara University), Neil Kaushikar (Freshman, University of Illinois), Mckenna Brown(Junior, Carnegie Mellon University), Abhishake Karmarkar (Senior, Penn State), Jelena Herriott (Sophomore, Langston University), Zsabre Wright (Junior, Langston University), Sophia Peceli (Junior, Sacramento State).