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New Spectrometer Purchase for NSF-funded MRI RAPID project
Achievement/Results
A new spectrometer (or ASD FieldSpec ® 3 Max portable Spectroradiometer) was purchased in December 2010 by Drs. Daan Liang (Construction Engineering/Engineering Technology), Brian Nutter (Electrical.Computer Engineering), Philip Smith (Environmental Toxicology) and Stephen Cox (Construction Engineering/Engineering Technology) for use in the National Science Foundation-funded project for the MRI RAPID grant. The spectrometer was shipped to Texas Tech in mid-January and is now ready for valid measurement after having been calibrated correctly. The spectrometer is designed to measure the radiance or reflectance from solid, liquid or vegetation surfaces in either indoors or outdoors environments, and will be used to measure the reflectance of oil slicks, man-made structures, and natural materials as ground truth of satellite hyperspectral images. In other words, according to Lin Cong, a Teaching Assistant in TTU’s department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, “the ground measurements are compared with the hyperspectral pixels in satellite images to remotely recognize the material distribution.” This is an addition to the suite of facilities in the WiSE Research Center.
Address Goals
The acquisition of the spectrometer adds to the suite of facilities available for Ph.D. research. Comprehensive facilities for research in wind science and engineering are assembled at Texas Tech University. It is perhaps the largest and varied physical facilities of all the institutions in the country. These facilities include a 200 meter instrumented tower, 50 station Mesonet, Sodar, K-Band portable radars, 36 StickNet platforms, instrumented experimental building, instrumented tower and signal light structures, sign board, and utility size wind turbine in the field. A vortex generator and boundary layer wind tunnel are in the laboratory. The combination of these facilities and instruments are used in multidisciplinary research in windstorm disaster mitigation and wind energy research. The addition of spectrometer allows us to recognize and correlate damage to the built environment from satellite images.
