Drone based Multispectral Imager for Monitoring Methane emissions from Landfills
Partners: City of London
We have established a line of communication with GDLS to explore the potential for extending the applicability of our instrument to image other greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. GDLS has expressed interest in collaborating on the customization of the DBSI for carbon dioxide imaging. We have demonstrated the instrumentation to team visiting Western in Fall 2024.
We have signed a Research Participation Agreement with Flux Lab at St. Francis Xavier University. This agreement provides us with access to landfill sites featuring controlled methane release during the methane release campaign period. Additionally, it requires us to share our processed emission data with the university.
As part of the future work from the drone team perspective, the system can be extended with fully autonomous capabilities. In this project, although the UAV flew autonomously to cover the target area, it still required intervention from a human operator for setup, battery swap, take-off, and landing. In the future, the UAV would be set up at a base station and programmed such that it routinely carries out methane emission data collection missions entirely on its own using the conclusions regarding flight parameters from this project.
Ongoing preliminary conversations to join The Global Environmental Measurement and Monitoring (GEMM) Initiative which is a collaborative effort between Optica and the American Geophysical Union (AGU). GEMM brings together scientists, engineers, and policymakers to develop and implement cutting-edge photonics technologies for environmental monitoring. By providing accurate and timely data, GEMM supports informed decision-making and policy development to address global environmental challenges.
Researcher Biographies
Jayshri Sabarinathan
Associate Professor
- Ph.D. University of Michigan, Electrical Engineering (2003)
- M.S.E University of Michigan, Electrical Engineering (1999)
- B.S.E University of Michigan, Electrical Engineering and Engineering Physics (1997)
Jayshri Sabarinathan is currently an associate professor at the University of Western Ontario in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She joined the University of Western Ontario in Fall, 2003 and received the NSERC University Faculty award (UFA) in 2004. She was promoted to associate professor in 2010.
She obtained her B.S.E in Electrical Engineering and Engineering Physics and her M.S.E and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1997, 1999 and 2003 respectively. Her Ph.D. research involved the demonstration of the first electrically injected quantum dot photonic crystal (PC) microcavity light source, novel two-dimensional PC-based microfluidic sensors and single-step epitaxial techniques to fabricate three-dimensional GaAs-based PCs. She has extensive nanofabrication experience working at the University of Michigan Solid State Electronics laboratory (SSEL) and the NSF funded Cornell Nanoscale Science & Technology Facility (CNF) and the Western nanofabrication facility.
She is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE), the optical society of america (OSA), the National Electrical and Computer Engineering Honor Society - Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) and, the Engineering Honor Society -Tau Beta Pi (TBP).
Anwar Haque
Industry Expert in Residence, Associate Professor
Dr. Anwar Haque is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He also serves as Industry Expert in Residence in the faculty of Science at Western. Before joining Western, he was an Associate Director at Bell Canada. Dr. Haque received his Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering and M.Math in Computer Science, both from the University of Waterloo. Dr. Haque’s primary research areas of interest include wireless/wireline network resources and performance management/optimization and cyber-security, focusing on IoT-based smart services and applications. He has been awarded several national/provincial-level research grants, including NSERC, MITACS, OCE, and SOSCIP. Dr. Haque is currently an associate editor for the Elsevier Vehicle Communications journal and the IEEE Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Haque is the director of the WING Lab, where he conducts cutting edge research in emerging network technologies and smart services, and established a strong collaborative partnership with several industry leaders.
