Drone based Multispectral Imager for Monitoring Methane emissions from Landfills
Partners: City of London
Methane is a potent green house gas that is commonly emitted from landfills. Canada intends to reduce these emissions by more than 35% by 2030. Methods of safely extracting methane from landfill sites exist. However, accurate mapping of the methane emission over landfills is critical for evaluating and monitoring the performance of these methods. This project will explore the use of drones to measure methane emissions at landfill sites working with our partner, the City of London. The goal is to test a lab prototype of a customized spectral imaging camera that could potentially be mounted on a drone for quantitative measurement of methane emissions. When combined with weather condition data such as temperature, humidity, and wind speed, the total methane emissions rates can be calculated. This will provide the city with better monitoring data to help them reduce these emissions. This project will involve modifying an existing prototype camera so that it is able to detect methane and conduct tests in the lab to validate the analysis and compare with satellite and ground methane data from the landfills provided by our partner. The drone flight path over the landfill site will be planned so measurements can be collected autonomously.
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.
