Towards A Digital Twin Framework for Landfill Emission Source Determination using Hybrid VTOL Fixed-wing: A Simulation Study

Mitigating methane emissions by improving measurement methodologies is key in reducing the effects of climate change and global warming in the near term. Oil & gas, Landfills, and Agriculture represent the three leading emission sources for methane. In recent years, alternative methods for measurement using sUAS have been developed for ONG. In the Landfill and Agriculture sectors, emission source determination methods and developments with sUAS are still lacking. Here we utilize a Digital Twin Framework for estimating area source distributions using an iterative refinement approach based on cylindrical flux plane flight paths, initially used to quantify emissions – removing the need to scan the site explicitly. Simulation experiment is carried out for a simple area source distribution. The simulation results show that the DT framework and iterative refinement method are capable of providing a source distribution estimate near the true distribution with some variation in the standard deviation (biased in the direction of the wind) and the centroid (difference of 106 m).