ANALYSIS AND REAL-TIME VISUALIZATION OF GEO-SPATIAL DATA USING XDASH: APPLICATION TO FLAIR PROJECT

Abstract. The reduction of atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions is a major challenge. In this context, each natural or industrial release such as methane (CH₄), carbon dioxide (CO₂) has to be monitored, localized and quantified. IFP Energies nouvelles (IFPEN) is developing a mobile measurement system called Flair car whose purpose is the detection of different abnormal gas emissions. Flair car system incorporates various gas sensors, including a weather station and GPS (Global Positioning System) module, mounted on a plugin hybrid electric vehicle. This enables the real-time monitoring and the recording of geo-time-stamped gas concentration measurements. Flair map corresponds to the on board real-time visualization software.

Flair map development required two important challenges: a quick and agile software modification capability together with a real-time display of measurements on maps. In order to meet these two challenges, we adopted a software rapid-prototyping approach based on the xDash tool. In this paper, our proposed real-time data visualisation approach is first introduced. Then, the rapid-prototyping development methodology which resulted in the Flair map software is described. Finally, two main operational usages of Flair map are illustrated. The first involves real-time visualization aboard the car of the maps representing data acquisition from gas concentration sensors. The second shows the a-posteriori analysis of measurement campaigns for the purpose of methane anomalies study.