Hub and Spoke System for Detecting and Locating Gas Leaks

A system that determines a location and a size of a gas source within a geographic area, comprising:

• an optical source configured to transmit an optical beam to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) while the UAV flies through the geographic area;
• an optical detector configured to generate path-integrated spectroscopic data from the optical beam after the UAV retroreflects the optical beam toward the optical detector while flying through the geographic area;
• and
• a processor configured to receive the path-integrated spectroscopic data, apply a high-resolution transport model to meteorological data for the geographic area, and apply an inversion model to the high-resolution transport model and the received path-integrated spectroscopic data to determine the location and the size of the gas source.