SetupSkyLOSA: A MATLAB Tool to support Acquisition of Sky-LOSA Data

SetupSkyLOSA is a MATLAB-based software tool to support an end-user in the acquisition of sky-LOSA image data used to quantify soot/black carbon emissions from gas flares.

Detailed Instructions

• Instructions for use
  • Introduction
  • Example
  • Procedure
    • Loading Statistical Data
    • On-the-fly Interaction with Loaded Data
    • Additional Utilities

Citation and Use

SetupSkyLOSA is described in a discussion article currently under open-review in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques Discussions and is shared free of charge under the MIT license. When using the software for the acquisition of data in published work, it is requested that users cite/acknowledge the following:

Conrad, B.M. & Johnson, M.R. (2020), An uncertainty-based protocol for the setup and measurement of soot/black carbon emissions from gas flares using sky-LOSA, Atmos. Meas. Tech. (doi: 10.5194/amt-2020-255) [under public review].

Features

The accompanying submission to the Journal of Atmospheric Measurement Techniques includes the theoretical background for SetupSkyLOSA and how to interpret results. The SetupSkyLOSA software provides guidance on the positioning and pointing of sky-LOSA camera based on statistics computed in a Monte Carlo-based General Uncertainty Analysis (GUA). The user provides the time and date, location (latitude and longitude), skylight conditions, and plume transmittance. SetupSkyLOSA parses these inputs and returns statistics in sky-LOSA-computed soot mass column density, which dominates sky-LOSA measurement uncertainty. The user can then interact with GUA data to determine the optimal camera pointing(s) given a desired threshold in uncertainty.

Installation & Requirements

Source and build (standalone executable and packaged MATLAB app) distributions of SetupSkyLOSA are hosted on GitHub. Software data are too large to house completely on GitHub but are available in the latest release. If a release has not yet been created for the latest version, please contact the author for the latest complete source and/or build versions.

Note

If you encounter issues during installation or when using SetupSkyLOSA, please contact the author.

Source Distribution

If you have a MATLAB license, add the entire “source” directory to the MATLAB path and run “SetupSkyLOSA”. The software was developed in MATALB R2019a and uses the Image Processing and Statistics and Machine Learning toolboxes. To clone the SetupSkyLOSA repository, see GitHub’s instructions.

Build Distributions

Build distributions are provided as a standalone executable and a packaged MATLAB app.

Standalone Executable

To install the SetupSkyLOSA executable, double-click the “SetupSkyLOSA_Installer” executable (.exe file) in the “build” directory.

Note

MATLAB unpackages the Runtime and executable to a temporary folder on each boot of the software. To speed up booting, the user can direct MATLAB to unpackage the Runtime and executable once in a defined location. The user can create a folder to house the unpackaged data (approximately 1.1 GB) and define an environment variable called MCR_CACHE_ROOT that links to the folder. The MCR_CACHE_ROOT folder should be located on the fastest available hard drive.

Note

When booting the software, the landing screen may disappear and it may seem as though booting has stalled. Be patient at this point; the MATLAB Runtime is being loaded and SetupSkyLOSA will initialize shortly after.

Packaged MATLAB App

To install the packaged SetupSkyLOSA MATLAB app, double-click the “SetupSkyLOSA_Installer” app installer (.mlappinstall file) in the “build” directory.

Contribute

SetupSkyLOSA is intended be a research tool that improves over time - your input to introduce and improve functionality would be highly appreciated. Consider contributing in the following ways:

1. Have a bug report? Raise an issue on github.
2. Want to introduce functionality helpful to your work? Fork the repository, make it work for you, and issue a pull request. Credit will always be given.

License

SetupSkyLOSA is licensed under the MIT license:

Copyright (c) 2020 Bradley Conrad

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Colourmap

The colourmap used in this application is adapted from the open-source cividis colourmap described in:

Nuñez, J.R., Anderton, C.R., & Renslow, R.S. (2018), Optimizing colormaps with consideration for color vision deficiency to enable accurate interpretation of scientific data. PLOS One, 13(7):1-14 (doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0199239).

Author Contact Information

You can contact Bradley (Brad) Conrad with issues and/or recommendations at brad.conrad@carleton.ca or brad.m.conrad@gmail.com

Version History

Version 1.0: Submission to the Journal of Atmospheric Measurement Techniques.

Acknowledgements

SetupSkyLOSA was developed at Carleton University’s Energy and Emissions Research Laboratory with support from NSERC FlareNet and Natural Resources Canada.