Geospatially Resolved UAV-Enabled Waste Settlement Monitoring at Xerolakka Landfill in Greece

Settlement monitoring of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is valuable for the operation, closure, and post-closure development of landfills. Conventional techniques for settlement monitoring are cumbersome, expensive, and lack the temporal and spatial resolution needed to provide valuable insights on the full-scale compressibility of MSW. Repeated deployments by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with optical cameras at a landfill in Western Greece have allowed the generation of 3D models of the landfill that vary with time for a monitoring period of three years. These models were used to track settlements and calculate the long-term settlement rate of the waste. The long-term settlement rate is found to vary with time and is not constant as often assumed. This finding is consistent with the underlying biological and physicochemical processes that occur at landfills. The data also has a geospatial resolution that enables the localization of higher waste settlement areas. Such information provides insights into the full-scale behavior of MSW without affecting landfill operations.