Undergraduate Research in Data Science and Sustainable Aviation

The aim of this study was to process large data sets obtained from NASA and to estimate the emissions for traditional jet fuel through calculating the path lengths of aircrafts. Computational analyses were performed, in collaboration with NASA and Universities Space Research Association, as part of a summer research program for undergraduate students. A program using Python was developed to process the NASA Sherlock data to obtain aircraft details and flight paths. Altitude independent emissions were then estimated for traditional jet fuel. The paper also describes future research plans for altitude dependent emissions, implementation of an approach for sustainable aviation fuels, and high performance computing capabilities.