Autonomous UAV-Based Volcanic Gas Monitoring: A Simulation-Validated Case Study in Santorini

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can deliver rapid, spatially resolved measurements of volcanic gases that often precede eruptions, yet most deployments remain manual or preplanned and are slow to react to seismic unrest. In the present work, we present a simulation-validated design of an earthquake-triggered, autonomous workflow for early detection of CO₂ anomalies, demonstrated through a conceptual case study focused on the Santorini caldera. The system ingests real-time seismic alerts, generates missions automatically, and executes a two-stage sensing strategy: a fast scan to build a coarse CO₂ heatmap followed by targeted high-precision sampling at emerging hotspots. Mission planning includes wind-and terrain-aware flight profiles, geofenced safety envelopes and a facility-location approach to landing-site placement; in a Santorini case study, we provide a ring of candidate launch/landing zones with wind-contingent usage, illustrate adaptive replanning driven by heatmap uncertainty and outline calibration and quality-control steps for robust CO₂ mapping. The proposed methodology offers an operational blueprint that links seismic triggers to actionable, georeferenced gas information and can be transferred to other island or caldera volcanoes.