Research projects blaze trails at Canadian colleges and universities

By ES&E Staff

Canadian colleges and universities made headlines this spring with an array of innovative and meaningful research projects. From mapping sea ice with artificial intelligence in Waterloo, to using datadriven flood solutions to safeguard Calgary, ES&E offers a snapshot of some of the impactful work already underway at nine schools across the country.

Alberta

The City of Calgary’s River Engineering team provided the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology’s second-year Integrated Water Management students Aidan Yakymyshyn and Dawson Smethurst with four different spatial geographic information system (GIS) datasets for the students’ final major project.

The students were able to use GIS to identify local communities susceptible to potential pipe backups due to flooding. They recommended stormwater outfall upgrades such as the installation of water flow control devices in flood-prone areas.

“The potential cost of damages in the absence of these valves could be three times the cost of installing the valves,” says Smethurst.

Also in Alberta, the University of Calgary researchers behind the successful COVID-19 wastewater monitoring program and online COVID tracker have received $5 million in new funding to use their wastewater testing platform to study and develop monitoring for other pathogens.

Dr. Casey Hubert, professor of geomicrobiology in the Faculty of Science, says that “developing additional versatile methods that cover a wide range of genomic targets will better prepare Alberta Health for contending with future epidemics, pandemics and even endemic disease using wastewater monitoring.”

Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan Polytechnic’s Integrated Resource Management program student Tucker James, who spent last summer on Prince Albert National Park’s resource conservation team, wants to expand the presence of pollinator gardens.

During the second year of his diploma program, James decided to further his knowledge of pollinator gardens, which he says teach people about the native ecology in Saskatchewan, and the importance of growing native plants and providing resources for species at risk.

“The main focus is creating a habitat that is beneficial to local native species such as butterflies, hummingbirds and moths,” says James, who plans to further his education at the University of Regina, majoring in environmental biology. He pitched his pollinator garden idea to the City of Prince Albert, which resulted in a partnership. James received

Ontario

Earlier this year, a remote sensing research team from the University of Waterloo won an international competition aimed at mapping sea ice. Waterloo Engineering and the Vision and Image Processing (VIP) Lab within the Department of Systems Design Engineering partnered to develop an AI model based on a multi-task deep convolutional neural network to retrieve parameters from multi-sensor satellite data. They used advanced AI techniques such as spatial-temporal encoding, domain adaptation and multi-task learning to boost the performance of the model.

Dr. Xinwei Chen, a UWaterloo postdoctoral researcher, says that the team’s success “motivates us to continue to have worldwide impact in future research concerning the combination of AI and remote sensing.”

Canadore College in North Bay has launched its Clean Water Initiative with the opening of a Water Teaching Lodge named Mshibizhiwgamig, which means Great Lynx Lodge. The lodge and the construction of an operational water treatment facility on campus will provide a new approach to clean water and technology that prioritizes Indigenous teachings about water.

“The lodge is a collaboration between Canadore and the private sector to be a catalyst for change,” says Shawn Chorney, Canadore’s VP of strategic infrastructure, Indigenous and learner services. “We need to offer new, custom solutions for water so we’re not perpetuating existing toria to study climate solutions for rural, remote, and Indigenous communities in B.C.

With the aid of $1 million from the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, the research partners will spend four years “preparing communities, people and economies for the coming climate impacts,” says Nancy Olewiler, a professor in SFU’s School of Public Policy.

Project leaders note that the initiative’s success depends on pairing technical knowledge from partner organizations with local knowledge among rural, remote and Indigenous communities.

While people living in urban centres are experiencing the effects of climate change through heatwaves and extreme rain, their remote and rural counterparts

(NEI) research program at Yukon University has received $5.5 million in funding to assess the realities, challenges and barriers surrounding clean energy options in a northern environment. It is one of seven research programs at the YukonU Research Centre.

NEI is partnering with the University of Toronto (UofT) and the University of Victoria (UVic) for two new research projects. With UofT, the teams will study how carbon capture and storage technologies might be effectively integrated into remote northern communities.

With UVic, there will be a multi-disciplinary initiative focused on offshore technologies to promote the transition of clean energy in small, remote communities in the North.