Monday Workshops*
May 7, 2012
*Preconference schedule subject to change
Registration desk opens 7:30 AM to 4:00 PM
Monday Program Tuesday Program Wednesday Program
Workshop Descriptions
Full Day Session
Dr. Mryka-Hall Beyer and Junyan Ding (University of Calgary)
Monday May 7, 2012 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM (Full Day)
Many applications using geospatial data involve questions that can only be answered by examining directional or cyclical changes over time. The remote sensing databank increasingly makes available radiometrically equivalent images over a multi-decade time period. Specialized techniques and software adaptations make unique contributions to handling this data, but they remain largely the province of sub-specialists. This workshop will look at multi-temporal issues from data through the large questions of techniques to hands-on work with a change detection problem and a cyclical problem. Case studies will be presented.
IMPORTANT INFO:
Document available for download
Since 1996, Dr. Hall-Beyer has taught and researched remote sensing. She is currently an Associate Professor of Geography in the University of Calgary Geography Department. Her primary research is on vegetation cycles, mostly in Alberta, although she has an additional interest in the use of texture in image classification. She is an active member of the international multi-temporal community and several national and local geomatics organizations.
Junyan Ding is near completion of her MSc in Geography, examining long-term weather patterns and their influence on vegetation vigour in the Serengeti area of east Africa. She has made use of some innovative algorithms such as EOT (Empirical Orthogonal Transforms) to tease apart cycles of different lengths in this complex area of the world, and to examine the influence of environmental variables like soils on the vegetation resilience to drought. She would present her work as a case study, and lead participants through an EOT analysis.
Morning Session
Justin Deoliveira & Samuel Smith (OpenGeo)
Monday May 7, 2012 8:30 AM to 12:00 PM
You have seen all those cool mapping applications, both on the desktop and on the web, and want to make some of your own nifty mapping applications. This workshop will give you all the tools you need to build a complete GIS and web mapping stack using a selection of free and open source tools. We will take shapefiles and put them in PostGIS. With this as the base we will use open source desktop tools (QGIS), GeoServer, GeoWebCache, GoogleEarth and OpenLayer. Prerequisites: Aside from working knowledge of GIS there are no prerequisites for attending the workshop. However, some familiarity of open geospatial web standards such as Web Map Service and Web Feature Service is recommended.
IMPORTANT INFO:
Document available for download
Justin Deoliveira is the Director of Engineering at OpenGeo and the technical lead of the OpenGeo Suite product team. A charter member of the OSGeo foundation, Justin has been involved in a number of open source projects of the past years including GeoServer, GeoTools and uDig.
Samuel Smith is the Global Support Manager at OpenGeo. Since 2007, he has been providing spatial integration and implementation support to emergency management, security and defense organizations throughout the world. He has worked extensively in the Middle East and Australasia with a commercial mapping application that implements several Open Source spatial components.
Dale Rhyason (D.B. Rhyason & Associates)
Monday May 7, 2012 8:30 AM to 12:00 PM
It has been estimated that up to 80% of projects undertaken are not totally successful. Many projects are doomed to failure before the building or development work even begins because of non-existent or ineffective "front-end" planning. This workshop is the result of over 40 years of participating in and reviewing the full range of projects from construction to technology to change management to planning projects. The most frequent cause of challenges in project deliverables or expectations is inadequate planning and/or poor communication. The workshop will address these issues through topics such as:
-
What is success?
-
Understanding the project process;
-
How to effectively plan a project;
-
Looking at a simplified form for doing project planning including providing samples for different components of a plan;
-
Open discussion and experience sharing. The concepts covered are not only applicable to GIS projects but equally apply to any type of project.
Dale Rhyason, P.Eng. is an independent management consultant specializing in strategic planning, technology implementation, project planning and GIS implementation. He is a professional engineer with 45 years management and consulting experience in a broad range of municipal operations including 30 years employed by the City of Edmonton. Most of his positions with the City involved implementing technology and change management. He worked for the Town of Hinton for 6 years as Director of Engineering and Development. He has served on advisory boards to two provincial ministers and to the University of Calgary, the University of Alberta, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and Telus Geomatics. Clients since leaving the City of Edmonton have included rural and urban municipalities, large and small municipalities as well as private companies. Dale has lectured or given workshops on strategic planning, project management and implementing technology throughout the world. He currently lectures at NAIT on GIS Strategic Planning and Project Management and teaches project management for the West Yellowhead Leadership Program as well as providing client workshops on project planning and project management.
TECTERRA & researchers
Monday May 7, 2012 8:30 AM to 12:00 PM
This half-day workshop shares the successes of various research projects on geomatics technologies as catalyzed by TECTERRA. There is something for everyone in this excellent learning and networking opportunity. The schedule below details the topics in more detail:
8:30-10:00
A. Natural Resources Monitoring Using Optical Remote Sensing
Nadia Rochdi
Alberta Terrestrial Imaging Centre and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Lethbridge
Karl Staenz
Alberta Terrestrial Imaging Centre and Department of Geography, University of Lethbridge
Remote sensing continues to play an important role in the mapping and, subsequently, in the monitoring of natural resources in space and time. For example, it is especially a useful tool to track the impact of mining resources such as minerals and oil to the environment. The presentation will provide insight of remote sensing technologies to map/monitor various aspects of natural resources, such as reclamation of mine and oil and gas well sites in Alberta and Ontario.
B. Integrating image processing and remote sensing techniques for better classification of WorldView-2 satellite imagery
Ahmed Shawky Elsharkawy, Dr. Mohamed Elhabiby, and Dr. Naser El-Sheimy
Mobile Multi-sensor Research Group
Department of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary
The new advances of having eight band satellite mission similar to Worldview-2 give the chance to address and solve some of traditional problems related to the low spatial and/or spectral resolution; such as the lack of details for certain features or the inability of the traditional classifiers to detect some land cover types because of missing efficient spectrum information and analysis techniques. High spectral and spatial resolution of WorldView-2 data introduces challenges in detailed mapping of urban features. Classification of Water, Shadows, Red roofs and concrete buildings spectrally exhibit significant confusion either from the high similarity in the spectral response (e.g. water and Shadows) or the similarity in material type (e.g. red roofs and concrete buildings).
This presentation assesses the enhancement of the classification accuracy and efficiency for a data set of WorldView-2 satellite imagery using the full 8-bands through integrating the output of classification process using three band ratios with another step involves object-based technique for extracting shadows, water, vegetation, building, bare soil and asphalt roads. Second generation curvelet transform will be used in the second step specifically to detect buildings boundaries, which will aid the new algorithm of band ratios classification through efficient separation of the buildings. The combined technique is tested and the preliminary results show a great potential of the new bands in the WV-2 imagery in the separation between confusing classes such as water and shadows and the testing is extended to the separation between bare soils and asphalt roads. Also, the combined band ratio-curvelet transform edge detection techniques increased the percentage of building detection by more than 30%.
C. Turning Total Station into TBM Control Robot in Tunnel Construction
Dr. Johnson Shen
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta
Dr. Ming Lu
Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta
The absence of effective tunnel alignment surveying solutions adds to the high risks of tunneling projects. During the construction process, it is crucial to precisely position the tunnel boring machine (TBM) in the underground space, so as to control its advance along the as-designed alignment. This research aims to develop an automation solution to facilitate TBM control in the construction of large-diameter drainage tunnels. The latest research has produced a new-generation TBM position tracking system which embeds automation control and computing intelligence into the popular survey tool of robotic total station. The real-time survey data are processed on the fly to determine: (1) TBM’s position in the underground space; (2) the three-axis body rotations of the TBM; (3) tunneling productivity progress; and (4) line and grade deviations of the tunnel alignment. In collaboration with the Drainage Services of the City of Edmonton, the new system will be field tested in the construction of a 1,040-meter-long, 8-ft-diameter drainage tunnel in Edmonton. This research was substantially supported by the TECTERRA’s Alberta University Applied Research Funding Program (1108-UNI-008).
10:15-12:00
A. QA/QC of LiDAR Data
Dr. AymanHabib
Professor and Head, Department of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary
Quality assurance and quality control of data from the LiDAR sensor.
B. Remote Sensing of Mountain Pine Beetle Forest Disturbance: Results for British Columbia and Perspectives for Alberta and the Canadian Boreal Forest
Derek R. Peddle, Sarah Boon, and Aaron P. Glover
Alberta Terrestrial Imaging Centre and Department of Geography, University of Lethbridge
Forrest G. Hall
NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre, Biospheric Sciences Branch, Greenbelt MD, USA
The mountain pine beetle (MPB) has killed over half of the mature pine forest in British Columbia (BC), with significant implications to the forest industry, ecology, and the national carbon balance. MPB are now damaging forests in Alberta and there is deep concern regarding its spread through the vast boreal forest that extends across Canada. Remote sensing provides important survey, change assessment and prediction capabilities over these large areas for inventory, economic reporting, salvage, biomass and carbon estimates. Canopy reflectance models provide an explicit physical-structural basis for obtaining biophysical structural information and change from MPB damage. The BIOPHYS multiple-forward mode (MFM) approach provides improved reflectance modeling by enabling direct forest structure output from highly-sophisticated models while retaining full sun-surface-sensor geometry and sub-pixel scale analytical capabilities. Using the MFM-Partial and Full-Blind approaches that require minimal or no user input due to automated model parameterisation, forest structure was derived from pre-outbreak (1999) and post-outbreak (2007) satellite imagery with validation against field data from healthy and MPB damaged stands at a study site near Prince George BC. MPB structural change results from BIOPHYS-MFM were validated for 2007 Landsat imagery against field measurements at MPB-killed stand plots as 45 stems/pixel for stand density, 0.65m for crown radius, and 0.80m for tree height, from which change assessment estimates were derived against 1999 image structural outputs. These results as well as their use in related estimates of carbon dynamics resulting from this large MPB outbreak will be presented together with perspectives on important forest disturbance work in Alberta regarding MPB and other key disturbance metrics.
C. Development of Wireless Sensor Networks based "Local Indoor GPS" for Resources Tracking in Industrial Construction
Ms. Meimanat Soleimanifar
Ph.D. Student, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta
Dr. Ming Lu
Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta
Positioning and tracking jobs and resources in dynamic, complex environments such as fabrication shops or module yards are vitally important to improve productivity and safety performances in industrial construction. GPS based technologies including standard GPS, A-GPS, DGPS and RTK GPS are not yet capable to provide sufficient and cost effective positioning solutions to a wide range of applications in challenging indoor or partially covered environments in industrial construction. The best practice in industry relies on the use of RFID technology for tracking and locating materials. Yet, the RFID solution falls short of self-positioning and wireless networking communications. Our research of applying wireless sensor networks (WSN) for indoor positioning exposes the limitations of the range-based Trilateration method analogous to the GPS mechanism. Correlation of the distance range with received RF signal strength is difficult and computationally expensive due to dynamic, complicated application settings. Our recent research has developed a new methodology of integrating real-time neural computing with received signal strength profiling, resulting in promising positioning accuracy (less than 1 m) in indoor experiments. This leads to ongoing development of “local GPS” for an industrial setting by taking advantage of the mature technology of WSN and radial basis function neural networks (RBF NN). Eventually the local GPS will be coupled with the active RFID technology in order to facilitate the tracking and localization of materials and labourers in a fabrication shop or a module yard. This research is substantially supported by NSERC and JV Driver Project Inc. via a collaborative research and development grant.
Afternoon Sessions
Michael Schlosser (AutoDesk) and Mary Butler Gretton (Cansel)
Monday May 7, 2012 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM
Explore "what could be" in the context of "what is" with Autodesk Infrastructure Modeller. This new software from Autodesk is a geospatially enabled 3D conceptual design tool for creating, evaluating and communicating convincing infrastructure project proposals for faster stakeholder approval and more confident decision making. Attend this half-day, hands-on workshop and learn how to:
-
Incorporate conceptual design and 3D GIS as part of the BIM for infrastructure lifecycle process
-
Build a 3D model of your world even if you only have 2D GIS data
-
Incorporate CAD, GIS, BIM and raster data to quickly create models that realistically depict your project, campus or city
-
Create compelling, 3D conceptual design proposals
-
Query and analyze your models
-
Visualize and communicate your 3D world with interactive navigations, rendered images and recorded videos
Computers, software and sample data for this hands-on workshop will be provided. However, you are encouraged to bring your own data so that you can build your own models. Suggested data sets for you to bring include GIS ready parcel data and building footprints. Additional data can include surfaces, above and below ground infrastructure, aerial imagery and BIM models. Suggested data formats include the following:
IMPORTANT INFO:
Twelve computers will be provided on a first-come, first-serve basis, with two people per computer.
Michael Schlosser (P.Eng, GISP) is an Autodesk Technical Specialist. As a professional Engineer with more than 20 years of experience in the geospatial industry, he has been invaluable to many organizations in helping them increase productivity throughout the BIM for infrastructure lifecycle encompassing planning, design, implementation, distribution and maintenance. He has had the privilege of working with a wide variety of clients on their CAD, GIS and web-mapping implementations including telecommunications firms, utilities, transportation departments, municipalities and other levels of governments. Michael is also a blogger, skilled educator and trainer whose works have been published in both trade and academic publications.
Mary Bulter Gretton, Business Manager at Cansel, has over six years of experience as an account manager in the geospatial and civil engineering sector, working with Autodesk products and professional services to bridge the gap between survey, drafting, design and visualization. The Autodesk division of Cansel has a team of civil engineering and geospatial technical experts who regularly provide needs analysis and workflow assessments, and design and build GIS applications and asset management tools that work.
Trevor Wiens (Apropos Information Systems Inc.) and Leif Olson (O2 Planning + Design Inc.)
Monday May 7, 2012 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM
Marxan is the most widely used conservation planning software in the world. Marxan has been used effectively worldwide, with the notable example of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Australia. Marxan is freely available for download and use on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux computers. Until now, preparation of Marxan input files has depended on expensive proprietary GIS software. Apropos has released the Qmarxan plugin for QGIS which emancipates Marxan users from proprietary GIS and makes the input file creation process for Marxan faster and easier. This workshop will give users both a theoretical and hands on introduction to Marxan and QGIS.
IMPORTANT INFO:
Document available for download
Data available for download
Trevor Wiens has worked with GIS and environmental data for 20 years. He has a MSc from the University of Alberta in biogeography, owns and operates Apropos Information Systems Inc. and is a GIS instructor for University of Calgary Continuing Education. Over his career Trevor has worked with most GIS software packages and he currently works primarily with Free / Open Source GIS tools because they are powerful, flexible, and cost effective. Trevor is interested in integration of GIS with unstructured information and providing effective access to GIS for ordinary people through web GIS solutions.
Leif Olson, PhD, has worked as a researcher studying human-bear interactions in Waterton National Park, as a consultant to Saint Lawrence Islands National Park summarizing breeding bird diversity across Ontariom and as a consultant with Enviroment Canada calculating road fragmentation indices across Canada. His current work at O2 Planning + Design Inc. focuses on the development of systematic land-use planning and multivariate decision-making processes, using spatial, statistical and graphical methods to guide and explore complex and wide-ranging social and environmental issues.
Dale Rhyason (D.B. Rhyason & Associates)
Monday May 7, 2012 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM
Implementing a GIS in an organization involves far more than understanding the technical aspects of GIS technology. Successful GIS is not measured by the technology being used but by the degree of "penetration" into an organizations business functions. In requires significant knowledge and skills in areas like team building across organizational boundaries, managing expectations, educating senior managers understanding the business processes, and more. This workshop is the result of over 40 years of implementing technology and change management in large and small organizations, including 30 years of involvement in, managing and advising on GIS projects. The workshop with address GIS management issues through topics such as:
-
What are some of the keys to success?
-
Understanding the project process
-
Funding strategies
-
Team building
-
Gaining support from senior managers
-
Organizational approaches
-
Management philosophies
-
Evolving the GIS
-
Training
-
Contracting
-
Open discussions and experience sharing
This workshop combined with the morning workshop on project planning will provide the participant with a complete set of tools for successfully implementing a GIS.
Dale Rhyason, P.Eng. is an independent management consultant specializing in strategic planning, technology implementation, project planning and GIS implementation. He is a professional engineer with 45 years management and consulting experience in a broad range of municipal operations including 30 years employed by the City of Edmonton. Most of his positions with the City involved implementing technology and change management. He worked for the Town of Hinton for 6 years as Director of Engineering and Development. He has served on advisory boards to two provincial ministers and to the University of Calgary, the University of Alberta, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and Telus Geomatics. Clients since leaving the City of Edmonton have included rural and urban municipalities, large and small municipalities as well as private companies. Dale has lectured or given workshops on strategic planning, project management and implementing technology throughout the world. He currently lectures at NAIT on GIS Strategic Planning and Project Management and teaches project management for the West Yellowhead Leadership Program as well as providing client workshops on project planning and project management.
Monday Workshops*
May 7, 2012
*Preconference schedule subject to change
Registration desk opens 7:30 AM to 4:00 PM
Monday Program Tuesday Program Wednesday Program
Workshop Descriptions
Full Day Session
Dr. Mryka-Hall Beyer and Junyan Ding (University of Calgary)
Monday May 7, 2012 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM (Full Day)
Many applications using geospatial data involve questions that can only be answered by examining directional or cyclical changes over time. The remote sensing databank increasingly makes available radiometrically equivalent images over a multi-decade time period. Specialized techniques and software adaptations make unique contributions to handling this data, but they remain largely the province of sub-specialists. This workshop will look at multi-temporal issues from data through the large questions of techniques to hands-on work with a change detection problem and a cyclical problem. Case studies will be presented.
IMPORTANT INFO:
Document available for download
Since 1996, Dr. Hall-Beyer has taught and researched remote sensing. She is currently an Associate Professor of Geography in the University of Calgary Geography Department. Her primary research is on vegetation cycles, mostly in Alberta, although she has an additional interest in the use of texture in image classification. She is an active member of the international multi-temporal community and several national and local geomatics organizations.
Junyan Ding is near completion of her MSc in Geography, examining long-term weather patterns and their influence on vegetation vigour in the Serengeti area of east Africa. She has made use of some innovative algorithms such as EOT (Empirical Orthogonal Transforms) to tease apart cycles of different lengths in this complex area of the world, and to examine the influence of environmental variables like soils on the vegetation resilience to drought. She would present her work as a case study, and lead participants through an EOT analysis.
Morning Session
Justin Deoliveira & Samuel Smith (OpenGeo)
Monday May 7, 2012 8:30 AM to 12:00 PM
You have seen all those cool mapping applications, both on the desktop and on the web, and want to make some of your own nifty mapping applications. This workshop will give you all the tools you need to build a complete GIS and web mapping stack using a selection of free and open source tools. We will take shapefiles and put them in PostGIS. With this as the base we will use open source desktop tools (QGIS), GeoServer, GeoWebCache, GoogleEarth and OpenLayer. Prerequisites: Aside from working knowledge of GIS there are no prerequisites for attending the workshop. However, some familiarity of open geospatial web standards such as Web Map Service and Web Feature Service is recommended.
IMPORTANT INFO:
Document available for download
Justin Deoliveira is the Director of Engineering at OpenGeo and the technical lead of the OpenGeo Suite product team. A charter member of the OSGeo foundation, Justin has been involved in a number of open source projects of the past years including GeoServer, GeoTools and uDig.
Samuel Smith is the Global Support Manager at OpenGeo. Since 2007, he has been providing spatial integration and implementation support to emergency management, security and defense organizations throughout the world. He has worked extensively in the Middle East and Australasia with a commercial mapping application that implements several Open Source spatial components.
Dale Rhyason (D.B. Rhyason & Associates)
Monday May 7, 2012 8:30 AM to 12:00 PM
It has been estimated that up to 80% of projects undertaken are not totally successful. Many projects are doomed to failure before the building or development work even begins because of non-existent or ineffective "front-end" planning. This workshop is the result of over 40 years of participating in and reviewing the full range of projects from construction to technology to change management to planning projects. The most frequent cause of challenges in project deliverables or expectations is inadequate planning and/or poor communication. The workshop will address these issues through topics such as:
-
What is success?
-
Understanding the project process;
-
How to effectively plan a project;
-
Looking at a simplified form for doing project planning including providing samples for different components of a plan;
-
Open discussion and experience sharing. The concepts covered are not only applicable to GIS projects but equally apply to any type of project.
Dale Rhyason, P.Eng. is an independent management consultant specializing in strategic planning, technology implementation, project planning and GIS implementation. He is a professional engineer with 45 years management and consulting experience in a broad range of municipal operations including 30 years employed by the City of Edmonton. Most of his positions with the City involved implementing technology and change management. He worked for the Town of Hinton for 6 years as Director of Engineering and Development. He has served on advisory boards to two provincial ministers and to the University of Calgary, the University of Alberta, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and Telus Geomatics. Clients since leaving the City of Edmonton have included rural and urban municipalities, large and small municipalities as well as private companies. Dale has lectured or given workshops on strategic planning, project management and implementing technology throughout the world. He currently lectures at NAIT on GIS Strategic Planning and Project Management and teaches project management for the West Yellowhead Leadership Program as well as providing client workshops on project planning and project management.
TECTERRA & researchers
Monday May 7, 2012 8:30 AM to 12:00 PM
This half-day workshop shares the successes of various research projects on geomatics technologies as catalyzed by TECTERRA. There is something for everyone in this excellent learning and networking opportunity. The schedule below details the topics in more detail:
8:30-10:00
A. Natural Resources Monitoring Using Optical Remote Sensing
Nadia Rochdi
Alberta Terrestrial Imaging Centre and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Lethbridge
Karl Staenz
Alberta Terrestrial Imaging Centre and Department of Geography, University of Lethbridge
Remote sensing continues to play an important role in the mapping and, subsequently, in the monitoring of natural resources in space and time. For example, it is especially a useful tool to track the impact of mining resources such as minerals and oil to the environment. The presentation will provide insight of remote sensing technologies to map/monitor various aspects of natural resources, such as reclamation of mine and oil and gas well sites in Alberta and Ontario.
B. Integrating image processing and remote sensing techniques for better classification of WorldView-2 satellite imagery
Ahmed Shawky Elsharkawy, Dr. Mohamed Elhabiby, and Dr. Naser El-Sheimy
Mobile Multi-sensor Research Group
Department of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary
The new advances of having eight band satellite mission similar to Worldview-2 give the chance to address and solve some of traditional problems related to the low spatial and/or spectral resolution; such as the lack of details for certain features or the inability of the traditional classifiers to detect some land cover types because of missing efficient spectrum information and analysis techniques. High spectral and spatial resolution of WorldView-2 data introduces challenges in detailed mapping of urban features. Classification of Water, Shadows, Red roofs and concrete buildings spectrally exhibit significant confusion either from the high similarity in the spectral response (e.g. water and Shadows) or the similarity in material type (e.g. red roofs and concrete buildings).
This presentation assesses the enhancement of the classification accuracy and efficiency for a data set of WorldView-2 satellite imagery using the full 8-bands through integrating the output of classification process using three band ratios with another step involves object-based technique for extracting shadows, water, vegetation, building, bare soil and asphalt roads. Second generation curvelet transform will be used in the second step specifically to detect buildings boundaries, which will aid the new algorithm of band ratios classification through efficient separation of the buildings. The combined technique is tested and the preliminary results show a great potential of the new bands in the WV-2 imagery in the separation between confusing classes such as water and shadows and the testing is extended to the separation between bare soils and asphalt roads. Also, the combined band ratio-curvelet transform edge detection techniques increased the percentage of building detection by more than 30%.
C. Turning Total Station into TBM Control Robot in Tunnel Construction
Dr. Johnson Shen
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta
Dr. Ming Lu
Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta
The absence of effective tunnel alignment surveying solutions adds to the high risks of tunneling projects. During the construction process, it is crucial to precisely position the tunnel boring machine (TBM) in the underground space, so as to control its advance along the as-designed alignment. This research aims to develop an automation solution to facilitate TBM control in the construction of large-diameter drainage tunnels. The latest research has produced a new-generation TBM position tracking system which embeds automation control and computing intelligence into the popular survey tool of robotic total station. The real-time survey data are processed on the fly to determine: (1) TBM’s position in the underground space; (2) the three-axis body rotations of the TBM; (3) tunneling productivity progress; and (4) line and grade deviations of the tunnel alignment. In collaboration with the Drainage Services of the City of Edmonton, the new system will be field tested in the construction of a 1,040-meter-long, 8-ft-diameter drainage tunnel in Edmonton. This research was substantially supported by the TECTERRA’s Alberta University Applied Research Funding Program (1108-UNI-008).
10:15-12:00
A. QA/QC of LiDAR Data
Dr. AymanHabib
Professor and Head, Department of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary
Quality assurance and quality control of data from the LiDAR sensor.
B. Remote Sensing of Mountain Pine Beetle Forest Disturbance: Results for British Columbia and Perspectives for Alberta and the Canadian Boreal Forest
Derek R. Peddle, Sarah Boon, and Aaron P. Glover
Alberta Terrestrial Imaging Centre and Department of Geography, University of Lethbridge
Forrest G. Hall
NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre, Biospheric Sciences Branch, Greenbelt MD, USA
The mountain pine beetle (MPB) has killed over half of the mature pine forest in British Columbia (BC), with significant implications to the forest industry, ecology, and the national carbon balance. MPB are now damaging forests in Alberta and there is deep concern regarding its spread through the vast boreal forest that extends across Canada. Remote sensing provides important survey, change assessment and prediction capabilities over these large areas for inventory, economic reporting, salvage, biomass and carbon estimates. Canopy reflectance models provide an explicit physical-structural basis for obtaining biophysical structural information and change from MPB damage. The BIOPHYS multiple-forward mode (MFM) approach provides improved reflectance modeling by enabling direct forest structure output from highly-sophisticated models while retaining full sun-surface-sensor geometry and sub-pixel scale analytical capabilities. Using the MFM-Partial and Full-Blind approaches that require minimal or no user input due to automated model parameterisation, forest structure was derived from pre-outbreak (1999) and post-outbreak (2007) satellite imagery with validation against field data from healthy and MPB damaged stands at a study site near Prince George BC. MPB structural change results from BIOPHYS-MFM were validated for 2007 Landsat imagery against field measurements at MPB-killed stand plots as 45 stems/pixel for stand density, 0.65m for crown radius, and 0.80m for tree height, from which change assessment estimates were derived against 1999 image structural outputs. These results as well as their use in related estimates of carbon dynamics resulting from this large MPB outbreak will be presented together with perspectives on important forest disturbance work in Alberta regarding MPB and other key disturbance metrics.
C. Development of Wireless Sensor Networks based "Local Indoor GPS" for Resources Tracking in Industrial Construction
Ms. Meimanat Soleimanifar
Ph.D. Student, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta
Dr. Ming Lu
Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta
Positioning and tracking jobs and resources in dynamic, complex environments such as fabrication shops or module yards are vitally important to improve productivity and safety performances in industrial construction. GPS based technologies including standard GPS, A-GPS, DGPS and RTK GPS are not yet capable to provide sufficient and cost effective positioning solutions to a wide range of applications in challenging indoor or partially covered environments in industrial construction. The best practice in industry relies on the use of RFID technology for tracking and locating materials. Yet, the RFID solution falls short of self-positioning and wireless networking communications. Our research of applying wireless sensor networks (WSN) for indoor positioning exposes the limitations of the range-based Trilateration method analogous to the GPS mechanism. Correlation of the distance range with received RF signal strength is difficult and computationally expensive due to dynamic, complicated application settings. Our recent research has developed a new methodology of integrating real-time neural computing with received signal strength profiling, resulting in promising positioning accuracy (less than 1 m) in indoor experiments. This leads to ongoing development of “local GPS” for an industrial setting by taking advantage of the mature technology of WSN and radial basis function neural networks (RBF NN). Eventually the local GPS will be coupled with the active RFID technology in order to facilitate the tracking and localization of materials and labourers in a fabrication shop or a module yard. This research is substantially supported by NSERC and JV Driver Project Inc. via a collaborative research and development grant.
Afternoon Sessions
Michael Schlosser (AutoDesk) and Mary Butler Gretton (Cansel)
Monday May 7, 2012 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM
Explore "what could be" in the context of "what is" with Autodesk Infrastructure Modeller. This new software from Autodesk is a geospatially enabled 3D conceptual design tool for creating, evaluating and communicating convincing infrastructure project proposals for faster stakeholder approval and more confident decision making. Attend this half-day, hands-on workshop and learn how to:
-
Incorporate conceptual design and 3D GIS as part of the BIM for infrastructure lifecycle process
-
Build a 3D model of your world even if you only have 2D GIS data
-
Incorporate CAD, GIS, BIM and raster data to quickly create models that realistically depict your project, campus or city
-
Create compelling, 3D conceptual design proposals
-
Query and analyze your models
-
Visualize and communicate your 3D world with interactive navigations, rendered images and recorded videos
Computers, software and sample data for this hands-on workshop will be provided. However, you are encouraged to bring your own data so that you can build your own models. Suggested data sets for you to bring include GIS ready parcel data and building footprints. Additional data can include surfaces, above and below ground infrastructure, aerial imagery and BIM models. Suggested data formats include the following:
IMPORTANT INFO:
Twelve computers will be provided on a first-come, first-serve basis, with two people per computer.
Michael Schlosser (P.Eng, GISP) is an Autodesk Technical Specialist. As a professional Engineer with more than 20 years of experience in the geospatial industry, he has been invaluable to many organizations in helping them increase productivity throughout the BIM for infrastructure lifecycle encompassing planning, design, implementation, distribution and maintenance. He has had the privilege of working with a wide variety of clients on their CAD, GIS and web-mapping implementations including telecommunications firms, utilities, transportation departments, municipalities and other levels of governments. Michael is also a blogger, skilled educator and trainer whose works have been published in both trade and academic publications.
Mary Bulter Gretton, Business Manager at Cansel, has over six years of experience as an account manager in the geospatial and civil engineering sector, working with Autodesk products and professional services to bridge the gap between survey, drafting, design and visualization. The Autodesk division of Cansel has a team of civil engineering and geospatial technical experts who regularly provide needs analysis and workflow assessments, and design and build GIS applications and asset management tools that work.
Trevor Wiens (Apropos Information Systems Inc.) and Leif Olson (O2 Planning + Design Inc.)
Monday May 7, 2012 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM
Marxan is the most widely used conservation planning software in the world. Marxan has been used effectively worldwide, with the notable example of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Australia. Marxan is freely available for download and use on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux computers. Until now, preparation of Marxan input files has depended on expensive proprietary GIS software. Apropos has released the Qmarxan plugin for QGIS which emancipates Marxan users from proprietary GIS and makes the input file creation process for Marxan faster and easier. This workshop will give users both a theoretical and hands on introduction to Marxan and QGIS.
IMPORTANT INFO:
Document available for download
Data available for download
Trevor Wiens has worked with GIS and environmental data for 20 years. He has a MSc from the University of Alberta in biogeography, owns and operates Apropos Information Systems Inc. and is a GIS instructor for University of Calgary Continuing Education. Over his career Trevor has worked with most GIS software packages and he currently works primarily with Free / Open Source GIS tools because they are powerful, flexible, and cost effective. Trevor is interested in integration of GIS with unstructured information and providing effective access to GIS for ordinary people through web GIS solutions.
Leif Olson, PhD, has worked as a researcher studying human-bear interactions in Waterton National Park, as a consultant to Saint Lawrence Islands National Park summarizing breeding bird diversity across Ontariom and as a consultant with Enviroment Canada calculating road fragmentation indices across Canada. His current work at O2 Planning + Design Inc. focuses on the development of systematic land-use planning and multivariate decision-making processes, using spatial, statistical and graphical methods to guide and explore complex and wide-ranging social and environmental issues.
Dale Rhyason (D.B. Rhyason & Associates)
Monday May 7, 2012 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM
Implementing a GIS in an organization involves far more than understanding the technical aspects of GIS technology. Successful GIS is not measured by the technology being used but by the degree of "penetration" into an organizations business functions. In requires significant knowledge and skills in areas like team building across organizational boundaries, managing expectations, educating senior managers understanding the business processes, and more. This workshop is the result of over 40 years of implementing technology and change management in large and small organizations, including 30 years of involvement in, managing and advising on GIS projects. The workshop with address GIS management issues through topics such as:
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What are some of the keys to success?
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Understanding the project process
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Funding strategies
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Team building
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Gaining support from senior managers
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Organizational approaches
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Management philosophies
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Evolving the GIS
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Training
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Contracting
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Open discussions and experience sharing
This workshop combined with the morning workshop on project planning will provide the participant with a complete set of tools for successfully implementing a GIS.
Dale Rhyason, P.Eng. is an independent management consultant specializing in strategic planning, technology implementation, project planning and GIS implementation. He is a professional engineer with 45 years management and consulting experience in a broad range of municipal operations including 30 years employed by the City of Edmonton. Most of his positions with the City involved implementing technology and change management. He worked for the Town of Hinton for 6 years as Director of Engineering and Development. He has served on advisory boards to two provincial ministers and to the University of Calgary, the University of Alberta, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and Telus Geomatics. Clients since leaving the City of Edmonton have included rural and urban municipalities, large and small municipalities as well as private companies. Dale has lectured or given workshops on strategic planning, project management and implementing technology throughout the world. He currently lectures at NAIT on GIS Strategic Planning and Project Management and teaches project management for the West Yellowhead Leadership Program as well as providing client workshops on project planning and project management.