Session Descriptions: Tuesday, November 18th
Session Number 1: November 18th - 10:00 a.m.
Beyond PSAB 3150 Improving Cross-Platform Data Access and Currency
Delays in entering as-built construction information into the records database means that important infrastructure data is often months and sometimes years out-of-date. These delays make it difficult to provide reliable information about the infrastructure for field, management and regulatory requirements such as PSAB 3150. A lack of data integration and inadequate interoperability further aggravates the issue and costs stakeholders billions of dollars. This presentation reviews the challenges encountered when attempting to integrate as-built information with other data repositories and discusses the importance of addressing these challenges throughout the infrastructure lifecycle. The presentation concludes with demonstrations highlighting how cross-platform data access and currency can be achieved.
Presenters(s): Michael Schlosser
Integrated Resource Management
The Alberta ICT Institute has undertaken an initiative called Integrated Resource Management (IRM). This initiative is designed to assist decision makers in integrated resource management sectors by developing the geomatics and ICT related tools to support their decision making processes. IRM will focus on technology development in earth observation, GIS and GPS, sensors and sensor networks and ICT related technologies used in the development of these solutions. IRM is a needs-based initiative that will address issues in land use, air and water quality monitoring, environmental concerns, cross sector initiative and economic development through the creation of the tools, development of highly qualified people, use of infrastructure (and potential development of new infrastructure), a centre of excellence for research and development for geomatics, and a potential product commercialization centre.
Presenters(s): Stephen Lougheed
Session Number 2: November 18th - 11:15 a.m.
Incorporating Field Knowledge with Digital Data
Constantly increasing demands for detailed and accurate information are being placed upon Municipal government from the public, the province, and the internal staff. So, how do you take the in depth knowledge of your infrastructure held by field staff and make it available to those who need it? Infrastructure data can change daily and is traditionally stored in the memories of long term staff and on the backs of field reports. We are forced to find solutions that will allow required changes to be collected by the people in the field and be available and logical for the people in the office. Using a combination of CAD, GIS, and paper we have endeavoured to develop a solution that is reliable, simple, quick and require a minimum of resources and training.
Presenters(s): Ingrid Aldridge
City of Edmonton Then, Now and Future
The City of Edmonton, Planning and Development has been developing integrated systems for some time. This talk will be on the past, what we did, present, what we are doing now, future, where we expect to go in the near future.
Presenters(s): Dennis Wilkie
Complete SQL based GIS
During this presentation you will learn how to integrate your GIS, CAD, and SQL Databases in a comprehensive database driven GIS. Begin with your engineering drawings, use a GIS software to access your maps and transfer them into a spatial database. Once your maps are in a spatial database, you may view and maintain all maps in one central spatial database.
Presenters(s): Jeremy Tomlinson
The Alberta Integrated Resource Management (IRM) – Geomatics Centre
Land and water management have become critical to the sustainable development of Alberta. Many related issues threaten to interfere with our path of progress as a province; they demand resolution. Using advanced geospatial tools, applications and data, Alberta has a rare opportunity to proactively manage the increasingly complex and interrelated economic, community and environmental issues confronting the key sectors of energy, forestry, agriculture and the environment, while continuing to drive strong, sustained economic growth.
Alberta can capitalize on this opportunity by committing to achieve significant progress in the area of integrated resource management (IRM) tools and solutions. In so doing, it will establish a critical mass of economically and environmentally valuable, exportable, geomatics-based business skills and solutions built on state-of-the-art needs-driven research. IRM is characterized by massive information requirements over vast areas; these requirements can be met only through geomatics technology. Alberta is uniquely poised for multi-sector innovation in IRM because of its exceptional, world-class core of expertise in these areas. The Alberta IRM Geomatics Centre will cultivate and focus that expertise, generating entrepreneurial opportunities to address urgent resource management issues with direct impact on Alberta’s economy. There is a highly compelling case for Alberta, through the IRM Geomatics Centre, to become a leader in IRM on the world stage, with direct benefits to the province, its private and public sectors, and its domestic and international trade partners.
The centre’s proponents are the University of Calgary, University of Alberta, University of Lethbridge and the Alberta Information and Communications Technology Institute (AICTI). The synthesis of the raw abilities of these four partners, amplified through direct industry and government partnership, is at the core of the Centre’s potential. This presentation will provide an overview of the centre’s mission, vision, partners, core activities and research areas.
Presenters(s): Dr Naser El-Sheimy
Anti-Surveillance or How Not To Get Caught
In today’s environment corporations, educational institutions, health care providers, military, and government are implementing technology to monitor and curtail the activities of employees, contractors and other entities. Reasons range from legal ramifications such as lawsuits to regulatory requirements such as FOIP.
This presentation will demonstrate how people use technology to circumvent the current monitoring and forensics capabilities of corporate Canada. These techniques can be applied by people with little to no technical background and is highly effective in eliminating detection, identification and prosecution.
Presenters(s): Barry Kokotailo
Session Number 3: November 18th - 1:45 p.m.
An agent-based model (ABM) to simulate the impact of human activities on wolf behaviour
Wolves are considered one of the key indicator species of the cumulative effects induced by human activities. This paper describes the conceptualization and implementation of a new modeling approach, called agent-based model, to investigate how different intensity levels of human activities affect wolfs behaviour in the central Rocky Mountains region of Alberta. ABM is a system that consists of a number of interacting autonomous artificial agents. Our model consists of a wolf module as the primary component, and bear, elk, and human modules integrated together. The model was run for six months of the summer (from 15 April to 15 October) using seven sets of parameters. Each set of parameters was replicated 15 times and the results were analyzed. The model was calibrated and validated with previously collected radio collared GPS data acquired yearly from 2001 to 2005. The simulated trajectories of wolves reflect similar movement patterns as indicated by the real trajectories. The simulations reveal that the wolves’ movement and behaviour are significantly affected when increasing the intensity of human presence. The modeling prototype developed in this study may serve as a useful tool to test hypotheses about human-wildlife interactions and guide decision makers in designing adequate management strategies.
Presenters(s): Sk. Morshed Anwar
CSI GP: Centralized Spatial Infrastructure at Grande Prairie
Within a municipal organization, there are different ways to manage spatial information. The GIS resources can be spread out among various departments, concentrated in a standalone department, outsourced or any combination of these. The City of Grande Prairie has adapted a centralized model in which the GIS department serves the entire organization. This presentation focuses on the business case around which GIS services are delivered at the City. Participants will learn how the structure and philosophy of the department has influenced the way application development, data maintenance, data sharing, standards and user requests are handled. Successes and challenges of this model will be shared which can benefit those looking to start or restructure a GIS department. Also, a brief demonstration of Grande Prairie online GIS will be given.
Presenters(s): Darren Lepchuk
GeoDiscover Alberta
Improved sharing of geographic information in Alberta, will support more efficient and effective resource development, decision making and management. GeoDiscover Alberta is a Provincial initiative to optimize the collective geographic information investment, through better enabling the discovery and use of spatial information across sectors. Starting with the initial development of a rudimentary portal within the Provincial government, the concept of collecting information once, closest to source and making it most widely available is beginning to take shape. Through cross sector involvement in setting the strategic direction, the concept is expected to expand beyond the Provincial Government environment. Current status, governance and future plans will be discussed.
Presenters(s): Craig Barnes and Liam Barry
SPIN 2 / ALTA 2
Alberta Land Titles is currently in the process of re-developing the entire application technology platform that manages its registration and data distribution systems (e.g. registered titles, documents, survey plans, other GoA land related data). The presentation will provide an overview of the completed SPIN 2 system along with a view of the future direction for provisioning “real time” data access across the Government of Alberta as well as to municipal and private sectors. In addition, there will also be an overview of the new ALTA 2 registration system and the innovative Business Rules Management (BRM) and Business Process Management (BPM) development approach being taken. BRM and BPM technologies simplify the traditional application development process through the use of English rule statements and various other coding aids for decision services and configurable “drag and drop” processing components.
Presenters(s): Bill Elliot
Session Number 4: November 18th - 3:00 p.m.
Urban Planning: with Location-Based Mass Collaboration Systems
Location-based mass collaboration systems allow for large groups of online users to collaborate on geographically-referenced information. Two recent technological advancements present new opportunities for such applications: (a) web-GIS tools and location-based services, and (b) online mass collaboration. In this paper we describe the architecture of a location-based mass collaboration system termed WikiGIS, and discuss its application in the domain of urban planning.
Presenters(s): Arie Croitoru, Ofer Arazy, Matthew Dance
Field data collection utilizing aerial drones, ground vehicles and GPS
In this presentation, Talon will outline efficient processes to gather infrastructure asset positions for an accurate inventory. These processes utilize the latest in drone fixed wing and rotary wing technology along with ground vehicle and handheld GPS to minimize time and maximize your budget for maintenance of your assets positions and status.
Presenters(s): Landra Trevis and Dale Knock
Spatial Data Management Strategies
Organizations are leveraging spatial data in day to day business operations. Therefore best practices in data management need to be applied to enterprise spatial data. This presentation will examine components of spatial information management and explore the context of spatial data in an enterprise information management strategy. Topics covered will include GIS Enterprise Architecture, Master Data Management Strategies and Meta data management.
Presenters(s): Dippan Shukle
GeoDiscover Alberta - Information Sharing
The purpose for undertaking the Sustainable Resource and Environmental Management (SREM) Information Sharing Initiative (ISI) was to move toward the vision of effectively sharing natural resources and environmental information in a cross-ministry environment (Alberta Energy, Environment and Sustainable Resources Development (SRD) in a transparent manner. An enormous quantity of natural resources information exists within individual government departments and industry. Among other applications, the information supports a vast array of land use activities and decisions. However, the format and technology platforms usually differ, and there are varying levels of restrictions on sharing the information. These problems severely limit the access to and use of the natural resources information, which in turn restricts the completeness and timeliness of information for making land use decisions. The Information Sharing Project Team would like to introduce GeoDiscover Alberta. The information sharing initiative is a standard based approach to ensure data consistency and inter-operability. The GIS-enabled virtual portal technology is the tool that enables access for the discovery, evaluation and viewing of information that is available within the three departments. We would like to demonstrate where we are today and where we are going tomorrow.
Presenters(s): Daryl McEwan
Data Management of Large 3D Urban Scenes
The use of three-dimensional geospatial content is becoming widely adopted within the disciplines of surveying, urban planning, architecture, and engineering. Three key advances are driving the adoption of 3D solutions:
- Ubiquitous deployment of sensor technologies (eg. LIDAR)
- Availability of commercial off the shelf 3D city models
- Maturity software tools to manage 3D types
However, the automatic generation of 3D data from advanced sensor like LIDAR, introduces new data management problems. For example, the volumes of point data resulting from LIDAR surveys (typically of the order of millions of points), introduce data visualization and management visualization. The amount of data typically needed to represent complex urban scenes can easily overcome most file-based CAD and GIS tools. Moreover, urban planning efforts to simulate and analyze 3D cityscapes, (commonly on the order of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of complex 3D vectors) requires a scalable storage and query platform. Such a platform needs to support 3D visualization, editing, spatial analysis, reporting, and web publishing. This paper highlights recent advances in handling 3D data models (point clouds, TINs, and 3D vector types) in an RDBMS. A database-centric approach to managing large volumes of 3D data overcomes many of the high cost of traditional 3D visualization solutions, by allowing application developers to incorporate best of breed commercial or open source 3D visualization tools. The paper illustrates use cases of how solutions developers are benefiting from this new 3D data management infrastructure.
Presenters(s): Xavier Lopez
Session Number 5: November 18th - 4:15 p.m.
Wireless Sensor Networks for Environmental Monitoring
A Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is a collection of small autonomous devices (nodes) that sense attributes, e.g. temperature and CO2 concentration. Nodes can collect sensed values, process and communicate the same among themselves and/or towards a central node as needed. The size of these nodes, allows them to be deployed virtually anywhere, e.g., in forests, floating on rivers/lakes, atop light poles/semaphores, etc, collecting localized observations that would be difficult or even impossible to collect remotely. On the other hand, the chief concern when designing and using them is to minimize the energy use because it may be difficult or unfeasible to replace batteries or use solar power (e.g,. in the long Winter nights).
In this presentation we will present EcoNet, a prototypical application that uses WSNs to monitor a small forest environment which has been developed jointly by the Univ. of Alberta and Olsonet Inc. Using EcoNet as a running example we will discuss some typical requirements and challenges of such WSN-based monitoring applications, present an overview of the solutions created, and also offer insight into new applications that could use GIS technologies and WSN technologies for monitoring.
Presenters(s): Mario Nascimento and Arturo Azofeifa-Sanchez
Applications based on Future Location
This presentation will discuss applications of geospatial technology focused on future location. The bulk of the presentation will focus on applications in the social networking space. Most efforts to add location to social networking have focused on the current location of users. Modeling the future location of people is harder to do, but arguably a lot more useful. The benefits of handling future location, and technical approaches and challenges, will be discussed. The presentation will also discuss how some of these ideas can apply to a variety of enterprise applications, including coordination of construction work between organizations, to minimize street repaving costs and inconvenience to the public.
Presenters(s): Peter Batty
Integrating the Geospatial Workplace
The evolution of geospatial applications within our organizations has spawned multiple software vendors, collaboration amongst diverse professions, and the engagement of experts and subcontractors in different locations. Our presentation moves beyond a discussion of individual tools and methods. We focus on Managing the Production Process through the use of a Production Framework. Our Goal: Wrap existing software tools (from multiple vendors) as well as workflow procedures in a production framework that allows us to better manage the process. Our framework must be extensible, accommodate existing software tools, and emerging prototype applications. It must be scalable to meet today's typical project sizes. This framework must allow production managers to:
- View project production status in real time
- Support Distributed Project Management (subcontractors)
- Increase production throughput and efficiencies
- Manage tools, data, and human resources more effectively
- Integrate GIS, non-spatial tools and data in a seamless environment.
- Develop, introduce and deliver new end products faster.
- Integrate and monitor Quality Management and continuous improvement into the production environment.
- Constant change demands better tools to manage the production environment.
Our presentation will outline our Integration approach, will present real world examples, and will demonstrate a typical production framework.
Presenters(s): John Mostert and Lewis Graham
Google Earth as an AVL tool for business and pleasure
Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth are now common household names and most computer users are familiar with these two GeoSpatial applications. The two applications were initially for personal use, but lately they have been employed in commercial applications. This presentation is intended to depict an independent perspective on the potential functionality of Google Earth as a practical AVL tracking system. Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) is the general term used for GPS-enabled systems that track vehicles, vessels, planes, people, animals, and any other mobile object whose location can be dynamically mapped on a GeoSpatial display. This presentation will include a discussion on the background of Google Earth, which started as a company called Keyhole. The explanation of the XML based KML data storing method will be addressed at a level of technical detail that all listeners may understand. KML is an open standard officially named the OpenGIS® KML Encoding Standard (OGC KML). Live online demonstrations will illustrate example applications for both business and pleasure, including EPCOR's Mobile Work Force Management application using Google Earth for AVL and dynamic work order mapping. GIS may now be considered an accessible end-user tool, like a word processor or a spreadsheet, which most people can understand and afford. Google Earth can be downloaded at no cost for personal and restricted business use.
Presenters(s): Peter van Muyden