Currently, in the oil and gas industry, document handling tasks are performed manually. Intellog is developing a search engine for handling the documents to various users in this domain. Due to complexity of the search task and variety of the users, development of a usable user interface for the search engine is challenging. In this project usability engineering methods will be used to develop a user interface, which will be integrated into the intellog's software.

Autonomous surveillance based on unmanned robotic network is in demand in search & rescue in hazardous environments and for continuous remote monitoring. For autonomous robotic surveillance, the robots should be able to gather information and analyze patterns in object behavior. Effective surveillance rests in detecting point and pattern changes normal behavior and thereby assessing the situation. The robotic network can then reconfigure to deliberate for additional information or to optimize surveillance performance.

The objective of this project is to develop a computational simulation model designed to determine how the resource-extraction industries of oil, gas and forestry influence woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus) habitat selection and use in west central Alberta. Specifically, an agent-based model will simulate caribou as individual agents that 1) are capable of making trade-off decisions to maximize their reproductive success and survival, 2) are spatially aware of their surrounding environment, and 3) can learn where to forage, while concurrently avoiding predators and habitat disturbance.

There are two fundamental wave modes that travel through the earth p‐waves and s‐waves. Currently most seismic exploration uses p-waves only. P‐waves convert into s‐waves at a discontinuity of the material parameters of the earth and are called converted waves. Converted waves offer the ability to detect fractures in the earth which are linked to areas of high oil and gas production. Reverse time migration is a tool to process seismic data using multipathing and without dip imitation.

This internship is in partnership with ISIS Canada. The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) Standard A23.1 requires air entrainment in concrete subjected to chlorides, not only for freeze-thaw environments but also for non‐freeze-thaw environments. Air entrainment presents some challenges in finishing of power trowelled surfaces, for example parking decks. Depending on the timing and amount of trowelling, air entrained slabs can be susceptible to surface de-lamination. As a result, air entrainment can not only add cost, it can make it more difficult to achieve a durable structure.

The intern will work closely with Pressure Pipe Inspection Company, a provider of critical water infrastructure management tools, to develop a new wireless data transmission system. The tasks will include 1) Rebuild Windows CE kernel for communication programming; 2) Data uploading program based on Winsock; 3) Data transmission software development between sites; 4) Design/Implement command function from the remote node. 5) Test the wireless data transmission system. 6) Improve the stability of the wireless system.

Oil and gas resources are hidden deep within the earth in geological structures which form reservoirs for these fluids. Finding these reservoirs, and monitoring the flow of fluids within these structures requires advanced imaging technologies and algorithms for the successful recovery of these valuable resources. This project will develop a newly proposed mathematical approach to imaging these structures, known as full wavefield tomography (Brenders and Pratt, 2007).

Hydraulic fracturing technology is one of the most used and efficient methods of oil reservoir stimulation. A way to improve this technology is the consequent pumping of several different fluids containing different concentrations of different proppants (solid spherical particles). This project with Schlumberger, one of the largest international companies in oilfield services, aims at developing a mathematical model describing this technology. The numerical model will predict the fluids’ and proppants’ location is reduced to formulating and solving numerically a different equation.

Cognitive Mapping or CM - sometimes called Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping- is a process by which an individual, group of individual, or groups of individuals can identify a central topic and over prolonged discussion, identify the various factors which relate to that topic. CM has been recently applied to explore issues in First Nations communities by researchers at the University of Ottawa to, for example, explore factors associated with diabetes (diet, lifestyle, education, etc) and to weigh these various factors associated with the central theme as strongly or weakly, positively or negatively.

This internship project with Deep Compression Inc. aims to produce a prototype demonstrating a new technique for asymmetric lossless data compression. Unlike conventional compression techniques, this prototype will allow representational information to be recovered using an algorithmic recovery procedure, algorithmic self-organizing structure (ASOS).