Advancing a 5G Framework for Natural Asset Management

Natural assets are the stock of natural resources and ecosystems that provide essential services including positive contributions to human health and well-being, and climate change mitigation. Natural asset management has been identified as a priority area by governments, but is challenging to do on a large scale, due to its complex and expensive labor-intensive nature. This is where the use of sensor networks presents a new opportunity to integrate natural assets within the “smart cities” research space. Enabled by Rogers’s 5G network, this project uses the UBC campus as a “living lab” to deploy a natural asset sensor network to identify and monitor both the ecological and social factors that affect natural assets. Using data science techniques, researchers will be able to further gain predictive insights to understand and value natural assets on campus. In the long-term, this research could automate the natural asset management process.

Faculty Supervisor:

Lorien Nesbitt;Edmond Cretu;Susan Day

Student:

Partner:

Rogers Communications Inc.

Discipline:

Physics

Sector:

Information and cultural industries

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program: