Projets novateurs réalisés

Impact de la culture dans le développement local et social du quartier Centre-Sud, quartier des Faubourgs

L’étude que nous souhaitons mener déterminera de quelle façon la culture a une incidence sur le développement local et social du milieu du quartier Centre-Sud, quartier des Faubourgs. La présence d’artistes et d’organismes culturels est un élément essentiel à l’identité du quartier, mais aussi à son essor social et économique. La démarche permettra de mettre en évidence les dynamiques issues des initiatives portées par divers acteurs locaux, depuis la fin des années 2000, dont la mise en œuvre de projets culturels a été faite dans un objectif de développement local. Cette recherche deviendra un outil pertinent pour les différentes instances culturelles qui œuvrent dans le quartier, en leur permettant de comprendre les variables fondamentales du territoire et d’adapter leur offre en conséquence.

Freewalker: Développement et évaluation d’un dispositif pour favoriser la marche et l’activité physique chez des patients hospitalisés et sous oxygénothérapie

L’importance de la marche dans le rétablissement des patients et les dangers de rester au lit pour les patients sont décrits depuis longtemps (Asher, 1947). Cependant, il a été constaté que les patients restent le plus souvent sédentaires au cours de leur hospitalisation avec un temps de marche quotidien moyen de 7 minutes (Pitta, Troosters, Probst, Spruit, Decramer, Gosselink, 2006) (Spencer, 2018) (Brown, Redden, Flood, Allman, 2009) (Callen, Mahoney, Grieves, Wells, 2004).
Le projet consiste à 1) développer un dispositif favorisant la déambulation (FreeWalker) chez des patients hospitalisés sous oxygénothérapie par le design et 2) déterminer l’impact physiologique et l’expérience d’usage lors de la marche avec ce dispositif. Par dispositif, il est entendu un ensemble de composantes techniques, matérielles et visuelles pouvant se traduire par un équipement médical, un aménagement, un objet ou un document visuel.
Pour ce faire, le design interviendra par une approche de design empathique s’appuyant sur l’étude de l’expérience du patient en situation d’hospitalisation afin de mieux documenter le sujet (Gagnon et Côté, 2014) (Köppen et Meinel, 2012). Soit par des entrevues, l’observation des participants et des lieux.

Utilizing an evaluation of a community initiative to inform lessons for collaborative partnership and service delivery: All In for Youth Case Study

This project aims to provide much needed evidence to community organizations who want to use evaluation findings to better understand how to work with and support vulnerable children and their families in schools. The All in for Youth initiative and its collaborative partners offer integrated, wraparound supports to improve academic outcomes and resiliency of vulnerable children, support family health and stability, get communities involved, and inform policy and systems change. Individual non-profit organizations do not always have the resources, expertise, time, or capacity to intentionally gather evidence to support critical reflection of their services. Balancing the needs of all organizational representatives into one evaluation will be challenging. As will efforts to mobilize evaluation evidence so diverse audiences can learn about the AIFY initiative and its work. This case study will allow the Evaluation Capacity Network research team to more closely examine how community partners, collaboratively delivering services to children and families, develop and use evidence to inform and improve organizational practices, programs, and policies, navigate systems change, and establish common outcomes.

From Observation to Response: The use of inclusive indicators to inform coastal Inuit resilience in Northern Labrador.

This project focuses on building a framework for socio-ecological and economic indicators that integrate local observations and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). The primary goal is to uncover valuable knowledge of coastal communities and provide a tool that encompasses TEK in measuring the status and trends in the health of marine resources while at the same time advancing our understanding of Inuit community values and customs. Due to the absence of data that characterize the coastal ecosystems and communities of Labrador, developing such indicators has been heretofore impossible. In identifying the current state of fisheries and the indicators that can help improve the ecological and social outcomes from fisheries management in Nunatsiavut, I will be organizing focus group discussions with Nunatsiavut communities and semi-structured interviews with local and regional stakeholders involved in the pre and post harvesting sector. Early involvement of those groups in identifying the needs and challenges for the development of indicators is critical in making sure that their input and local observations are effectively taken into account.

Computer-vision Powered Smart Production Assistant

Over 70% of tasks in manufacturing are still manual; therefore, over 75% of variation in manufacturing comes from human beings. Human errors were the major driver behind $22.1 billion in vehicle recalls in 2016. Currently, when plant operators want to gain an understanding of their manual processes, they send out their highly-paid industrial engineers to run time studies. These studies produce highly biased and inaccurate data that provides minimal value to manufacturing teams. This project aims to create a smart production assistant that helps manufacturing plant operators gain unprecedented visibility into their manual production operations, allowing them to optimize their worker efficiency while maximizing productivity. This will be done by automated data generation using computer vision, conversion of raw data into useable information, visualization of information using common Business Intelligence methodologies and lastly, prediction of future plant performance based on historical information, as well as information about other market drivers.

TEDS – Train Early Detection System

In Canada there are just over 17,000 public rail crossings—17% have gates, 22% just have bells and lights, and the remaining 61% have a white, reflective X crossing sign which at times is accompanied by a stop sign. In the U.S., the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) latest figures (2009) indicate there are 136,041 public rail crossings—31% have gates, 16% have flashing lights and 1% have highway traffic signals, wigwags and bells. The remaining 52% have a yellow and black crossbuck. Unsecured rail crossings, combined with distracted drivers, can lead to fatal accidents. For example, the Sept 18th, 2013 OC Transpo / VIA rail crash resulted in 6 fatalities and 34 people injured. The TBS investigation determined that distracted driving was a key cause of the crash, and distracted driving is on the rise.
In this project, we will explore and develop the key building blocks to building an efficient and scalable train early detection system (TEDS). The key idea is as follows: As trains move, their locations are updated on a public or private server. User devices such as a smartphone run an APP that checks a user’s location against known train locations.

Community Engagement and Ownership of Projects Emerging from Social Innovation Labs

The purpose of the proposed research is to identify the factors and indicators that enable, or block community actors from taking ownership of a solution previously led by a social leader or government actor. The project will allow our partner and the communities they work with to gain a better understanding of factors that enable the transition of projects to ownership within the community, as well as further the available research and knowledge for other government or social led business ventures transitioning ownership to the community. The key objectives for the research are to identify the indicators that create a space for a community actor to take on ownership of a project, specifically looking at the factors that attracted them to take on this ownership role and how they took on this position. In doing so, we will trace the path through which impact occurs by mapping interactions between actors and groups directly and indirectly involved in the project.

Modelling the current and future (2025) state of travel demand in the Toronto-Waterloo Innovation Corridor

The economic productivity and social quality of life within the Greater Golden Horseshoe (GGH) in general and the Toronto – Waterloo Innovation Corridor in particular depends on a high-quality transportation network that provides cost-effective, attractive mobility to the regions residents and businesses. Expansion of the GGH road and transit networks, however, has not kept up with the region’s rapid and sustained growth over the past several decades. While major new transportation infrastructure investment is needed to fill this gap, such projects typically take decades and billions of dollars to complete. This project involves a comprehensive investigation of short-run improvements that can be made to the region’s transportation services (particularly its surface transit network) that will significantly improve the system’s performance over the next few years while longer-term major expansions to the system are being planned and built.

Retrofit of Switcher Locomotive: Clean Energy Hydrogen Fuel Cell/ Battery Hybrid (Hydrail) with Innovative High Density H2 Storage

The H2M project, with the assistance of University of British Columbia Okanagan, will demonstrate a scaled down fuel cell powered rail locomotive (Hydrail) (250 horse power) and solid-state hydrogen storage retrofit solution on a Southern Railway of BC (SRY) diesel-electric switching locomotive. If the scaled down trial is successful, the project will proceed to scale up to a full powered locomotive (700 horse power). The project is expected to be complete by March 2022. H2M’s application includes local partners: University of British Columbia Okanagan and Southern Railway of BC. Research problem to be addressed: To reduce cost of H2 storage and dispensing, thereby increasing locomotive range and improving economics for NA fleet conversion. At $1 to 2 million/conversion, across all 24,000 locomotives, this approaches a $50 Billion commercialization potential for BC industry.

Shot peening for fatigue life improvement and forming of aerospace structures

Shot peening is a cold working process widely used to improve the fatigue life of

metal components in the aerospace industry and to produce thin components with complex shapes such

as wing skins. This process is accomplished by bombarding the surface of a metallic component with

shots at a high velocity that induce a layer of plastic deformation near the surface. This plastic

deformation leads to a residual compressive stress field in the peened surface that reduces the

likelihood of premature failure under cyclic loading conditions and therefore improves the fatigue life of

the peened component. Peen forming is a special application of shot peening, during which, the

combination plastic deformation and compressive stress generation causes the material to develop a

compound, convex curvature on the peened side. Shot peen forming is often more effective in

developing curvatures than rolling, stretching or twisting of metal. Because it is a dieless process, shot

peen forming reduces material allowance from trimming and…..TOBECONTINUED

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Cultural memory and diversity in Canadian film festival programming

“Cultural memory and diversity in Canadian film festival programming” will work with the Kingston Canadian Film Festival and the Vulnerable Media Lab at Queen’s University to research best practices related to film and video preservation, media digitization, and public programming. Specifically, interns will investigate the role of historic films made by diverse Canadians – including women, Indigenous and Métis, Inuit, and LGBT2Q+ people – within national film festivals, considering the social roles that these films and their screening cultures play. Through researching, archiving, and digitizing a selection of films made by marginalized Canadians, interns will work with the Kingston Canadian Film Festival to diversify their screenings and preserve their own archive.

Innovation indicators framework for technology-based companies

The project consists on the construction of a system of innovation management indicators (framework) for managing innovation in technology-based companies. For this, studies will be carried out together with companies, since the lack of harmony between the theoretical frameworks and companies’ needs is a highlighted problem. There will be three main activities in the research scholarship: (a) refinement of the literature review, applying topic modeling tools developed by professor Stoyan Tanev to structure the insights from literature; (b) field research, understanding Ottawa’s innovation ecosystem and being in contact with companies; and, (c) framework applicability check, based on the state of the art and state of the practice.