Remote sensing of fluvial environments: Automating the freedom space delineation to support sustainable river management at large scale

Recent advances in hydrogeomorphology promote a sustainable, holistic approach to river management based on the concepts of working with nature, where mobility and flood zones are defined to give more space to rivers for fluvial processes and associated ecosystem services to operate. This sustainable and proactive restoration vision, termed “the freedom space for river” concept, defies the traditional reach-based, engineering interventions which are often temporarily displacing the problems rather than solving them. The objective of this project is to develop novel approaches to implement the freedom space concept through a semi-automation of its cartography at local and regional scales to make it available to municipalities and river managers for entire watersheds. It is hoped that these tools will facilitate the application of freedom space concepts in river management in Quebec and the rest of Canada thanks to the partnership between the environmental company AECOM and the University of Concordia.

Faculty Supervisor:

Pascale Biron

Student:

Partner:

AECOM (Montreal, QC)

Discipline:

Earth science

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Concordia University

Program: