Like most Canadian municipalities, the City of Ottawa is struggling to reign in urban sprawl and encourage sustainable residential development. According to my doctoral research, few residential developers in Ottawa are heeding the call to build green. Profits and markets are larger for single detached houses in the suburbs, and housing consumers choose green construction […]

BC Hydro purchases power from four independent wind farms in British Columbia to supplement their hydropower. But wind is not steady, so BC Hydro must compensate for shortfalls or excesses in wind power to provide steady, reliable, economical power to its customers. To achieve this reliability, BC Hydro uses wind forecasts provided by the University […]

This project is focused on exploring volunteered geographic information (VGI), a special classification of widely available and pervasive data, which is commonly afflicted by issues degrading its overall quality. These issues make the applicability of VGI for a variety of projects in government, private, and scientific sectors questionable. We hope to design and implement several […]

In 2006, the Government of Ontario introduced “Places to Grow: Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe” to control urban sprawl, protect farmland and green spaces, create complete communities and revitalize downtowns and urban centres. Key specifications include minimum intensification targets, such as requiring 40% of new residential development to occur in existing built-up areas. […]

The Mapping our Common Ground Mitacs- supported Internships will support the Evaluation and Communications functions for the UVIC Community Mapping Collaboratory. Supported by lead Academics from UVIC and UBC, key staff working at the Collaboratory and key advisors from the Community Mapping Collaboratory Steering Ctte (including Wendy Brawer from the global Green Map system and […]

e projet scientifique, qui se déroulera entre juin 2014 et mai 2016, comprend 8 blocs de stage Mitacs-Accélération répartis entre 3 stagiaires, en maitrise, doctorat et postdoctorat. Il vise à mieux comprendre la structure et le métamorphisme d’une portion de croûte archéenne, ainsi que les relations géométriques et chronologiques avec la mise en place des […]

The proposed research will use a multiproxy fire history approach to reconstruct wildfire history, severity, and impacts, as well as controls on and changes to the fire regime in the Alberta Foothills region. Fire scar and stand origin records will be used to reconstruct the fire history of the study area over recent decades and […]

The objective is to create new weather-forecast products to enable BC Hydro meteorologists to better support electric-power generation, power transmission, dispatch of emergency repair crews, anticipation of electric loads, and energy trading. The method is to use powerful computers to solve atmospheric equations for future weather (a method called Numerical Weather Prediction, NWP), and to […]

This project involves better understanding how climate change might affect our natural environment with the Region of Peel located within the Greater Toronto Area. The approach is to consider how vulnerable components of the natural environment, such as streams, forests and the organisms living in these habitats, might be to a new climate or extreme […]

There are currently tens of thousands of locations throughout North America where pipelines cross stream channels. At these locations, instability of the stream bed and banks poses a serious risk to pipeline infrastructure, and has the potential to cause environmental harm. The objective of this internship is to improve the numerical models used to monitor […]

Raglan Mine is developing new, strategic and aligned approaches to its Community Social Involvement (CSI) program. The aim of this program is to partner with others to deliver long lasting value through programs of capacity building, and community social and economic development. This proposed research project involves further developing a comprehensive Community Social Involvement (CSI) […]

Rain-on-snow events, where rain falls on pre-existing snow, cause some of the highest peak flows in mountainous coastal regions, such as Southwestern British Columbia. Operational hydrologists have a difficult time predicting runoff during these events because of an incomplete knowledge of the energy fluxes into and within the snowpack over large areas, and because of […]