Canada

Municipalities in Quebec’s capital region have recently begun using artificial intelligence to track everything from tree cover to cars — and even backyard pools. The Communauté métropolitaine de Québec, which groups Quebec City and its suburbs, says the groundbreaking project will help member municipalities achieve their environmental targets, assess parking availability and monitor urban development. ...

The Canadian government has launched a new interactive online map pinpointing the location of residential schools, and experts say it will help in the search for unmarked or forgotten graves of children forced to go to the institutions. Many residential school buildings have been torn down, paved or built over since the first one opened ...

A growing number of heritage buildings primed for demolition in London will live on virtually with the help of high-end 3D technology. The city has amassed a small but growing number of virtual building replicas as part of its regular process to document and photograph heritage properties, or properties with heritage components, before their date ...

With weather, limited flights and long distances, gravel runways at remote airports—particularly in northern Canada—are difficult to get to, let alone to inspect for safety. So Northeastern University researcher Michal Aibin and his team have developed a more thorough, safer and faster way to inspect such runways using drones, computer vision and artificial intelligence. The ...

The Town of The Blue Mountains will soon have its own online and interactive Cultural Map. For the past several months, the town’s museum staff and the town’s GIS department have been working together on the cultural mapping project. Together, they are creating a comprehensive record of the cultural, natural and intangible features that define ...

The UK government has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Government of Ontario, Canada, to share knowledge and technology related to creating digital maps of underground infrastructure. The agreement was signed by Viscount Camrose, Minister for Intellectual Property, and Kinga Surma, Minister of Infrastructure with the Government of Ontario. The MoU outlines a ...

A new app featuring more than 10,000 aerial photos from London and surrounding counties shows what the region looked like from the air in the last 100 years. Developed by Eunice Chu, a fourth-year geographic information systems (GIS) student who works as a student library assistant at the Map and Data Centre at Western University’s ...

Organic agriculture may be as old as dirt, but that doesn’t mean its impacts are fully understood. A team of scientists in the United States and Canada are doing their part to change that. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara, University of British Columbia, and University of Colorado Boulder discovered that organic farming significantly affects the ...

A new scientific endeavour has taken to the sky using high-tech drones and satellite images to understand better the annual spring herring spawn vital to salmon and wildlife on the West Coast. Between February and March each year, frigid ocean waters transform to a milky tropical-looking turquoise green when male herring release milt to fertilize ...

Wildfire fighting and forest management decisions are potentially being hampered by inaccurate government data that misrepresents forest fuel loads in British Columbia’s Interior, a new study has found. The B.C. government says the provincial wildfire service is working with the study’s lead author and others to close the data gap, which involves “mismatches” between remotely-sensed ...

A new online tool allows users to examine agricultural land use across the country. Developed by ALCES for the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, the Agriculture Web Mapping Application Tool offers maps and datasets about land use, management practices and agri-environmental indicators. Census, crop production and land use data can be viewed individually or overlaid. Tyler ...

Michelle Cyca has had to change too many diapers on bathroom floors. The mother of two (her youngest is in his peak diaper phase right now), says she finally had enough after having to change her child’s diaper on the concrete floor of an Oak Street deli. So she decided to do something about it. ...

People who live near the Region of Waterloo International Airport know it can get noisy there and that intrigued a group of third-year geography and aviation students at the University of Waterloo. As pilots, Matthew Toy, Chase Cardoza, Nikith Challa and Isabelle Mazzoco know planes can get loud and wanted to look into just how ...

In wildfire season, sometimes you can’t see the tundra for the trees. Most Northwest Territories communities facing any kind of wildfire threat are the ones in the boreal forest. For obvious reasons, the forest gets all the attention. That’s where the fuel and danger is. As a result, nobody has really been counting the tundra ...

Even as Alberta prepares for a serious drought this spring, government officials continue to update flood mapping studies covering 1,600 kilometres of riverways. The province is asking for public feedback on 27 flood studies across the province, encompassing 600 kilometres of updated mapping and 1,000 kilometres of new mapping. “That’s more flood mapping we are ...

Researchers and students at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology are using sophisticated drones to digitally map Frog Lake First Nation. The nation, about 260 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, has relied on paper and low-resolution digital maps that no longer represent the community, according to the research team. “Maps are incredibly dynamic. They change quite ...

Two years ago, Ecopia received almost $1 million from the Ontario Vehicle Innovation Network (OVIN) to fund this map’s development. The work was done using artificial intelligence technology to plot crucial information about Toronto’s land cover and transportation features. The data is essential to supporting safe and effective AV transportation and navigation. Ecopia also invested ...

Toronto Pearson International Airport, in Ontario, Canada, is the country’s largest and busiest airport, serving some 50 million passengers each year. To enhance traveler experiences, the airport in June deployed the Zensors AI platform, which uses anonymized footage from existing security cameras to generate spatial data that helps optimize operations in real time. Using anonymized ...

Une nouvelle recherche publiée aujourd’hui par AccessNow, une entreprise de technologie de l’accessibilité, en collaboration avec l’Université de Calgary, Lésions médullaires Canada et BDO, révèle que près de 60 % des bâtiments cartographiés à Vancouver, Calgary et Ottawa ne sont pas entièrement accessibles et met en évidence les zones où les villes et les propriétaires ...

MDA selected SpaceX to launch its Chorus next-generation Earth observation constellation, planned for launch in the fourth quarter of 2025. The mission will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket, MDA announced Wednesday. MDA CEO Mike Greenley said Chorus production is well underway. MDA announced the constellation in December 2021. It will build on the company’s ...

Canada’s geospatial community is gearing up for the country’s inaugural national geospatial exposition. The GoGeomatics Expo is scheduled to take place from 6-8 November at the iconic Calgary Stampede grounds. The GoGeomatics Expo’s highlights encompass speaking programmes featuring renowned experts in the geospatial field who will share their insights on industry trends, challenges and future ...

A new study, using a first-of-its-kind approach to analyze satellite imagery from boreal forests over the last three decades, found that fire may be changing the face of the region in a way researchers did not previously anticipate. Historically, fires in North American boreal forests have led to coniferous trees being supplanted by deciduous trees, ...

Scientists from the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), together with collaborators from Shihezi University (Xinjiang, China) and University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada), have proposed a cotton mapping strategy and provided high-resolution cotton maps throughout Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. Xinjiang is the leading and largest cotton production region ...

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) will receive substantial new government funding to extend the long-standing Radarsat satellite series, a keystone of the country’s climate change strategy and international disaster response, not to mention military surveillance. The agency allocation is $1.012 billion CDN (roughly $740,000 USD) over 15 years, a substantial boost to annual spending. At ...

VertiGIS, a worldwide leader in spatial asset management solutions and geographic information system (GIS) software is proud to announce the latest addition to the new VertiGIS Networks product line: VertiGIS Network Locator. This innovative locates solution for underground utilities revolutionizes the way companies handle the demand of 811, Call-Before-You-Dig and One-Call responses with efficiency and ...

Canada’s fire forecasters will be getting a new tool in their battle against out-of-control blazes. In this year’s record-scorching fire season, provincial and federal wildfire agencies had to rely on a mix of European and NASA satellite instruments to help monitor and predict fire behaviour. Now, however, the Canadian Space Agency is preparing to launch ...

Balko Tech, a Canadian innovator in the geospatial industry, has announced the launch of Connectiv, the next evolution of its modular drone Lidar system. This release also includes the introduction of the e-Connect application. Following the success of the e-ONE system in 2021, Connectiv represents a significant leap forward in technology, designed to offer geospatial ...

The Guelph Lab, a collaboration of The College of Social and Applied Human Sciences, University of Guelph and the City of Guelph, is working with the university’s Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics to identify areas in the city without public washroom access so that facilities can be considered for the future. Guelph Lab facilitator ...

Esri Canada, today announced its acquisition of Ratio.City, a Toronto-based urban planning software and data company. This acquisition expands Esri Canada’s community planning solutions portfolio, enabling customers to better collaborate within the land development and planning community, and accelerating the design and approval of more affordable housing. “Ratio.City’s extensive expertise in planning, design and development ...

Le Géoportail de santé publique du Québec est une plateforme cartographique qui permet de visualiser la variation géographique d’indicateurs de santé et de ses déterminants partout au Québec. La plateforme est accessible à tous les organismes ainsi qu’au grand public. Des indicateurs sont aussi disponibles en lien avec la qualité de l’air et bruit environnemental, ...