Canadian Geospatial Digest for Jan 29th, 2024
- Did you know about Canada’s tundra fire?
- A new digital map will facilitate the deployment of autonomous vehicles
- Launch day for a climate measuring satellite: Kudos to the team of students at Memorial University
- Waterloo Researcher’s tool part of European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative
- National database for roads and addresses: ESRI Canada’s Program
Did you know about Canada’s tundra fire?
Fires in the Tundra region are evolving. It may be small and away from the community, but it is crucial to record them. Matthew Hethcoat and his colleagues from the National Resources of Canada’s Northern Forestry Centre began by studying satellite images from 1986 to 2022.

A file image of a tundra fire. Alexandr Hlopotov/Dreamstime
They used trained software to learn the difference between burned and unburned pixels in the images. Decades worth of unnoticed wildfires in Tundra were identified. Due to lack of enough data, it is challenging to make any informed decision at present. However, this new research is setting up a baseline for the data. Know more about tundra fire here
A new digital map will facilitate the deployment of autonomous vehicles
A high precision 3D digital map of the city of Toronto has been developed by Ontario’s innovator in digital mapping Ecopia AI. The maps are for the use of autonomous vehicle(AV). When it comes to AVs, to function efficiently and safely, a number of geospatial technologies are needed, including a fundamental reference dataset of real-world features.

Photo: Ecopia AI
To create this map, Ecopia gathered high resolution street views, aerial images of road network, lane delineation, pedestrian features and buildings in 3D. This is vital in training, testing deploying AVs as help vehicle to navigate in the correction direction. Know more here
Launch day for a climate measuring satellite: Kudos to the team at Memorial University
‘ Killick-1 ‘ is a teensy cube satellite, which has been in making for years. And finally it about to get launched into space as part of SpaceX’s mission to the International Space Station on March 3rd. The group of engineers designed and built this satellite with a mission to observe climate data and sea ice in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The Killick-1 cube satellite was designed and built by students at Memorial University in St. John’s
The satellite is made of aluminum and is quite small; it weighs about one kilogram. It contains a lot of integral parts for collecting data from orbit. The Killick-1 will orbit for one year before burning up in Earth’s atmosphere. Know more about this here
Waterloo Researcher’s tool European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative
Researchers at the University of Waterloo have created new methods that provide an unparalleled level of accuracy in assessing lake ice conditions, with the goal of advancing climate change observation and safety for people.
The researchers are the first to handle satellite radar altimetry data using machine learning models that can distinguish between open water, thin ice, increasing ice, and melting ice with 94% accuracy.
The algorithm will be used as part of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Climate Change Initiative to evaluate lake ice patterns over time.
It represents a significant advancement for climate change monitoring.
Because the presence or absence of lake ice in Northern communities impacts food security, recreational activities, tourism, and ice road traffic, it is also important for public safety and recreation. Know more about this here
National database for roads and addresses: ESRI Canada’s Program
The aim to this program to build upgraded and meticulous GIS database for Canada-wide roads and address. The Roads and Address Program at Esri Canada, plan to take on the same model that is being used by the Community Maps program.
The Roads and Address Program at Esri Canada, aims to adopt the same model that is being used by the Community Maps Program. This strategy creates accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date roads and addresses information by having local authoritative data suppliers contribute updates that are automatically merged into the database. Know more here

A comparison of road data provided by a local municipality (left), by a province (middle) and by the federal government (right). All data was accessed on the same day. Data from the provinces and the federal government can be a year or two out of date, highlighting the need for an automated update process to aggregate local sources automatically. Source: Esri Canada.