Canadian Geospatial Digest July 24th, 2023

1. ‘Incredible geo-cultural landscape’ is being mapped using a drone.
2. FireSmoke Canada Interactive Map
3. Sea ice in Hudson Bay is melting sooner than usual
4. 2023 North American Indigenous Games to use advanced mapping technology.
5. The 2023 Esri Special Achievement in GIS Award goes to the City of Ottawa
6. Successful Launch of Telesat’s LEO 3 Demonstration Satellite

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‘Incredible geo-cultural landscape’ is being mapped using a drone.

University of Toronto post-doctoral geologist Kristen Kennedy will be spending the summer mapping the Georgian Bay watershed with a drone equipped with LiDAR. The project is funded by a grant from the Trebek Initiative. According to Kennedy, “The project is to document and map the geo-cultural landscape of Georgian Bay,” said Kennedy. Georgian Bay has an incredible geo-cultural landscape. It’s a landscape that has evolved over billions of years, but in the last 10,000 years has been occupied by people.” In addition, the results of the project will inform the planning o the Georgian Bay Geopark project, which aims of attaining UNESCO status.

 

Full article here.

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FireSmoke Canada Interactive Map

FireSmoke Canada is an interactive map created by BlueSky Canada that displays smoke forecasts, fire weather forecasts, and fire information across Canada, the United States, and Mexico. This data is produced by the Weather Forecast Research Team at the University of British Columbia (with assistance from governmental agencies) and fed into the BlueSky playground. The goal of this interactive map is to provide data to professionals in air quality, health and safety, and emergency management fields to better plan and prepare. In addition, it provides information to the general community to plan and organize based on smoke and fires.

Interactive Map here.

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Sea ice in Hudson Bay is melting sooner than usual

Due to warm weather sea ice in Hudson Bay has broken up at an accelerated rate. And according to Canadian Ice Service data, this has been a trend over the past decade; sea ice coverage is shrinking. Ice typically breaks up, however, in recent years the time at which the break up occurs happens sooner and sooner. Putting animals like polar bears, which rely on ice for hunting, in jeopardy.

Full article here.

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2023 North American Indigenous Games to use advanced mapping technology

From July 15th – 23rd, 2023 Kjipuktuk (Halifax), Nova Scotia, will be hosting the 2023 North American Indigenous Games (NAIG). In order to streamline event operations as well as event planning the NAIG Host Society has collaborated with Esri Canada to create GIS apps that visualize, analyze, and share information related to the games. The GIS apps will help improve several areas of the games, including Venue planning and mapping – for connecting all venues and identifying specific stations within each venue, such as medical and security stations and Venue materials inventory – for capturing materials (e.g., tables, chairs) within each venue. In addition, the NAIG is using reality capture technology provided by consultant firm EastPoint. Floorplans were collected using 3D laser scanning and BIM software to provide an accurate layout of event venues and surrounds.

Full article here.

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The 2023 Esri Special Achievement in GIS Award goes to the City of Ottawa

At the 2023 Esri User Conference, Esri Canada presented the City of Ottawa with the 2023 Esri Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award. Out of thousands of other Esri customer organizations, the City of Ottawa was selected for “exceptional use of geographic information system (GIS) technology to visualize and plan urban development in new ways.” Specifically, the City of Ottawa was recognized for transforming its 2D mapping data into interactive 3D digital twin data. Using ArcGIS Urban the 3D visualizations provides decision-makers creative and innovative experiences throughout the city planning process.

Full article here.

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Successful Launch of Telesat’s LEO 3 Demonstration Satellite

Telesat’s LEO 3 satellite was successfully launched from Mahia, New Zealand aboard one of Rocket Lab’s Electron rockets. The LEO 3 satellite features Ka- and V-band payloads and will continue to help with vendor testing as the Phase 1 LEO satellites are decommissioned.

Full article here.

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