Geo Days 2019 the place to be for geomatics engineering insight

When Canada’s Geomatics Engineering Departments gather, you’re pretty much guaranteed a conference where no one feels out of place.

The opportunity to share ideas and insight into the latest spatial data research made Geo Days 2019 and the 1st Canadian Geomatics Engineering Conference a resounding success, with the Schulich School of Engineering playing host to the concurrent events over one weekend in late February.

With visitors from across Canada and speakers from the geomatics engineering industry, the events brought cutting-edge research and fascinating real-life geomatics experience together under one roof, including a keynote speech by University of Calgary grad Ivan Maddox.

“One of the things about creating these geospatial data sets and building awareness about it is you can bring about beneficial results,” said Maddox, executive vice-president of Intermap.

Intermap is the company which played a key role in the successful rescue of 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave system in Thailand last year, after providing sophisticated mapping data of the 10-kilometre-deep Tham Luang cave system, where the team was trapped.

A chance to exchange ideas

As well as keynote speeches, the Canadian Geomatics Engineering Conference gave Geomatics Engineering Departments/Programs in Canada (UNB, ULaval, YorkU, Ryerson, Waterloo, SAIT, BCIT, UCalgary) a chance to meet, exchange ideas, and foster the inter-department collaboration.

The goal is to see the conference develop into a full-fledged conference on Geomatics in general, giving Canadian researchers a chance to meet on a regular basis, stay connected, and join forces to face future challenges.

Meanwhile, Geo Days 2019 featured a series of Geomatics Engineering Events hosted and organised by students, staff and faculty from UCalgary’s Department of Geomatics Engineering.

First place for Team Calgary

Events included the 2nd Annual National Geomatics Competition, a student-led consulting engineering competition featuring 12 student teams from seven institutions and industry representatives from across the country.

First place went to UCalgary Team 1: Morgan Moe, Jamie Horrelt and Kiera Fulton; second Place went to BCIT: Meaghan McLellan, Benoit Chevrette, Kathryn Conconi and third place to Laval Team 1: Vincent Patenaude, William Pomerleau, Benjamin Lauzière.

Brand new for this year was Geomathon, a hacking, designing, and innovating event aimed at Graduate Students from geospatial related fields.

First Place went to Randy Ho, Brandon Wong, Changlin Yang, and Cheng Huang for their ‘Safeguard’ (Fall Detection). Second Place to Zhitao Lyu, Kaixiang Tong, Wei Ding, and River Jiang for their ‘Novel Way of Tilt Survey.’ Third Place to Emad Ghaleh Noei, Bahareh Yekkehkhany, and Mohammadreza Rahimi for their ‘Parking Detection System.’

And there was Geomatics Exposition 2019, a career exposition providing geomatics and other engineering students a chance to connect with industry.