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GGE News - 2012

Spring 2012 Graduate Seminar and Student Technical Conference

An interesting and informative Graduate Seminar and Student Technical Conference was held in the David E. Wells room (E-11) of the Engineering building, Head Hall, during the afternoon of Wednesday, April 4, 2012. The well-attended activity showcased nine graduate students making presentations of their selected topics previously submitted in formal papers. The seminar organizer, Shabnam Jabari, opened the event with prepared remarks and introductions including that of Dean David J. Coleman for the Faculty of Engineering. The first afternoon session included the following topics: quality assessments of volunteered geospatial data, detection of specific waterborne objects using a multibeam array, a study of geoidal undulations, vehicle velocity estimation using multispectral imagery, and advanced hydrodynamic modeling to estimate sound speed in a complex estuary. The chair of the first session was Evans Ralston. The second afternoon session began with the introductions of Bahram Salehi as the chair. There were four presentations covering object orientation estimation using magnetic and inertial sensing, environmental object attenuation reduction when using multi-sector sonar, proper integration of observations in hydrographic surveys, and 4D ionosphere tomographic modeling using GPS and GLONASS observations data.

A pair of judges evaluated each oral presentation and the corresponding papers in order to select the graduate student paper awards winners The judges, Professor Susan Nichols, GGE Director of Graduate Studies, and Adjunct Professor Anna Chrzanowski, reviewed the submitted papers and presentations at the conclusion of the sessions.

A post seminar reception with a food buffet was held for presenters, faculty, and guests. Professor Peter Dare, chairman of the GGE department welcomed all, announced the award decisions and made presentations. The awards were made possible thanks to the generous support of McElhanney Land Surveys Ltd., part of the McElhanney Canadian consulting company. Cash awards of $1000, $300, and $200 were presented to the first, second, and third place winners. The first place winner was Ian Church for his presentation “Estimating sound speed uncertainty within a complex estuary using hydrodynamic modeling.” Second place was won by Carlos Rubrio Marques and third place by Rodrigo Carvalho, making a clean sweep for the department’s Ocean Mapping Group.

The seminar was a well-attended success due, in part, to the strong support of our sponsors: McElhanney, the Faculty of Engineering, and the Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering. The support of GGE staff also contributed to the event’s success.

Click on the thumbnail image to look at photos taken during the seminar.

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Annual GGE Graduate Dinner

The Geomatics Undergraduate Engineering Student Society (GUESS) hosted the annual Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering graduate dinner on Friday, March 30 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. There were a total of 47 students, faculty, and staff present at the event, including special guests Professor Emeritus Angus Hamilton and his wife, Margaret. Highlights of the night included a few thoughtful words by Dr. Peter Dare, chair of the department; a lapel pin presentation to the May 2012 graduates by Dr. James Secord; and the annual grad “gag” gift exchange. The night finished off with the presentation of a gift to Dr. Secord in the form of a “Flagging Dispenser 3000,” made by GGE students enrolled in the course TME 3313 (Project Management).

GUESS would like to thank all of the students, faculty, staff, and special guests that made it out for a night of great food, lots of laughs, and well-deserved recognition. We wish all of the 2012 graduates good luck in their future endeavours and hope they all keep their “useful” gifts!

Click on the thumbnail image to look at photos taken during the dinner. (Photos: Norman Chai, 2012-March-30)

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2012 Undergraduate Technical Conference

The Dept. of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering 2012 undergraduate student paper competition and technical conference was held on 22 March. It featured 20 presentations covering various aspects of geodesy and geomatics.

After opening remarks, the first session began at 9:30 a.m. This year’s conference was slightly different from past years in that there were four sessions overall, and all 10 of the afternoon presentations were part of the Geomatics Engineering Student Paper Competition, co-sponsored by the New Brunswick Branch of the Canadian Institute of Geomatics (CIG).

There were 10 students competing for three top prizes. The first prize was $1000, awarded by the Canadian Institute of Geomatics. Second prize was $700, awarded by McElhanney. Third prize was $500, awarded by Midwest Surveys and a honorary mention of $100, was awarded by GGE.

Upon completion of all of the presentations, Dr. James Secord gave closing remarks and offered his congratulations to all contestants and presenters of the day. At this time the judges gathered to deliberate while the presenters, faculty, and guests gathered for refreshments supplied by the department and McElhanney.

After a difficult deliberation, the judges returned with their results. An honorary mention was first awarded by Dr. Peter Dare, chair of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, to Dane Frenette, whose paper was entitled “A GIS-based web application for the Geo cell.” Third prize was awarded to Brett Watson for his paper “Accuracy and precision assessment of atmospheric pressure loading applied to precise point positioning.” Second prize was awarded to Brad Eisan, for his paper: “Acoustic mapping of a moving iceberg in the Canadian Arctic.” Finally, first prize was awarded by CIG’s Yves Léger to Tracey Peet for her paper “An assessment of the GOCE gravity models across Canada.”

The 2012 undergraduate student paper competition and student technical conference was a great success. This year's presentations were some of the best seen from the department.

Many of the day's events would not have been possible without gracious efforts and support of a select few people and sponsors. A huge thank you is extended to this year’s judges: Yves Léger, GISP, GIS Manager, City of Saint John, and chair of the New Brunswick Branch of CIG; John Ellefsen, GIS Coordinator, City of Saint John; and Jody Blakely, P.Eng., CBCL Limited, Saint John [UNB Geomatics Engineering, 1997], secretary of the New Brunswick Branch of CIG. Also, many thanks for the support of our sponsors, the CIG New Brunswick Branch, McElhanney, and Midwest Surveys. Finally, a big thanks goes out to the Michelle Ryan for organizing the reception, as well as the Geomatics Undergraduate Engineering Student Society committee for putting on the lunch-time barbecue.

Congratulations to all of this year’s presenters!

Click on the thumbnail image to look at photos taken during the conference. (Photos: Norman Chai, 2012-March-22)

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GGE's Yun Zhang Receives Research Council Award from Governor General

At a ceremomy at Rideau Hall on Monday afternoon (27 February), Prof. Yun Zhang of the University of New Brunswick's Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering received one of this year's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Synergy Awards for Innovation.

The Synergy Awards recognize partnerships in natural sciences and engineering research and development between universities and industry. They honour the most outstanding achievements of university-industry collaboration in the natural sciences and engineering. Winners receive a $200,000 research grant.

Prof. Zhang, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Advanced Geomatics Image Processing at UNB, received the award for his research with imagery taken by satellites. As stated in an NSERC backgrounder, "[the] satellites provide the ultimate "big picture" and make it possible to see what's happening in hard-to-reach places. However, it can be slow, expensive and difficult to process the vast amounts of data captured by satellite imagery. This team is working to solve this problem by creating complex algorithms that can fuse images from satellites with a processing speed and image quality that is the best in the world. It's also developing technology that makes remote sensing imagery look more like traditional aerial photography."

Prof. Zhang's research aims at solving challenging technical problems in remote sensing image processing that are of great benefit to industry. He has worked directly with PCI Geomatics in Toronto, a world leader in geo-imaging products and solutions, who have implemented a number of Dr. Zhang's innovations. Prof. Zhang teamed with PCI Geomatics for the NSERC award.

The awards ceremony was hosted by His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada.

Read the associated UNB news release.

NSERC profile

Click on the thumbnail image to look at photos taken during the ceremony.

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Chinese Geomatics Delegation Visits GGE

On February 16, 2012, a geomatics delegation from Jiangsu Province in the People’s Republic of China visited GGE to explore leading research trends in remote sensing and GIS. Due to vast infrastructure development, geomatics has been booming in China at an unprecedented pace. The purpose of the delegation’s overseas trip was to identity current and future leading geomatics technologies in the world and to place the province on the right track in purchasing modern geomatics equipment and software.

During the visit to GGE, Dr. Yun Zhang gave a presentation on new remote sensing technologies developed in his research lab and Dr. Emmanuel Stefanakis gave a presentation on the GIS work of his research group. GGE graduate students in remote sensing also participated in the meeting with the delegation. After the meeting, the delegation had a tour of the department.

Members of the delegation:

About Jiangsu Province:
Jiangsu is a province located along the east coast of China, neighboring Shanghai, with a population of 78.7 million (2010). With Nanjing as its capital, it is the province with the highest population density in China, except for the provincial level municipalities like Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin. Since the inception of economic reforms in 1978, Jiangsu has been a hot spot for economic development, and now has the highest GDP per capita of all Chinese provinces. It has been China’s largest recipient of foreign direct investment since 2006.

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UNB to Help Train Europeans in Understanding Space Weather Effects on Satellite Navigation

The University of New Brunswick has become an official partner of a major European program to train the next generation of scientists and engineers to counter solar threats to satellite positioning and navigation systems.

One of the major threats to our ever-increasing dependence on GPS and other global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs) comes from the sun. Solar-related phenomena and their effect on the Earth’s ionosphere, such as ionospheric scintillation, can be very disruptive, with serious consequences.

As we approach the next solar maximum in 2013, when ionospheric effects will be at their greatest, a network of internationally renowned experts, led by the Institute of Engineering Surveying and Space Geodesy (IESSG) at The University of Nottingham, are joining forces to help protect society from the effects of solar-related phenomena on GNSS signals. These experts will be training a new generation of young researchers as well as developing new research programs in the field of ionospheric perturbations and their mitigation.

At worst, solar outbursts can black out satellite signals altogether. They can also create positioning errors and rapid signal fading. These intermittent problems can impact all GNSS users including mission-critical and high-precision applications for air, rail, and marine transport, and even autonomous machinery in areas such as agriculture.

Testimony to the damaging effects of ionospheric interference were the serious service interruption and degradation caused by the so-called “Halloween storm” event that took place in October/November 2003, when one of the most intense solar flares ever was recorded: companies delayed high-precision land surveying, postponed airborne and marine surveys, cancelled drilling operations, and resorted to backup systems and commercial aircraft were unable to use GNSS-based systems for precision approaches.

TRANSMIT — Training Research and Applications Network to Support the Mitigation of Ionospheric Threats — is the first project of its kind in Europe. It is made up of a consortium of leading universities, research centres, and industry across Europe and as far afield as Brazil and Canada.

This €4m initiative is being funded by the European Commission (EC) through a Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN). ITNs are part of the FP7 People Programme and aim to improve the career perspectives of researchers who are in the first five years of their research career in both public and private sectors.

Marcio Aquino, coordinator and senior researcher in IESSG, said: “Europe lacks robust counter-measures to deal with these ionospheric threats. TRANSMIT will succeed in its aims because of the strong expertise and resources from its exceptional set of partners, encompassing both academic excellence and top-end users — including the aerospace and satellite communications sectors, GNSS system designers, service providers, major user operators and receiver manufacturers. The EC investment in projects like this confirms the importance Europe is giving to this new and exciting research area.”

The project will place Europe in a position to compete with state-of-the-art technology already being developed in North America.

A number of TRANSMIT fellows, the students selected to participate in the training program, will visit UNB for short periods to learn about the space weather data analysis tools and techniques developed by researchers in the Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering and the Department of Physics on the Fredericton campus.

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