As part of its webinars series, the Convergence Network received Ms. Annick Brosseau, Business Development Director for the Quebec region at MITACS, last February 4th. This webinar was an opportunity to demystify MITACS funding programs and provide answers to several questions from the community.
[See the webinar (in french) ]
[Download the presentation (.PDF)]
The Convergence Network is presenting a webinar with Dr. James Elder , York University, on February 24 at 11:00 ( eastern time)
Title: Intelligent Systems for Sustainable Urban Mobility
About James Elder
James Elder received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from McGill University in 1996. He is a member of the Centre for Vision Research and a Professor in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Psychology at York University. Dr. Elder’s research has won a number of awards and honours, including the Premier’s Research Excellence Award and the Young Investigator Award from the Canadian Image Processing and Pattern Recognition Society. His research interests include developing novel and useful computer vision algorithms and machine vision systems through a better understanding of visual processing in biological systems.
Register now ! (free)
We are happy to announce the arrival of two new industrial partners in the Convergence Network: Chaac Technologies and Thales- Research and Technology Canada.
Through this partnership, both companies hope to work with Network members on various R & D projects and benefit from our researchers expertise.
About Chaac Technologies
Chaac Technologies Inc. is a dynamic and innovative company that provides worldwide, software and mobile applications to support the decision process and information management during an environmental crisis. Chaac’s mission is to ensure that its customers are better prepared and intervene with optimal efficiency during response operations following emergencies.
About Thales Research and Technology Canada
Thales role is to assist customers in making decisions by providing the tools and technologies needed to gather, process and distribute information, helping them to understand complex situations so they can decide and act in a timely fashion and obtain the best outcomes. This understanding of the critical decision chain underpins their innovation and technological developments in areas such as large-scale software-driven systems, secure communications, sensors (radar, sonar, optical), supervision, onboard electronics, satellites and systems integration.
Click here for more information about our industrial partners
Read this most recent paper to know more about this emerging concept.
Wided Batita, Stéphane Roche, Yvan Bédard and Claude Caron
Abstract
As an emerging complex concept, GeoDesign requires an innovative theoretical basis, tools, supports and practices. For this reason, we propose a new concept, “WikiGIS”, designed to answer some dimensions of the GeoDesign process. WikiGIS focuses on the needs of GeoDesign, but we leave the door open for future improvement when tested in other areas that may have additional needs. WikiGIS is built on Web 2.0 technologies—and primarily on wiki—to manage the tracking of participants’ editing (i.e., managing the contributions history). It also offers GIS functions for geoprocessing and a design-based approach for sketching proposals. One of the main strengths of WikiGIS is its ability to manage the traceability of contributions with an easy and dynamical access, data quality and deltification. The core of this paper consists of presenting a conceptual framework for WikiGIS using UML diagrams. A user interface is presented later to show how our WikiGIS proposal works. This interface is simply a means to illustrate the concepts underlying WikiGIS.
This paper presents a new method that combines GPS/GLONASS measurements and uses fixed GPS ambiguity to improve precision and performance.
Abstract
Precise point positioning (PPP) technology is mostly implemented with an ambiguity-float solution. Its performance may be further improved by performing ambiguity-fixed resolution. Currently, the PPP integer ambiguity resolutions (IARs) are mainly based on GPS-only measurements. The integration of GPS and GLONASS can speed up the convergence and increase the accuracy of float ambiguity estimates, which contributes to enhancing the success rate and reliability of fixing ambiguities. This paper presents an approach of combined GPS/GLONASS PPP with fixed GPS ambiguities (GGPPP-FGA) in which GPS ambiguities are fixed into integers, while all GLONASS ambiguities are kept as float values. An improved minimum constellation method (MCM) is proposed to enhance the efficiency of GPS ambiguity fixing. Datasets from 20 globally distributed stations on two consecutive days are employed to investigate the performance of the GGPPP-FGA, including the positioning accuracy, convergence time and the time to first fix (TTFF). All datasets are processed for a time span of three hours in three scenarios, i.e., the GPS ambiguity-float solution, the GPS ambiguity-fixed resolution and the GGPPP-FGA resolution. The results indicate that the performance of the GPS ambiguity-fixed resolutions is significantly better than that of the GPS ambiguity-float solutions. In addition, the GGPPP-FGA improves the positioning accuracy by 38%, 25% and 44% and reduces the convergence time by 36%, 36% and 29% in the east, north and up coordinate components over the GPS-only ambiguity-fixed resolutions, respectively. Moreover, the TTFF is reduced by 27% after adding GLONASS observations. Wilcoxon rank sum tests and chi-square two-sample tests are made to examine the significance of the improvement on the positioning accuracy, convergence time and TTFF.
GeoConnections invites you to learn about how geospatial information technologies contribute to the Big Data phenomenon and inversely, how Big Data technology contributes to geomatics.
You will learn more about:
English Webinar: Tuesday, October 28, 2014 – 1:30-3:00 pm (Eastern Daylight time)
French Webinar: Thursday, October 30, 2014 – 1:30-3:00 pm (Eastern Daylight time)
To register for this webinar, please contact Angélie Huchette by e-mail at Angelie.Huchette@RNCan-NRCan.gc.ca, or by telephone at 819-564-5600, ext. 297.Registered participants will receive a follow-up e-mail with information about how to access and participate in the webinar.
The 5th Spatial Knowledge and Information (SKI) Canada conference will be held in Banff, Alberta from February 27 to March 1st 2015. The Conference convenes researchers and students from the following fields: GIScience, applied GIS, geomatics, Geoweb, remote sensing, cartography etc.
A Call for papers is ongoing, for more information visit the website at: http://rose.geog.mcgill.ca/ski
The Convergence Network is proud to announce the winners of the Best Presentation Awards during the Spatial Knowledge and Information CANADA (SKI) Conference.
The Network offered both winners a 500$ award. Congratulations!
You can now watch the webinar presented by Rodolphe Devillers, broadcasted on January 28th (presented in French with the slides in English).
Feel free to contact us or to contact Rodolphe if you have any question or comment.
Don’t miss our next webinar, on February 18th, presented by Karem Chokmani.
Don’t miss our first Webinar on Tuesday, January 28th, 13h30 (EST). This webinar will be presented by Rodolphe Devillers, associate professor at the Department of geography and director of the Marine Geomatics Research Lab at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Its research interests include the quality of spatial data and geovisualisation as well as the use of geographic information by non-expert users and how it is possible to limit the cases of geographic information misuses.
For more information about Rodolphe Devillers : www.marinegis.com
The webinar will be presented in French but the slides will be in English. It will be a 30-minute presentation followed by a Q&A period.
The technical details about the webinar will follow shortly. Please note that the webinar will be recorded and be available on demand afterward.
This webinar is the first of a series that will highlight our researchers. The purpose is to promote the expertise and research activities in order to facilitate the partnership among the Network.
To be highlighted in our second webinar :
Karem Chokmani (INRS – ETE) (February, 18th )
The first CONVERGENCE Network workshop will take place on Monday, February 24 at Université Laval.
The objectives of this Workshop are the following:
Presentations and group discussions are planned.
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Don’t miss IGARSS 2014, to be held in beautiful and historic Québec City from July 13th – July 18th, 2014. The symposium is being held in conjunction with the 35th Canadian Symposium on Remote Sensing.
Abstracts can be submitted on-line at www.igarss2014.org between November 14th, 2013 and January 13th, 2014. Results of the review process will be available on-line by April 4th, 2014.
[ Further details ]
Have a look at our latest newsletter to stay informed on the upcoming activities of the Network.
Last November 20th, the Centre de Géomatique du Québec, a partner of the Convergence Network, was commemorating its 15 years of existence during the 4e Journée de la géomatique which took place at the Cégep the Chicoutimi. The event was celebrated with more than 60 clients and partners.
The Centre de géomatique du Québec (CGQ) is a College Centres for the Transfer of Technologies (CCTT) affiliated with the Cégep de Chicoutimi, member of the Réseau Trans-tech. It acts as a lever for innovation and performance by the use and development of geomatics through applied research, technical assistance and training.
The CGQ has an important technology park with state-of-the-art equipments, including various sensors, drones, specialized software products (image processing and GIS) and GPS .
These equipments can be used to support the research that takes place within the Network.
GeoConnections invites you, on December 12th, to a webinar that will discuss the results of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Funded Partnership Development Grant entitled Mapping the Legal and Policy Boundaries of Digital Cartography led by Dr. R. Fraser Taylor of the Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre (GCRC), Carleton University, and Dr. Teresa Scassa of the Faculty of Law, Centre of Law, Technology and Culture (CLTS) at the University of Ottawa, including the Canadian Internet Public Policy Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) and GeoConnections.
You will learn more about:
