At the beginning of February, six students from the UNBC Geography Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES) Club set out for Calgary to attend the 6th annual National Geomatics Competition. This year, the NGC brought 51 students from 9 schools across Canada together to challenge and learn from each other.
So what is geomatics anyway? Even as a geography student, I struggled to get my Google searches to tell me what the difference was between geomatics and GIS and geospatial analysis. It turns out geomatics is an umbrella term for all kinds of “geo”-type methods, including the ones above plus cartography, remote sensing, and surveying. I should have remembered that from my introductory cartography class (sorry Roger!). I don’t feel too silly about it though, as the few geomatics engineering students I surreptitiously asked during the conference didn’t seem to know either.
After icebreakers on Wednesday night and a networking and job fair on Thursday, the day came we’d all been waiting for: the release of the problem prompt. It could be anything—the only hint we had was the previous year’s prompt, an open question about using remote sensing for wildfires. When it was revealed that we’d be addressing traffic congestion in the Town of Banff, we immediately turned our minds to the problem. Then, the next surprise: we were off to Banff for the day! We all piled on to the bus, driving through the beautiful Rockies. In theory we were working on our ideas, but many of us just let them percolate and enjoyed the view.
In Banff, we heard from municipal staff about the huge traffic challenge as the town of 9,000 people hosts tens of thousands of vehicles a day in the summer season. Paid parking downtown, extra parking lots, and improved bus and bike options had helped a bit, but congestion can rival Toronto levels on a daily basis. They were excited to hear some new ideas and they helped us understand the issue by answering our many questions. Of course, there was a little time to explore the town and we took advantage of the beautiful sunny day to wander the streets.
Back in Calgary at the hotel, it was time to really get to work. Our solution was due by 11 o’clock the next morning, so every 3-person team was sequestered in their hotel room to get it done. Our team had agreed we wouldn’t work through the night but every waking moment up to the deadline was spent brainstorming and refining ideas, exploring and analyzing data, making our presentation, and looking for any holes in our plan that could give the panel of judges an opportunity to stump us.
Handing in our materials felt like a real accomplishment the next morning! We didn’t have much time to revel in it, though—we were fourth on the presentation list and only had time to run through our script once before we hustled over to the university to make our time. Thankfully we didn’t have time to stew or get too nervous! We presented our idea—public locker storage in strategic locations to enable people to use existing transit options—without a hitch and returned to the watch room, relieved, to support the other UNBC team presenting later that afternoon. Their solution—transforming a few streets to one-ways to streamline traffic flow and encouraging an evening culture to move traffic away from peak times—impressed us all and they were awarded third place at the awards gala the following day. Both UNBC teams were recognized with a “Most Unique Solution” award, so we definitely left our mark!
The whole competition was a fantastic experience. I was inspired and learned so much in a short time, and I got to make new friends and see some new beautiful places. Thank you so much to the Office of the President and Environmental Dynamics Inc. for supporting our trip, and to the NGC organizers and the Town of Banff for putting together such an awesome event!
