A multi-year, multi-million-dollar project that partners tech giant IBM with Ocean Networks Canada holds the promise of enhanced safety on the B.C. coastline, as well as educational and employment opportunities for Nuu-chah-nulth youth in remote communities.
Ocean Networks Canada operates the NEPTUNE underwater observatory. It’s an 800-kilometre seabed cable network based in Port Alberni, with an extensive array of sensors, seismographs and remote-operated cameras installed in Barkley Sound and off the West Coast of Vancouver Island.
Under the new initiative, called Smart Oceans BC, IBM and ONC are teaming up to install new equipment and computing capability both to monitor the ocean’s conditions and vessel traffic, and to predict the impact of off-shore earthquakes and tsunamis on coastal communities, said IBM spokesperson Peter Madden.
“We will be installing some new sensors on both the VENUS (Salish Sea) and NEPUTNE networks. We will also be putting in some new coastal radar sensors that are not technically part of the [ONC] network,” Madden said. “They will be deployed and configured for near-field tsunami detection.”
The existing ONC seismographic sensors, spotted along the NEPTUNE cable, can provide very accurate tsunami predictions for earthquakes thousands of kilometres away, Madden explained. The goal for the Smart Oceans BC initiative is to improve the ability to predict when a nearby seismic event will generate a tsunami, and which specific areas will feel its impact.
That will require detailed mapping of the seabed, according to ONC head, Dr. Kate Moran.
“Sea floor topography does determine the wave height,” she explained.
In simple terms, by mapping the sea floor, it becomes possible to determine how a seismic event of a specific magnitude would cause water to move and strike the shore in specific locations.
Moran said one of the most exciting components of the program is the installation of earthquake “early warning” sensors that detect what is known as the Primary (non-shaking) Wave, 30 to 90 seconds before the Earthquake Wave. Paired with increased tsunami predictive capacity, the enhanced network will be able to provide an extra safety margin for communities in the danger zone.
“We’re going to install them along the VENUS and NEPTUNE network and we also hope to install them in remote communities,” Moran told Ha-Shilth-Sa. “We would like to work with communities to put them in places like schools, so that, when we install them, the students can look at the data themselves, and know that they’re part of a network. We want to use it as an educational tool, so that’s what we’ll be taking about when we go into these communities.”
Citizen Science is already a huge component of ONC, which is affiliated, through the University of Victoria, with a worldwide academic network. Through its website (http://www.oceannetworks.ca/installations/observatories/neptune-ne-pacific), visitors are able to view a dazzling collection of underwater videos or, for the more adventurous, monitor underwater sensors in realtime or even operate underwater video cameras to watch undersea creatures at home in their own environment.
“We totally agree with IBM Canada that, by getting kids involved, it can really engage them to go into the sciences,” Moran said.
Participation from First Nations communities is a key element both for IBM Canada and ONC. Moran said there is already a precedent where ONC is working directly with an aboriginal community.
“We put in a mini-observatory up in the Arctic, in Cambridge Bay (http://www.oceannetworks.ca/installations/observatories/arctic), two years ago. When we installed it, we engaged the science teacher and the community leaders. We will work with them to help the science teacher build curriculum associated with that observatory. We’d like to do the same as we build out Smart Oceans BC.”
Madden is upfront when he says educating First Nations youth, especially those from remote communities, is good business.
“As a publicly-traded company, we are always interested in developing skills in areas where we think the market is going,” he said.
It is estimated that the global market for ocean monitoring technology will grow from $4 billion to $6 billion annually by 2020. To fill that need, organizations like ONC and IBM need people with a wide range of skills, from technology creators and operators to data analysts, biologists and even MBAs, many of whom will be based outside of the big cities.
Madden said IBM is drawing from the experience of the University of British Columbia’s Medical School, which now operates satellite programs in communities across the province, in partnership with small colleges and regional hospitals.
“If you’re going to train doctors, you want to draw them from where they live, educate them and send them back to their communities,” he explained.
But after spending eight years or more in university, sometimes it is difficult to think about moving back home.
“So now the goal is for them to undergo part of their training in their home communities and to contextualize that information to their locality.”
Part of the IBM plan is to create a Virtual Compute Lab for remote First Nations communities that will allow people in the villages both to monitor ocean conditions for their own activities and safety, and also to contribute to the body of knowledge being collected.
Madden explained that IBM provides “Armchair Analysts” with open-source tools to gather and analyze data and, potentially, join the growing Big Data wave, with its virtually unlimited economic and career opportunities.
“We are trying to make it easier for everybody to consume open data,” he said.
More importantly, increased Internet connectivity and the proliferation of hand-held computing and communications devices has reduced the cost of delivering education to remote communities, making it possible for First Nations students to acquire a significant portion of their training in their own community.
“So now we are able to take the benefit you get from attending university, and extract part of that and make it available at home, whether that is in your traditional aboriginal territory or even outside of Canada. It gives you that same ability to learn in place and to be able to contextualize it for your own community. We believe that is important.”
Moran said UVic is still in discussions about how to deliver university level courses through the new distance-learning portal that is being created in partnership with IBM. The immediate priority is to deliver curriculum materials to teachers that are based on data taken from the network and tailored for local consumption.
In theory, Moran suggested, Grade 6 classes in Cambridge Bay and Port Alberni might simultaneously undertake an interpretation of data taken from their local oceans and join forces to compare and contrast what they have each discovered.
“You can imagine how we could get some great exchanges. We’re not there yet, but that’s what we’re working towards,” she said. “As part of this, we are hiring a First Nations coordinator and First Nations educator to begin to work on those curricular materials, and to help us understand what gaps there are in the sciences, and what the priorities are for First Nations – what their needs are. Then we can put our priorities on those needs.”
Moran estimates installation of the Smart Ocean BC improvements will take about two-and-a-half years.
“We have purchased several pieces of equipment that have already arrived,” she said. “At the same time that we are obtaining equipment, we will be engaging with communities to determine where it should be sited. That engagement is going to be happening this summer.”
