Fort McKay First Nation is located along the banks of the Athabasca River with approximately 800 members of Dene, Cree, and Métis descent. The community is situated in the boreal forest of northern Alberta and lies at the center of a large-scale oil sands extraction area. The influence of oil sands mining and processing on Fort McKay’s natural environment, public health, and politics has led to its participation in resource development discussions as a key stakeholder. The community is concerned about the environmental quality and liveability of reclaimed land; a rise in VOC (volatile organic compound) levels in the air surrounding the oil sands[1] has been observed, and community residents are justifiably distressed about the potential health impacts of these emissions.
The WBEA has monitored and reported air quality in northeastern Alberta since 1997. WBEA’s Ambient Air Technical Committee (AATC), composed of representatives from its member organizations, sets the strategic direction for air monitoring in the region.
AirSENCE units installed at Fort McKay will provide continuous measurements of particulate matter (PM1, PM2.5, and PM10), CO, CO2, NO, NO2, O3, SO2, H2S, and VOC every minute. Access to this data will allow the community to keep tabs on local air quality and make better informed decisions to help protect the health and wellbeing of its residents as well as the surrounding environment. [1] FORT MCKAY FIRST NATION’S INVOLVEMENT IN RECLAMATION OF ALBERTA’S OIL SANDS DEVELOPMENT
AirSENCE Joining the University of Toronto to Start “Measuring Air Quality to Manage Canada’s Investment in Sustainability”
Canada has embarked upon a dramatic transformation to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The net-zero transformation must be monitored and evaluated in near real-time so that the knowledge gained can guide change and support continuous improvement. This two-year project aims to evaluate applications of low-cost sensor-based devices that measure both air-quality and greenhouse gases (e.g., AirSENCE) and to identify potential advantages of integrating them into Canada’s existing fragmented measurement infrastructure. The performance of AirSENCE will be further enhanced through in-lab research and validated through field deployment in a wide-range of locales such as urban traffic zones, neighbourhoods near freight hubs or airports, and indigenous communities. The synergies achievable by fusing data from low-cost monitors with data from space-based, mobile and government measurement infrastructure will also be explored.
Through this joint project, AUG will expand its AirSENCE product lines (AirSENCE-INDOOR and My-AirSENCE) to penetrate the residential and personal user market that has emerged due to increased interest in indoor air quality created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The project will also enable practical guidance on how to integrate low-cost monitors into air quality measurement infrastructure, and provide new knowledge needed to guide Canada’s economic recovery and investments in sustainability. After all, we can manage what we can’t measure.
Toronto, March 31, 2022
March 31, 2022 marked a special event for A.U.G. Signals Ltd. (AUG) – we successfully completed a 3.5 year collaborative project with our partners, York University, York Regional Police, and Ontario Good Roads Association, to develop ARGUS: Radar-based All-Weather Roadway Safety System under the Canadian Safety and Security Program (CSSP)supported by Defence Research and Development Canada’s Centre for Security Science (DRDC CSS).
Background – With millions of people on Canadian roads every day, roadway safety is a big priority for participants in road traffic and more so for first responders. At a typical scene of a road collision, the first responders such as police officers, firefighters, paramedics are among the first to arrive and provide assistance. Police officers also have responsibilities such as assisting and investigating vehicle crash, deploying and providing equipment, overseeing work zone, patrolling vehicle pullovers, and performing traffic control, etc. These tasks performed along the roadways increase the risk of vehicles hitting first responders while they are carrying out their duties.
While many factors contribute to this safety issue (weather, impaired driving, speeding) and various recommendations have been made to mitigate the risks of collision, annually significant number of first responders are killed attending to roadway emergencies, and experience near misses on a weekly basis. Nation wide police officer survey performed during the project revealed that a majority (91%) of the participants do not have access to any device or technology that detects and warns them about possible collisions a few seconds before they occur, 75% of participants would consider using a system that can warn them about oncoming dangerous traffic while they work on the sides of roads or stationery in their vehicle (inside and outside the vehicle). AUG and its partners aimed to develop ARGUS: Radar-based All-Weather Roadway Safety System addressing this gap by combining low-cost radar front-end (RFE) with advanced analytics and threat analysis to ascertain threats accurately, and alerts first responders.
Achievements – From concept to field trials, AUG and its partners have developed ARGUS and demonstrated its capability to improve the safety of the first responders by detecting and alerting the responders to the risks while they are carrying out tasks on the road and allowing them the time (>3seconds) to react and escape from the risks. This is proven by the 95% pass rate of ARGUS in all the field trial scenarios based on the accuracy and timeliness of ARGUS.
Specifically, as an affordable and portable system, ARGUS
Accurately detects and localizes the oncoming vehicles
Efficiently analyzes threats and foresees accidents risks and warns first responders in time (>3 seconds) to take adequate safety measures.
Provides targeted and effective warnings to the individual responder to realize threats and take appropriate action in time.
Photo: ARGUS Field Trial
Moving forward – ARGUS is ready to contribute to improving the roadway safety of the first responders. AUG is also actively pursuing other applications for ARGUS, such as work zone safety to expand the applicability of ARGUS and generate more benefits to the community from the project’s outcomes and beyond.
On March 18, 2022, A.U.G. Signals in cooperation with A.U.G. Signals Hellas deployed at the City of Corinth Greece a TRITON, AUG’s online multi-parameter water quality monitoring system.
Certified by ISO 9001:2015 in design, assembly, installation and servicing of water monitoring systems TRITON is an innovative online continuous water quality monitoring platform. This platform allows users to preemptively detect and diagnose problems in their water distribution networks by providing real-time data that can be accessible anytime and anywhere. TRITON provides continuous 24/7 online testing. By continuous on-line real-time monitoring prevents drinking water contaminations by notifying through smartphones the authorities when a water contaminant is present and its concentration grows. Hence, actions will be taken before the water contaminant reaches to levels that are harmful to the peoples’ health. Together with its leakage detection capability, TRITON is a powerful supporting system in monitoring drinking water in smart cities projects.
The partnership and close collaboration between AUG Signals and SOCAAR (Southern Ontario Centre for Atmospheric Aerosol Research) at the University of Toronto has started since the beginning of AirSENCE development in 2014. Leveraging AUG’s expertise in machine-learning-based signal processing, multi-sensor information fusion and system integration with SOCAAR’s exceptional talents and state-of-the-art air quality monitoring facility as well as innovative research on atmospheric pollutants and sensors, AirSENCE has evolved to an advanced, accurate, and affordable Continuous Ambient Air Quality Micro-Monitoring Station (caaqMMS) providing comprehensive and accurate real-time air quality monitoring and contributing to the global effort in net-zero transformation to reduce GHG emissions, improve air quality and mitigate environmental inequity. https://mailchi.mp/utoronto.ca/engineeringwrap-up-5754277?e=853d27bc52
AUG is proud to be awarded by ESA among the other two winners in the downstream category for the “Novel Crop Disease Risk Assessment and Crop Monitoring Web-Based Tool” project. AUG would like to express our appreciation to all our collaborators, especially to AAFC and CSA who have always provided us with great support in the success of previous and current projects. We certainly look forward to more successful collaboration in the future.
Last week, A.U.G. Signals’ President and CEO, Dr. George Lampropoulos, attended the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Dubai as the reward A.U.G. Signals received being the third place winner of the Global Space Market Challenge 2021 organized by European Space Agency (ESA) and EURISY. Asides from pitching our project, innovative satellite-based crops disease risk assessment and crops monitoring tool, our President had a pleasure to meet with the Director General of ESA, Josef Aschbacher, during the event (October 26, 2021).
On September 30, our President and CEO, Dr. George Lampropolous, had a productive meeting with Mayor Vasilis Nanopoulos in his office at the city hall of Corinth, Greece with an effort of raising the awareness of sustainably monitoring the environment. Specifically, municipality of Corinth is interested in A.U.G. Signals Ltd. (AUG)’s project of developing wildfire detection and management tool and the municipality is committed to the successful outcome of this project by providing AUG with in-kind support and their expertise in fire fighting and prevention.
Dr. George Lampropoulos meeting with Mayor Vasilis Nanopoulos
