Grant: CCI Applied Research and Development Grants

Selkirk College has been providing innovative learning opportunities in Southeastern BC since 1966. Selkirk College is home to 70+ nationally recognized programs serving more than 2,700 full-time learners per year in six rural communities. Selkirk Innovates engages in interdisciplinary social science and technical research and has invested heavily over 20 years to develop expertise in geospatial and digital manufacturing technology, to advance social innovation research, and is integrating emerging research expertise in health care innovation and advanced computing. This ARD project is led by Selkirk Innovates' Advanced Computing team, who solve industrial problems using machine learning analyses and techniques, machine vision, as well as scientific and computational modelling. Selkirk Innovates and project partner Climatic Resources Consulting (CRC) recently collaborated on a research project involving the downscaling of global climate data using convolutional neural networks. The project will layer a novel "Localized Climate Projection and Analysis (LCap)" software interface over downscaled global climate data and statistical inference capability at CRC, providing additional project partner, the City of Edmonton, with a regionally-specific and user-friendly software portal enabling climate adaption planning. This tool will allow CRC to facilitate quantitative estimates of the probability of exceedance of critical climate thresholds for a wide range of community assets, enabling a data-driven approach for the prioritization of climate adaptation measures for community infrastructure and operations. CRC and the City of Edmonton will be able to explore the application of the threshold exceedance probability approach to a variety of applications in asset management structures and operations. Whether applied to simple (e.g., critical temperature thresholds) or complex (e.g., budgetary thresholds) scenarios, the development of a more quantitative approach to assessing risks will lead to a better understanding of the potential impacts of future climate change and will facilitate the prioritization of adaptation measures. If successful, this LCap tool and approach could be applied to communities and organizations across the country to considerable environmental and economic benefit.