ENGINEERING AND GEOSCIENCE IN THE RESOURCE SECTOR
The 2021 British Columbia Atmospheric River Disaster
The passage of strong atmospheric rivers across southern BC in November 2021 flooded several communities and severed highways and rail lines, thus isolating the Metro Vancouver area from the rest of Canada for more than a week. In this presentation, Dr. John Clague will explain what an atmospheric river is, summarize the damage caused by the November storms, explore weak links in the province's built infrastructure, and forecast the impact of climate change on such events in the future.
Speaker
Dr. John Clague, P.Geo., FGC, FEC (Hon)
John is an emeritus professor at Simon Fraser University. He was educated at Occidental College (BA), the University of California Berkeley (MA), and the University of British Columbia (PhD). Clague worked as a research scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada from 1975 until 1998. In 1998 he accepted a faculty position with the Department of Earth Sciences at Simon Fraser University. Clague is a leading authority in environmental earth sciences and climate change. He has made major contributions in geologic mapping, engineering and environmental interpretations of surficial geological information, and understanding natural hazards and risk. He is noted for local, national, and international research collaboration with geologists, geographers, biologists, and physicists. Clague is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, former president of the Geological Association of Canada, past president of the International Union for Quaternary Research, and past president of Engineers and Geoscientists British Columbia. He received an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo in 2017 and in 2020 was inducted as an Officer of the Order of Canada. Clague is currently editor-in-chief of the journal, Natural Hazards.
Cosmic-ray Muon Tomography: Helping the Mining Industry Drill Less and Discover More
A spin-off of TRIUMF (Canada's national particle accelerator laboratory), Richmond BC-based Ideon Technologies is a world pioneer in cosmic-ray muon tomography technology. Ideon uses the energy from supernova explosions in space to provide 3D imaging down to 1km beneath the earth’s surface, to help the mining industry discover the critical minerals needed to fuel the clean energy transition. Ideon has developed the world’s first compact muon detection instrument designed to be deployed down industry-standard drillholes. During this presentation, learn about the latest developments in cosmic-ray muon tomography as well as early learnings from Ideon’s first client imaging programs.
Speaker
Dr. Douglas Schouten
Doug is a global leader in muon tomography and one of the few people in the world with the expertise to use muon research to solve industrial problems. Doug holds a B.Sc. (Hons) in physics and computer science from UBC, and a Ph.D. in subatomic physics from SFU. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at TRIUMF, leading projects in the discovery and characterization of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. At Ideon, Doug led the development of its second and third generation muon telescope systems and has successfully carried out surveys and projects across a range of industries and around the world. Doug has extensive expertise in computer simulations, data analysis and statistical inference, including machine learning methods and detector physics.