Research Report 2010-2011 - College of Engineering - University of ...

Institute for Space and Atmospheric Studies, and the Toxicology Research Centre as
well as collaborative research with the National Water Research Institute, the
Saskatchewan Research Council, the City of Saskatoon and the Prairie Swine Centre
Inc.
Infrastructure
Infrastructure research focuses on the ‘built environment’ upon which healthy,
prosperous and safe communities are built. As the infrastructure ages, there is a
particular need for the renewal of road systems, bridges, water supply facilities, and
water treatment systems. Given Saskatchewan’s unique dependence on the highway
system, research that targets the management, renewal and maintenance of this
system has been a particular focus of the Transportation Group within this theme area.
One area of rapid growth in research has been the participation of a number of faculty in
the ISIS Canada Network of Centre of Excellence (Intelligent Sensing for Innovative
Structures), which has close working relationships with public sector agencies (e.g.,
Highways Departments, City Engineering Departments), private sector infrastructure
users (e.g., resource companies) as well as service industries in this sector. An
example of projects in this area is the work of several faculty members in Civil and
Geological Engineering (G. Sparks, B. Sparling, L. Wegner and M. Boulfiza) on Life
Cycle Engineering and Costing, being undertaken in collaboration with Saskatchewan
Highways and Transportation and Weyerhauser Inc. In addition, B. Sparling and
L. Wegner are investigating methods for monitoring the condition of bridges using
information about their vibration characteristics and M. Boulfiza is working on models to
predict the service life of reinforced concrete structures.
Transportation Centre
Traffic Safety Research - The Transportation Centre, which is part of the Department of
Civil and Geological Engineering and is led by C. Berthelot along with J. Chan, has a
research focus on highway traffic safety and safety standards. The safety research at
the centre is funded by Transport Canada and continues to play an important role in
traffic safety research at the national level.
Intelligent Transportation Systems – Research on ‘weigh in motion’ systems, begun by
A. Bergan in the early 1970’s has continued, leading to collaborations with a commercial
vendor of this technology, International Road Dynamics (IRD), by C. Berthelot. The
development of Smart Work Zones, which use IT to quantify and improve work zone
safety, has recently begun in collaboration with International Road Dynamics, North
Carolina Department of Transportation, the US Federal Highway Administration, and
Saskatchewan Highways and Transportation. The use of Intelligent Transportation
Systems has also led to the pilot implementation of integrated real time video tracking
Theme 2 – Environment – Research Report 2010-11 Page 12