The second in a series of stories focusing on partnerships between Memorial University and the province’s communities. Next up: On The Land
For many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, being surrounded by water is where they feel most comfortable.
The province’s history is steeped in families and communities making a living off the ocean.
So, it’s no surprise that more than 40 per cent of Memorial University’s research is ocean-related, ranging from fish behaviour to cold ocean engineering and most things in between.
Safety on and around the ocean has also been paramount for people in the province and therefore, for its only university.
Collaborating with communities and industries has been essential to determining Memorial’s research priorities when it comes to ocean safety.
It’s one of the ways Memorial contributes to a socially resilient, economically prosperous, culturally vibrant, inclusive, innovative, healthy and sustainable Newfoundland and Labrador.
Read on to learn about just a few examples of the community and industry collaborations that have put Memorial on the map when it comes to ocean safety.
Ocean Ranger lessons
After the 1982 Ocean Ranger disaster, the Royal Commission on the Ocean Ranger Marine Disaster recommendations brought much-needed safety and regulatory changes to the industry.
And Memorial’s Marine Institute stepped up.
The institute established specialized training and research centres, namely the Centre for Marine Simulation, which provides specialized simulation-based training to meet internationally recognized training requirements for seafaring personnel; the Offshore Safety and Survival Centre, which was founded to ensure offshore workers were thoroughly prepared for offshore emergencies; and the Offshore Safety Research Unit, which was established to advance emergency preparedness knowledge to better understand and improve on issues in escape, evacuation and rescue.
One of the commission’s most crucial findings was the critical need for rigorous training in offshore drilling operations.
This led to the creation of Canada’s first and only motion-capable mobile offshore drilling unit stability and ballast control simulator, along with the Centre for Marine Simulation’s full-mission, full-motion ship’s bridge simulator.
Since then, the centre has grown into a facility boasting some of the most sophisticated and advanced marine simulators in the world.
This simulation training provides “artificial experience” to mariners, improving their performance and reducing the risk of human error-induced accidents.
“The Ocean Ranger tragedy serves as a constant reminder of why safety is paramount in all decisions made at the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board,” said Jill Mackey, chief safety officer of the board. “We will continue to work with operators, offshore workers, governments and our regulatory colleagues in Canada and around the world to ensure there continues to be a strong safety culture in all of our offshore operations.”
Predicting sea ice
In the Canadian Arctic, sea ice serves as a necessary roadway for people to travel their land and harvest food.
But climate change has made sea ice thickness unpredictable, so community trails have become increasingly dangerous to travel.
SmartICE (Sea-Ice Monitoring and Real-Time Information for Coastal Environments) technology is an ice-thickness sensor that the Canadian Museum of Nature dubbed as “the first-ever climate change adaptation solution.”
SmartICE is a community-based service that integrates Indigenous and local knowledge of ice with advanced data acquisition, remote monitoring and satellite mapping for ice travel safety in near real-time.
The system provides up-to-date information to suit community and industry-specific needs, such as combined ice and snow thickness measurements along specific travel routes.
It started in 2015, when Inuit elders proposed the idea of a community management committee to Drs. Trevor Bell and Katherine Wilson during a meeting in Mittimatalik.
“SmartICE is one thing Nain can proudly claim as our own.”
Since then, their self-named committee, Sikumiut, has documented and disseminated crucial Inuit knowledge regarding sea ice safety and has become a model of deeply embedded community relationships that draws on sea ice experts from community organizations, governments, elders, hunters and youth, among others.
Rex Holwell, manager of Nunatsiavut operations for SmartICE, says that going out on the sea ice off Nain, he’s noticed it is forming later in the year.
“I can recall years when we were out skating on the pond in December, but with climate change, the ice isn’t forming until later,” he said. “People are not able to predict their traditional travel routes. The ice isn’t freezing as early as it used to, and conditions are very different from 20-30 years ago.”
As a SmartICE operator in his community of Nain, Mr. Holwell creates ice travel safety maps and deploys the SmartBUOYs by SmartKAMUTIKs.
He says the service is helping Nunatsiavut communities by providing them with the tools, data and information they need to make more informed decisions before they travel on the ice.
“We use multiple ways to get the information out to as many people as possible, using online and social media platforms, doing interviews on the radio, printing off the maps and posting them in main locations like the grocery store or post office,” he said. “Lots of people use this information, and younger people and less experienced ice users are using these tools.”
Julius (Joe) Dicker, the angajukKâk (mayor) of Nain, says he sees the benefits for his community and how it benefits other Nunatsiavut communities and communities across Inuit Nunangat.
“I can honestly say, SmartICE is one thing Nain can proudly claim as our own,” he said.
The unpredictable ocean
Since last year, Dr. Brian Veitch (B.Eng.’88, M.Eng.’90) has been the Cenovus Energy research chair with a focus on safety at sea.
Dr. Veitch, an ocean and naval architectural engineering professor with the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, was also the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada/Husky Energy industrial research chair in safety at sea from 2017-23.
His research focuses on the safety of people who work at sea and the protection of the marine environment by engaging students and researchers from universities, research institutions, industry and government.
Over the past few years, Dr. Veitch and his team have developed virtual marine environments to investigate human performance in offshore settings.
The innovative simulator technology has greatly improved marine safety worldwide, providing experience that is otherwise unavailable due to dangerous and unpredictable offshore conditions.
One of Dr. Veitch’s partners has been Paradise, N.L.-based Virtual Marine, which offers marine training in simulation environments.
Together, they’ve brought insights from research outcomes to the market in the form of commercial marine simulators.
“Virtual Marine has worked with Dr. Veitch and Memorial University in the past on initiatives such as a lifeboat simulator, which has been adopted globally by oil and gas companies to enhance the competency of lifeboat operators on offshore facilities,” said Anthony Patterson, the company’s chief executive officer.
Inuit knowledge in search and rescue
Coastal regions of eastern Canada and the Arctic, known for their harsh and unpredictable conditions, are seeing increases in ship traffic every year.
Those harsh conditions pose severe challenges for search and rescue operators tasked with assisting in maritime distress situations.
In 2018, the Senate of Canada Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans published a report assessing maritime search and rescue in Canada; it offered 17 recommendations to make coastal communities safer and more sustainable.
Dr. Rob Brown, a research scientist at the Marine Institute, and a team of researchers and students from around the world, are addressing six of those recommendations to significantly advance search and rescue modelling and effectiveness.
As part of the research, Dr. Brown and the team worked with Inuit search and rescue responders.
“That’s progress. That’s what’s needed.”
The Nunavut-Nunavik Search and Rescue Project is a collaboration between the communities of Nunavut and Nunavik, where community-based search and rescue teams provide 24/7 response capabilities, 365 days a year, in an austere operating environment with few resources and little external assistance.
The project, which wrapped up this past spring, embraces the core laws, principles and practices of Inuit knowledge to employ a research strategy aimed at strengthening the search and rescue system through relationship building, knowledge creation, skills development, identifying required infrastructure and enabling the innovative planning and preparation required to support Inuit as the Arctic’s first responders.
The team held roundtable discussions, workshops and site visits where community representatives, government search and rescue pilots, planners, captains, search and rescue technologists and the academic team came together to discuss the issues and work on solutions.
Director of Kativik Civil Security Craig Lingard, whose role is to raise awareness of the importance of emergency preparedness in northern Inuit communities, was involved in the project with Dr. Browne.
He says the team made a lot of progress in a short amount of time.
“It’s the sustained attention that’s the difference here. We can’t just have a meeting and we’re done. The problems are too big. Too complex,” he said. “We need to make progress on all of this, and the clock is ticking. But having the roundtable, then the search and rescue debriefs and the standard operating procedure workshop in just over a year. That’s progress. That’s what’s needed.”
