Alberta Ingenuity support resources industry by adding fifth centre for geomatics research

Alberta Ingenuity is launching a new centre to meet surging demand for new research into resource management, utilizing approximately $85 million in provincial, federal and private sector funding. Described as the first research centre of its kind in the world, Tecterra will focus on geomatics research collaboration between industry and researchers from Alberta's three universities as well as other players.

With a strong commercialization mandate, Tecterra is seen as a critical new piece of infrastructure to match the province's resource-based industries with new information and communications technology (ICT) products and processes. Its objective is to fund collaborative research to generate new business opportunities from the observation, monitoring, forecasting and management of Alberta's land and natural resources.

"We will work with expertise within Canada and globally and add value to our resources centres," says Robert Lai, executive director of the Information and Communications Technology Institute, a three-year old body that provides strategic advice to the ICT sector. "We have a high concentration of geomatics companies in Alberta largely driven by the oil and gas sector and resource sectors such as forestry and agriculture."

Lai says Tecterra will be a critical mechanism for increasing geomatics R&D by leveraging industry R&D and stimulating research activity currently underway in both academia and government. Officials are currently finalizing the formula under which Tecterra funding will be awarded including the amount of leverage required to qualify.

Tecterra is the fifth ingenuity centre and the first to be established in several years and will soon become part of a larger research entity once Alberta completes the reorganization of its research and innovation system. Under the realignment, Alberta Ingenuity will be merged with the Alberta Research Council and other provincial programs into a new corporation aimed at bringing technology to market (R$, March 30/09).

The new centre will offer three different programs or pathways for industry/ researcher collaboration.:

* Guided Strategic Research Projects: With a duration of up to four years, these projects form the core of the Centre's offerings. Designed in conjunction with industry roadmapping, it will invite researchers to respond to requests for proposals for technological solutions in targeted areas with commercialization a long-term objective;

* Idea to Implementation Projects: These two-year projects focus on product development to move technologies to commercialization-ready status. The research community will be responsible for generating project ideas with industry coming on board if the projects align with their business interests;

* Industry-Sponsored Projects: These projects will be generated by industry and government stakeholders which will also provide financial support. Open calls for projects will ultimately result in research teams taking on projects in collaboration with a sponsoring stakeholder.

"We anticipated quite a bit of demand before we created Tecterra. We did extensive consultation with technology companies and their needs were identified through this process," says Lai. "We then developed the business case (for Tecterra) and outcomes were formulated."

Although Tecterra is primarily an Alberta initiative and is branded as an Alberta Ingenuity Centre, provincial funding (excluding Alberta Ingenuity resources) was matched by the federal government through the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) program. In the latest CECR competition, funding was provided to establish a Centre of Excellence for Integrated Resource Management (CEIRM) with the same partners identified for Tecterra. CEIRM is intended to pursue the same four activities as Tecterra: education and training; R&D; pre-commercialization of R&D, and partnering with and providing services to industry

Heading up CEIRM is Dr Naser El-Sheimy a professor and department head of Head of the Univ of Calgary's department of geomatics engineering within the Schulich School of Engineering.

"The federal funding will be integrated into Tecterra," says Lai. "It shows the alignment of the province and the federal government in the area of commercialization."

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