Water, water everywhere! It's a compound we can't live without. Yet, as much as we rely on water for our survival, it can also be a source of damage with flooding wreaking havoc on crops and communities, and scarcity impacting health and survival.
Thanks to their valuable skillsets and passion for water management, SAIT students are completing impactful work on water issues around The City of Calgary.
SAIT Integrated Water Management students are starting local with solutions to tackle the threat of flooding damage as well as increasing conservation in landscape use.
Data-driven flood solutions to safeguard Calgary communities
For their final major project, second-year Integrated Water Management students Aidan Yakymyshyn and Dawson Smethurst dove into data to create stormwater improvements for high-risk flooding areas around Calgary.
The City of Calgary's River Engineering team provided Yakymyshyn and Smethurst with four different spatial Geographic Information System (GIS) data sets.
"By combining the spatial GIS data sets, we were able to identify local communities susceptible to potential pipe backups due to flooding," says Yakymyshyn.
Yakymyshyn and Smethurst presented their findings to the City of Calgary team, where the two students recommended stormwater outfall upgrades.
"Using insights from our data analysis, we recommended the city install water flow control devices (valves) in flood-prone areas. The potential cost of damages in the absence of these valves could be three times the cost of installing the valves," says Smethurst.
