CPKC Geotechnical Engineering Team Awarded for Safety Innovation
Written by David C. Lester, Editor-in-Chief
CPKC
TORONTO –– The CPKC Geotechnical Engineering team was recognized at last week's Canadian Consulting Engineering Awards program in Toronto.
The CPKC Geotechnical Engineering team received two awards for its “innovative work to reduce risk and increase operational safety across the network.” The two awards were the Innovation and Technology Award and the Schreyer Award.
The awards were acccepted by Tom Bourgonje, Vice President of Engineering and Mehwish Rahman, Director of Geotechnical Engineering. Mehwish said “We were pleasantly surprised by the second award, the Schreyer Award, which is the highest honour in Engineering in Canada.”
According to CPKC, “these awards recognize CPKC’s work with Tetra Tech in creating an advanced waterbody monitoring system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and [a] remote sensing technique (Synthetic Aperture Radar – SAR) through satellite data collection to detect water-related hazards along our rail network.”
CPKC added that “This impressive system offers near real-time visibility across CPKC’s network, scanning more than 1.2 million waterbodies along more than 12,600 miles in images. AI then analyzes these images against pre-determined business rules and sends alerts for different categories of potential water-related hazards, such as high water/flooding, beaver dams and increasing proximity of water to the tracks that could impact railway operations and safety.”
