{"id":9504,"date":"2018-05-15T14:54:01","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T18:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=9504"},"modified":"2025-10-17T17:56:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T21:56:19","slug":"putting-ontario-east-on-the-map","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/putting-ontario-east-on-the-map\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting Ontario East on the Map"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Putting Ontario East on the Map\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

The Carleton Immersive Media Studio<\/a> (CIMS) has digitized King Tut\u2019s tomb and Morocco\u2019s kasbahs<\/a>, but that\u2019s nothing compared to what they\u2019ve got on tap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using a combination of terrestrial laser scanning, building information modelling (BIM) and open-source data, CIMS is creating a hyper-realistic 3D model of eastern Ontario that will put the region\u2019s entire economic activity at the fingertips of the Ontario East Economic Development Commission<\/a>, its partner on the 3D mapping project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And like so many stories do, this one begins with beer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese are all the breweries in eastern Ontario,\u201d says lead researcher Stephen Fai, associate professor of Architecture and Urbanism<\/a> and director of CIMS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fai is pointing toward an ultra HD screen pinned with dozens of flags. At first glance, you might think he\u2019s about to show you little more than a sharper, more vivid version of Google Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019d be wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can look at the data at a high level, or you can start to drill down,\u201d Fai says, zooming in on the Lake Ontario shoreline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese are the four breweries in Prince Edward County. And these are all the hops producers and grain producers in that area.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Putting<\/figure>\n\n\n

Strikingly Accurate Reproductions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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The tool uses its own browser, and allows users to explore each brewery\u2019s buildings, inside and out. Fai\u2019s team used BIM \u2013 which makes measurements by using laser scans to record and reproduce the exact positions of surface points — to create strikingly accurate interactive reproductions of freshly shined brewing kettles and fermentation tanks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can get so close you can almost taste it,\u201d says Andrew Harkness, a researcher on the project. \u201cYou can even get to the point where – if the company gives you a product code for whatever you\u2019re ordering – you can click on it, search your product code and see where it is in the manufacturing process. You can see it is in this stage of development and is \u201cX\u201d many days away from being completed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ontario East 3D mapping project not only integrates data that the CIMS teams records, but also farm business registration data from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs<\/a>. Using codes from the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), they can identify which farmers are growing what and where they\u2019re growing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It enables Ontario East Economic Development to connect businesses in a sprawling region that stretches from Port Hope — just east of Toronto — to Ontario\u2019s border with Quebec. At 46,200 square kilometres, Ontario East is nearly the size of Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Economic Implications for Ontario East<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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For economic developers, the implications are huge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSay you\u2019re a brewery,\u201d says Cindy Phillips McCann, economic development officer with the Town of Petawawa, \u201cand you\u2019re looking for alternative sources for hops. In certain areas in Ontario East, hops are hard to come by, and brewers have to bring them in from far away. So you have the data up there from the hop producers – this is the number of hectares we cultivate, this is what we\u2019ve currently got, this is what is already spoken for, this is our excess capacity. It makes my response time so much faster as opposed to: \u2018Let me gather the data and put a prospectus together for you.\u2019 This makes a world of difference. Once you have all that information in there, it makes it so much easier.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the 3D mapping project, Ontario East Economic Development is thinking big. Fai\u2019s team has already moved beyond beer to incorporate all of the region\u2019s agriculture and food production, as well as the infrastructure that supports it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs soon as he gets that done, we\u2019ll be moving to the manufacturing industry,\u201d says Executive Director Bonnie O\u2019Neill. Tourism and transportation infrastructure will come later, and as O\u2019Neill sees it, the project is still in its infancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery flag on the map represents a primary producer and a NAICS code, but it\u2019s still very basic,\u201d she says. \u201cI click on a flag, it tells me the code. I look it up, and that tells me what is produced there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been working with municipalities to fill in the supply chain – processors, agri-businesses, agricultural colleges. We\u2019re also working with a company out of Toronto to do a sweep of open data. Find out as much of what\u2019s out there through Google, web searches, or anything else. They grab open data, and then we have that in. Data is moving at such a rate that a lot of this stuff is going to be open as governments move in that direction. We\u2019re just trying to put it all in one spot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Putting<\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) has digitized King Tut\u2019s tomb and Morocco\u2019s kasbahs, but that\u2019s nothing compared to what they\u2019ve got on tap. Using a combination of terrestrial laser scanning, building information modelling (BIM) and open-source data, CIMS is creating a hyper-realistic 3D model of eastern Ontario that will put the region\u2019s entire economic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":9515,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[13,19],"cu_story_tag":[1918],"class_list":["post-9504","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-research-discovery","cu_story_type-technology-innovation","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-engineering-and-design"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/9504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/9504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98565,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/9504\/revisions\/98565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=9504"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=9504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}