GEMS, Geological and Environmental Monitoring System, was a final year engineering project made by a team of 4 in the Integrated Engineering program at the University of British Columbia. It drew from mechanical, electrical and computer engineering, aiming to solve a problem for civil and mining engineers.

It is a portable water quality assessment device in the form of a buoy, to be used in any mine or construction site that impacts a body of water nearby. The device is equipped with a range of sensors to measure water characteristics important to the operator. Sensor data is collected with an onboard processor, compiled, transmitted to a storage device such as a web server, and cached there for live tracking and data analysis.

The aim of the project is to aid and assist mines and construction sites to monitor water bodies, lower their costs of quality assessment, provide an adequate early warning system and enhance the safety of both operators and members of the public using the water bodies for economical or recreational activities.

GEMS is a prototype device and will have only a few crucial sensors in its first iteration. The design however, is modular and can be easily scaled up by adding sensors in a custom configuration depending on the end-user’s needs.

Group project as part of the UBC CIVL 430 course: Transportation Engineering 2. The project team worked with the City of Surrey Traffic Management Centre in Surrey, BC to evaluate the effectiveness of their pilot implementation of adaptive signalling; Surrey being one of the first municipalities in Canada to do so.

As part of the evaluation, traffic data from signal points was analysed and imported into a Synchro model. This was compared to alternative signal timing plans to determine the comparative advantages of implementing an adaptive signalisation system.

The final report is not yet publicly available but can be requested by email.