Virtual RE/ACTION Showcase August 2021

Project Description:

In the era of the 24-hour news cycle, the availability of media without boundaries, the impact of social media, and the rise of the true crime industry, it often feels like the media hyper-focuses on violent crimes. Although many of us indulge in some form of crime media consumption, we don’t often consider how it feels to be the subject matter of the reports.

Our project, Victims and Survivors of Violent Crime and Interactions with the Media, was inspired by responses from a larger study on Violence and Resilience. The study heard from 435 victims and survivors of violent crime, 88 of whom talked about their experiences with the media. These responses prompted further investigation into interactions between survivors of violent crime and the media, which is what inspired our research project.

We qualitatively analyzed the experiences of these participants and found that the majority of participants noted additional distress from their interactions with the media. This distress was largely caused by victims and survivors’ lack of knowledge of their rights when dealing with the media, reporters’ lack of respect and compassion for victims and survivors, loss of privacy, and misreported information.

As victimology graduates, we have learned that loss of control is often experienced among victims and survivors of crime, both during and following victimization. This notion was reinforced through our research, which found that victims and survivors felt a loss of control in their experiences with the media. For example, one participant stated “The media painted my dad as a violent, controlling man… They never stop and think about how these “stories” are impacting the family left behind. The victims who had no control over the situation and now have to suffer the residual negative impact…”.

Many participants noted that there is an increasing need for education among media personnel, specifically with regard to how their words and actions can affect victims and survivors. We aim to contribute to the literature through our research by:

a) Establishing a need for trauma-informed training and victim-oriented reporting among journalists to help minimize potential harms to victims and survivors in their interactions with the media.

b) Establishing a need for greater education about the media for victims and survivors, specifically to be delivered by victim service providers. This way, victims and survivors will be provided with the support and information necessary to make informed decisions when navigating their interactions with the media.

To construct our research project, we learned how to search journal databases to gather academic literature about victims and survivors and the media. Currently, we are drafting and revising our research paper in hopes of submitting our work to a peer-reviewed journal in the fall of 2021. We have multiple clients for our project: victims and survivors of violent crime; journalists and reporters; and victim service providers.

Thus far, our team has used critical thinking and teamwork skills to overcome challenges and meet the needs of our clients. While drafting our paper, we had to ensure that we were using a trauma-informed approach with regard to our terminology and maintaining the confidentiality of our participants. Our team was able to overcome this challenge by collaborating with one another and consulting our supervisors and other literature to use inclusive and non-objectifying language in our project.

Many participants noted negative experiences with the media in their responses, which posed a challenge to us as we did not want to discourage victims and survivors from interacting with the media, nor did we want to portray the media as solely negative to our clients. We overcame this by including the benefits of media coverage for victims and survivors as well as ways media personnel have assisted victims find their voice and regain control over their narrative.

We’re incredibly proud of the progress our team has made thus far and are excited to be sharing our research project. We look forward to finalizing our paper and publishing our findings later on this year.

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Project Description:

In January 2020, the City of Ottawa declared a housing and homelessness emergency. Immediately following the announcement COVID-19 reached the pandemic level, leaving the already vulnerable homeless and precariously housed populations to experiencing greater challenges.

Through our partnership with the Alliance to End Homelessness, the Victimology Research Centre’s new project is studying the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on homeless populations in Ottawa through a service provider lens. The COVID-19 and Systematic Responses to Homelessness project is examining how the global pandemic has affected system responses to homelessness, the potential gaps and barriers that are being experienced by homeless people, and what innovations in service provision are being developed to adapt to the pandemic.

The project is comprised of two phases. In phase 1, qualitative interviews are completed for data collection purposes. The focus of phase 1 is system mapping and preliminary data collection which will be done through online and telephone interviews with service providers.
In phase 2, the project will move forward with ethics approval for additional data collection through surveys, focus groups, and interviews with service providers and people with lived experience.

From this project, two products will be made. The first is a COVID-19 Housing & Homelessness Sector Map which will outline the challenges and opportunities experienced by homeless people in Ottawa during the pandemic. The second is a report to the City of Ottawa, measuring the response of COVID-19 in the homeless sector.

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Project Description:

The purpose of the project is to provide a user-friendly website to the owner and user, mostly allowing them to communicate with each other better, and possibly build a strong brand image for their business and their audience. A well-designed website is an opportunity for them to set their business apart from the competition.
The scope of this project is focused on using WIX as the development tool for our client’s website. WIX is a user-friendly website building platform. Their intuitive technology and powerful built-in features will help us to design professional website for our client.
The end users of the product will be our client and audience of their business. Our client can easily go on their website, update the image and new projects they have done in the future. Users can estimate cost based on the details they enter. The website communication can be established between the business owner and user. We have introduced a couple of functionalities :bilingual language support, user login functionality, cost calculator for deck and washroom, and email communication with users.

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Project Description:

CommonLit Readability Prize is a Kaggle machine learning contest that challenges participants to create algorithms that can rate the complexity of passages of text and place them on a 3-12 scale. The idea is to produce a cost-effective measure that CommonLit Inc, a nonprofit education technology organization can use to provide learning materials for teachers and students. Under the guidance of Algonquin College Professor Leanne Seaward we sought to address the problem using a combination of a fine-tuned BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) deep learning model and other natural-language processing models.

The prototype reads a CSV (Comma Separated Value) file containing sample sentences and produces a CSV with model targeting information. The prototype uses the fine-tuned BERT model and is currently scripted, with no user interface. The output is a CSV file containing pairs of unique identifiers and generated target scores that evaluated by the Kaggle CommonLit Readability contest to determine the value of the results.

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Project Description:

Our main aim to create this project is to increase the efficiency of solar panels. As we have seen for a long time that solar panels are mounted on top of any buildings and with changing weather there are chances of moisture, dust on it and it could decrease its working efficiency. so our robot will help solar panel users to clean solar panels in a timely manner with a cheaper solutions.

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Project Description:

Tattoos have been around for millennia, from Otzi the Ice Man’s sixty-one tattoos to Ed Hardy’s modern flash designs. Tattoos have been integrated into people’s lives as a deep, personal form of meaning-making. What we mean by this is that individuals may use tattoos to make sense of life events that have happened to them.

Tattooed Resilience came from a larger project on Violence and Resilience funded by SSHRC’s College and Community Social Innovation Fund, in partnership with the Victim Justice Network. Thus, our client is a social innovation project with a community partner.

When reviewing the qualitative data from the interviews of this larger study, there were some compelling narratives about tattoos when the participants shared their stories. Our project investigated the motivations that victims and survivors of violence had for acquiring tattoos related to their victimization, and how tattoos may offer a non-traditional form of healing.

We identified six participants’ interviews that self-disclosed tattoos as related to their victimization. The participant’s victimization history included homicide, domestic abuse, and sexual abuse.

Our analysis involved examining the interviews for prominent themes, and then using themes from previous research on tattoos as a non-traditional method of healing to inform our analysis. The outcome of this work resulted in six main themes: memorialization, communication, autonomy, permanence, self-injury, and spirituality.

The majority of participants acquired tattoos to memorialize loved ones that were homicide victims. One participant had their loved one’s ashes in the ink. Tattoos also allowed participants to communicate their ordeal to others through general inquiry about their tattoo. Another participant noted the word ‘survivor’ being tattooed on them represented reclamation of their autonomy in the aftermath of victimization. Tattoos also helped as a positive coping mechanism to refrain from self-injury, and were connected to participant’s spirituality.

The analysis was challenging for us because there is a lack of literature on tattoos and non-traditional healing. Also, this was the first time we used qualitative methods to analyze interviews. At times, we had concerns about ethical guidelines of confidentiality. It was important to not reveal identifiable information about participants in our work.

Next, we drafted a manuscript of our findings in preparation for a peer-reviewed journal publication, which was also challenging. Writing for publication is not the same as for a school assignment, and we had to learn how to write for academic reviewers.

Currently, we are working on revising our draft to be able to submit to a peer-reviewed journal, with the goal of having our paper published. From the outcomes of the six themes we found, we conclude that tattoos offered a non-traditional form of healing, allowed participants to reclaim their bodies in the aftermath of crime, are an important component of the participant’s narratives, allowed participants to make sense of their ordeal, and are a form of resilience. Thus, there is a need for further research into this field, and society should view non-traditional healing with a more humanistic perspective.

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Project Description:

As a signatory to the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol, Canada has a responsibility to fight climate change by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. There are several major sources of GHG emissions. Of these, the transportation sectors of developed countries account for approximately 28% of total global emissions. In Canada, the transportation industry generates 10% of its overall GHG emissions. Reducing emissions generated from road-freight can therefore aid in achieving the Paris and Kyoto climate-change goals.
Canada Post Corporation (CPC), one of Canada’s largest organizations and a crown corporation, relies heavily on transportation. Canada Post’s 2019 Sustainability Report states that they have set an ambitious goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Unfortunately, the same report shows that, in 2019, their GHG emissions increased by 5% compared to 2018. In 2020, Canada Post delivered more than 6.4 billion pieces of mail, parcels, and messages. Its value chain transportation network is connected by 21 major processing plants, 477 letter carrier depots, and 6,084 post offices. This network is responsible for 85% of the total GHG emitted by CPC.
Since trains emit approximately 75% less GHG emissions than trucks, rail seems the most viable option to reduce emissions–especially for long-haul deliveries. This research aims to help CPC investigate the implications of a switch to intermodal transportation, where a combination of road and rail can be used to transport mail. The biggest obstacle to making this move is the time sensitivity (also referred to as Delivery Standards) of transporting parcels from origin to destination. Therefore, this project aims to answer the following research question: “Can CPC’s parcel transportation network be redesigned to accommodate re-routing parcels via rail, maintain the Delivery Standards previously established, and in turn reduce overall GHG emissions?”. Specifically, which lanes (origin/destination) are eligible to use intermodal transportation? What percentage of parcel volume should be moved to rail?
To answer this question, five main objectives have been developed:
(i) Provide a detailed description of the mode of transportation of Canada Post and the advantages/disadvantages of each mode for Canada Post’s different products.
(ii) Provide a background study regarding rail and road intermodal transportation in supply chain networks, specifically postal services.
(iii) Analyze opportunities and risks associated with a road-to-rail intermodal shift.
(iv) Construct an analytical network design process that will facilitate decision-making to determine whether the parcel volume can be moved on rail or not for various routes; and
(v) Validate the decision-making framework using real data from a “typical” lane in the Canada Post network.
This research aims to provide Canada Post with alternative network design options to move more parcels from road to rail and reverse the emissions trend. Furthermore, by moving more volumes to rail, the added advantage of reducing transportation costs makes Canada Post more competitive.

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Project Description:

Transportation is a key logistics function of supply chains and an important driver of supply chain performance. It enables the movement of goods and materials from suppliers through to customers (B2C) or stores (B2B). Given the complexity of this function, businesses usually opt to outsource this function to third-party logistics (3PL) service providers like Dicom that specialize in transportation. Small to mid-sized businesses do not have large enough volumes to fill a truck and use dedicated Less-Than-Truckload (LTL) services, so 3PL firms have considered the possible benefits of combining LTL and parcels to fill a truckload. A parcel shipment can be an individual parcel that occupies a fraction of the truck space, while an LTL shipment can consist of a single or several pallets but do not take up the space allocated for a full truck load. In addition to their weight and dimensional differences, parcels are usually much more time-sensitive and are more commonly B2C deliveries, while an LTL shipment is usually a less time-sensitive B2B service.

The challenge for 3PLs is to minimize the empty space in trucks by allocating an optimum amount of capacity to the mix of LTL and parcel loads to accumulate as much volume as possible. Currently, many carrier companies prefer to manage the LTL and parcel services with separate and dedicated fleets, because consolidation can cause delays, and as a result, a time-sensitive parcel may miss its delivery date. This current lack of consolidation, however, results in much higher transportation costs per item. Therefore, the main research problem becomes: how to model and improve the allocation of the existing transportation capacity among LTL and Parcel customers while maximizing the expected revenue? The following objectives were developed to answer the research question: (i) Give a detailed description of the LTL and parcel business and the challenges faced by 3PLs, (ii) Provide a literature survey of the existing solutions similar industries and businesses, (iii) Construct an analytical model based on revenue management methodology to allocate LTL and parcels in the same transportation fleet optimally, and (iv) Validate the model by using simulation tools and real data from Dicom.

The proposed research project has benefits to Dicom, to Canadian industry, and to the environment. Firstly, it helps Dicom enhance the efficiency and profitability of its transportation network by supporting Dicom’s transportation capacity allocation decisions to avoid unnecessary investments required for their transportation capacity expansion. Furthermore, using the outcomes of this study, Dicom can increase the volume in its transportation network while improving capacity utilization and maximizing revenue. Secondly, from an industry perspective, this can be used as a model to spend less money on supply chain and logistic networks. Finally, from an environmental perspective, this research project lowers truck emissions and reduces Greenhouse Gas Emissions as increasing the individual capacity of each truck trip means that fewer trucks are needed overall.

Ultimately, this research project provided a great opportunity for students to identify the issues and strategies of private sector supply chain management. Students learned how to apply their theoretical knowledge from courses to a real business problem. Students were also able to improve their analytical skills by conducting simulation and optimization scenarios.

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Project Description:

Energy generation and its consumption nowadays are one of the main concerns of worldwide societies. According to Natural Resources Canada, about 82% of the GHG (greenhouse gases) emissions come from energy. While 64% of the total energy used in the residential sector is consumed due to space heating and cooling.

The project investigates the energy performance of a 100 sq.ft. real-scale test shed constructed by Building Science students. The test shed is equipped with a sustainable in-floor heating and cooling hydronic system using Uponor PEX piping and designed to include three closed loops: in-floor hydronic system, solar heating system powered by vacuum tube collector and future geothermal cooling system that includes ground heat exchanger (please see the layout of the systems).

The in-floor hydronic heating system was installed as a part of Uponor – Algonquin College project that aimed to investigate the performance of Uponor PEX piping application at the radiant heating systems. The industrial partner (Uponor Ltd.) has a particular interest in assessing energy efficiency, thermal comfort, usage efficiency, regulatory compliance, and ease of installation and maintenance of their product. The main aim of the hydronic part of the project is to help the industrial partner demonstrate and market the superiority of its PEX products and solutions by providing Uponor Ltd. with a detailed analysis of the results from the future system testing.

Initially, the project design involved only a hydronic heating system powered by a solar collector. However, the testing of heating system can be carried out only during cold periods, which means that the system can be valuably tested only during late autumn, winter, and earlier spring. For this reason, it was decided to add to the design a geothermal loop with a ground heat exchanger that will allow examining the hydronic system also for the cooling application during the summer.

So far, there are only two loops are being installed in the shed – solar and In-floor hydronic systems – with the pre-installed 3-way valves that will allow connecting the geothermal loop in the future. The geothermal loop design was done according to the research on similar systems and validated with the help of software such as LoopCAD (hydronic system design and simulation of performance), Energy2D and ANSYS (heat transfer simulation for obtaining the size of ground heat exchanger loop). The further steps will be to test the solar heating system during the upcoming cold period as well as complete the installation of the geothermal loop.

In addition to evaluating the heating/cooling system, the shed’s changeable wall panels that designed in a way to facilitate testing the effect of different details and composition of wall assembly on the building envelope performance. Furthermore, a series of various building envelope tests- such as blower door test, already completed, and infrared thermography- will assist in analyzing the energy performance of the shed as a complete unit.

All the testing opportunities that this equipped shed provides will enable college students and professors to perform a regular range of repeatable applied research activities to test, analyze, and benchmark the performance and effectiveness of the systems used in this project as well as to connect them with the building envelope performance.

The project is sponsored and made possible by the office of Applied Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Uponor Ltd (PEX), and the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

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