Partnering for Environmental Research

Environment Canada performs a lot of science. Seventy per cent of its budget is devoted to Science and Technology (S&T) activities, and about two-thirds of its employees are in S&T positions. All this activity has made Environment Canada the largest producer of published articles in the environmental sciences in Canada. But Environment Canada is not an old-fashioned research institution, generating its science in isolation. It is the main partner of each of the other nine top producers of environmental research articles in Canada, including six universities.

In recent years, research groups within Environment Canada (EC) have experimented with new ways of working with universities. The publication Smart Partners: Innovations in Environment Canada-University Research Relationships, highlights some of these success stories.

University-government collaborations began as informal joint projects undertaken by individuals with complementary research interests. These relationships have evolved and now encompass many varied forms of partnerships and networks. Some remain essentially informal, while others are highly organized and quite complex. Often the stories behind these innovative collaborations are as interesting as the research they help create.

One such case is the collaboration between Environment Canada's Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) numerical prediction group and Dalhousie University's Department of Oceanography. The MSC group was charged with building the computer models that use data from a range of sources to provide predictive tools for weather forecasters. When it came to predicting ocean storm surges, MSC had considerable numerical modelling expertise for the atmospheric side of the equation, but it was lacking expertise on the oceanographic side. That's where Dalhousie University's extensive oceanographic know-how in the area of storm surge prediction came in.

Working together, these two organizations were able to develop a storm surge prediction model driven by MSC's numerical prediction model. This model has allowed forecasters to give people more accurate advance warnings of flooding. Additionally, this collaboration was one of the factors that led to the establishment of the Centre for Marine Environmental Prediction, a collaborative effort of seven government departments, three corporate partners and Dalhousie University.

Another innovative EC-university relationship is being developed between Carleton University and Environment Canada. The planned Environmental Technology and Training Institute (ETTI) will help the two organizations work together in areas related to environmental protection. It will streamline the paperwork when the two organizations want to work on an issue of mutual interest, making it easier to share resources, facilities and expertise between the two organizations and freeing them to work on important issues like the air quality effects of vehicle emissions and the development of new methods to assess the survival and persistence of bacteria and fungi in soil.

Also helping to facilitate connections between people is the Atlantic Environmental Sciences Network (AESN), a partnership of 12 universities, federal and provincial governments, industry and community groups in Atlantic Canada. Modelled on the Atlantic Cooperative Wildlife Ecology Research Network, the AESN allows researchers to address a wide range of environmental issues in a larger and more multidisciplinary way than they could undertake individually. In addition to encouraging collaboration between institutions, AESN also works to bring together researchers from different parts of the same organization to tackle tough environmental problems from several different angles.

Building on these successes Environment Canada will continue to develop innovative approaches to working with universities, to assess the outcomes and to make adjustments accordingly. This will help identify more effective ways to conduct environmental research, and thus to fulfill the Department's mandate. Ultimately, these partnerships will serve to strengthen environmental sciences in Canada while delivering environmental and sustainability benefits to all Canadians.

The Smart Partners: Innovations in Environment Canada-University Research Relationships paper tells the full story of eight innovative partnerships and is available on the Canadian Environmental Sciences Network Web site.