The United Nations (UN), as part of its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, has identified Good Health and Wellbeing (Goal 3) and Clean Water and Sanitation (Goal 6) as part of its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to improve and promote sustainable healthy lives and communities. The above identified health-related SDGs aim at promoting good quality of health by reducing the number of deaths and illnesses caused by harmful substances being released into water-related ecosystems, and ensuring the availability of clean and affordable drinking water for all. However, human actions and activities such as oil pipeline activities, that is, construction, operation and expansion, may cause incidents which pose serious threats to these goals. Incidents could be in the form of leakages/spillages of oil into water bodies, which lead to crises such as pollution of these water bodies and clean water-shortage. This has serious implications for public health, including deaths, illnesses and the scarcity of clean water especially for vulnerable individuals and communities such as Indigenous communities.
The goal of the UPHILL web application is to use 3D visualization and Operations Dashboard analytics to provide accurate visualization and important statistics about the effects of oil pipelines on the health of Indigenous communities in Alberta. UPHILL is designed to provide information on Indigenous communities in Alberta, the proximity of oil pipelines to these communities and water-related ecosystems, and oil pipeline incidents that have been recorded. This puts in context areas that are susceptible to oil pipeline incidents and therefore have their communities’ health threatened. This web application can be used by government officials, Indigenous communities and oil companies to identify these susceptible areas and this information can be used to influence further action such as putting measures in place to prevent or mitigate health impacts of oil pipeline activities. Addressing the UN’s SDGs on Good Health and Wellbeing, as well as Clean Water Sanitation, this app can be adapted to multiple scenarios with the health of Indigenous communities in other provinces of Canada where oil pipeline activities take place.
Manpreet (left): I was the Lead Data Scientist for the team. I am completing my Master’s in Geography, working with Public Participation GIS and Heritage Planning at the University of Waterloo. I completed my undergraduate degree in Biology and Environmental Science with a minor in GIS at McMaster University. My background in using GIS technology in my undergraduate thesis and thus far in my Masters thesis has given me the experience to gather, clean, organize, and analyze the data for the app. In my spare time, I enjoy playing sports such as basketball and soccer and watching hockey.
Robert (middle): I was the Lead Researcher for the team. I am a 2nd year Urban Planning Master’s student at the University of Waterloo (UW). I earned my undergraduate degree, BSc. Land Economy, at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). Currently at UW, I am involved in a planning project which focuses on using participatory mapping to inform urban intensification projects. Past academic and research experience has equipped me with research and analytical skills which were used in this project. My hobbies include watching and playing football, and playing musical instruments specifically the piano and guitar.
Misha (right): I was the Lead Analyst and Data Visualizer for the team. I am completing my Bachelors in Environmental Studies in Geomatics with a Minor in Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. I have had the pleasure in using GIS and data science technology in a variety of workplaces including at the University as a research assistant, at the Ministry of Agriculture as part of the business support team, and at Statistics Canada as part of the elections registrar. My hobbies are game development, art, and animation.
[1] Alberta Energy Regulator Shapefiles and Other Spatial Data. (2019). Enhanced Pipeline Shapefile - Open data.
[2] Government of Canada Open Government Portal. (2019). Pipeline Incidents - Open data.
[3] Government of Canada Open Government Portal. (2019). Aboriginal Lands of Canada Legislative Boundaries - Open data.
[4] Government of Canada Open Government Portal. (2016). Water File - Lakes and Rivers (polygons) - 2011 Census.
[5] Government of Canada Open Government Portal. (2018). Drinking Water Advisories in First Nations Communities - Open data.
[6] Statistics Canada. (2019). Boundary Shapefile of Provinces in Canada - Open data.
[7] Atlalis. (2020). Alberta Provincial DEM 25m.
Displayed from a birds-eye view, a web map provides a overview of the spatial context for the effects of pipeline incidents on water health. In combination with Operations Dashboard, the 2D web map acts as a spatial filter for charts and graphs, allowing on-the-fly statistics for specific extents and areas. This feature allows users to find specific case studies for investigating Indigenous health in Alberta.
Using ArcGIS Pro, 3D visualization of the data to get a more on-the-ground view of the information is possible. A 3D visualization can hopefully make the data more interesting and engaging to a user exploring the scene. It also allows for a more detailed visual analysis, as a user can see how elevation differences occur across the space, and how an imagined leakage of petrol products might flow into nearby water bodies.
ArcGIS Online has access to a wide variety of tools and apps, including Operations Dashboard. Combining the web map and 3D visualization, it is possible to create an informative dashboard that updates and filters data as a user zooms and pans around the map. Charts and graphs can help serve an informative role in the dashboard. Indicators can be used to provide an updating counter for which water advisories are in effect for a particular map extent.
Alberta is a province that is located in western Canada. Alberta has a land mass of 661,000 sq km (255,214 sq km) making it the fourth largest province in Canada, with a population of about four million. The province is bordered by the Canadian Rocky Mountains to the west, the vast prairies and badlands to the east, Northwest Territories to the north and the state of Montana, USA, to the South. Alberta’s landscape varies from mountains, rivers, forests, fertile prairies, and lakes.
The province’s oil and natural gas industry is a backbone of its economy as the province contains about 165 billion barrels of oil from its oil sands out of Canada’s total 168 billion barrels of oil. Oil production supports 30% of all provincial economic activities, provides 415,000 jobs for Albertans, and realized about $3.33 billion between 2015 and 2016 in economic activity generated by about 20,000 businesses that directly or indirectly engage in oil and gas activity. The provincial government earns and receives approximately $5 billion in revenues and taxes. The economic benefits of oil and gas production are numerous thereby making it a lucrative business in Alberta, and to a larger extent, Canada.
There are a number of ways by which these natural resources are transported. These ways include transporting by either rail or pipelines. The use of oil pipelines is one of the cost-effective ways of transporting oil and gas from Alberta over long distances to various destinations. Pipelines are cost-effective in transporting oil and largely used in Canada as its (Canada) existing pipeline network stretches for over 800,000 kilometres. However, there are a number of incidents and potential risks associated with the use of oil and gas pipelines. These pipeline incidents, which occur either during construction or operational stages, include fire explosions, installation leaks, ruptures and hits or physical impacts to pipelines. The province of Alberta recorded 416 in 2018 and 415 pipeline incidents with incidents having varying degrees of impacts on health, ranging from low (for e.g., no impact on water-bodies, pipeline hits) to high (for e.g., flowing water affected, evacuation of persons in a nearby community).
Pipeline incidents pose threats and risks to public and environmental health. Incidents such as the release/spillage of contents being transported through pipelines exposes people to volatile chemicals which can cause respiratory issues. Also, spilled contents sometimes end up in water-bodies thereby making the water unsafe for human consumption such as drinking and cooking, and requires costly purification processes to make them safe for human consumption. Aquatic life such as red fish and salmon which serve as a source of food to people such as indigenous communities are also poisoned by spillages thereby rendering aquatic food unsafe for eating. In August 2019, a pipeline spilled 40,000 litres (250 barrels) of oil into the Washout Creek, a stream in Alberta. Despite the stream not serving as a source of drinking water, it is a tributary of the North Saskatchewan River, a source of Edmonton’s water supply. This is a real-life example of how oil pipeline incidents threaten health. As a result of the threats pipeline incidents pose, indigenous communities, environmentalists, municipalities and other advocates constantly oppose numerous pipeline projects.
Our main goal is to use our technical GIS knowledge, creativity, ability to innovate, and teamwork to produce a relevant and functional web app using the Esri platform. The way in which we are accomplishing this goal is by using ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Operations Dashboard, and ArcGIS Web App Builder. We are looking to showcase our skills using these Esri platforms. Our secondary objective is to build a strong sense of community among senior undergraduate and grad students in the GIS field. The way in which we are accomplishing this objective is that all of us are grad students or senior undergraduate students and have an interest in helping the broader community. This app is focused on the theme of Health and uses Canadian Open Spatial Data.
There are a number of Indigenous communities in Alberta. Some of these include First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities. Indigenous communities and people have a sense of relationship with ecosystems and the natural environment including land and water, and these ecosystems serve as sources of activities and food including hunting and fishing. However, a lot of these communities are within Alberta’s oil sands region and their health is therefore susceptible to and threatened by oil pipeline activities - construction, operation and expansion. Risks from oil pipeline activities include oil spillage and fire explosions which can lead to water contamination, asthma, cancer, fire and risk to the health of wildlife habitat. The consequences of these risks can be devastating for water quality and environmental health of ecosystems. This in turn negatively impacts the health of Indigenous communities as these communities, for example, are unable to access clean water. Also, fire-damaged wildlife habitats cause the traditional lifestyle of Indigenous communities to be impacted negatively. Contaminated drinking water can lead to diseases such as cancer and burning forest habitats can lead to breathing difficulties such as asthma.
The provincial and federal governments, other oil-related agencies and oil companies are aware of the impacts pipeline incidents have on human and environmental health. These authorities are interested in issues that relate to oil pipelines and also put measures in place to mitigate pipeline incidents and its impacts. For example, the National Energy Board (NEB), an independent agency, has authority over pipeline construction that spans across provincial borders to ensure pipelines are safely constructed to standards to minimize pipeline incidents. Also, oil companies are required to set up pipeline monitoring procedures in order to detect pipelines as soon as possible in order to mitigate health impacts the incidents might pose. Another notable agency is the Drinking Water Advisories (Boil Water Advisory and Do Not Consume Advisory). These advisories are issued as a precaution or in response when drinking water sources have been actually or suspected to have been polluted by various factors including oil pipeline incidents. They advise communities as to when to boil water before use or completely avoid use of water from particular sources.
SDG 3: Good health and well-being
This goal is to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
SDG 6: Clean water and sanitation
SDG 6 aims at ensuring access to clean water and sanitation for all.
Alberta Boundary Shapefile:
- Download the boundary shapefile of provinces in Canada from Statistics Canada as a zip folder.
- Unzip the folder and load the shapefile into ArcGIS Pro.
- In order to select the province of Alberta, open the attribute table and select by attribute: Province Name = Alberta.
- Create new layer from selected features to create a new shapefile of only the provincial boundary of Alberta.
- The reason that the provincial boundary of Alberta is required is so that the Intersect tool can be used to intersect all other shapefiles with the Alberta boundary to witness phenomena only in our study area of Alberta.
Pipelines in Alberta:
- Download the pipelines shapefile from the Alberta Energy Regulator website in zipped folder format.
- Unzip the folder and load the Alberta pipelines shapefile into ArcGIS Pro.
- Since this shapefile includes all federal, provincial, and municipal pipelines and segments as well as ones that are operating and abandoned, there is a need to select operating national pipelines in Alberta.
- Select by attribute: Segment Status = Operating and select by attribute: Is National Energy Board = Yes.
- Create a new layer from selected features to have a shapefile of only operational national pipelines in Alberta.
Pipeline incidents data in Alberta:
- Download the pipeline incidents dataset from the Government of Canada Open Government portal as a csv file.
- Load the csv file into ArcGIS Pro and display the Longitude and Latitude data as XY data to display the pipeline incidents as point data.
- Use the Intersect tool to intersect pipeline incidents with the Alberta provincial boundary shapefile to have a shapefile of pipeline incidents only in the province of Alberta.
- Select by attribute: Incident Type = Adverse Environmental Effects/Explosion/Explosion and Fire/Fatality/Fire/Fire and Release of Substance/Operation Beyond Design Limits/Release of Substance/Serious Injury to create shapefiles of each type of pipeline incident.
- Choose Release of Substance, Operation Beyond Design Limits, and Fire pipeline incidents in Alberta as they each have 100 occurrences each, while the rest of the incidents have less than 20 occurrences each.
Indigenous Communities in Alberta:
- Download the shapefile for Aboriginal Lands of Canada Legislative Boundaries from the Government of Canada Open Government portal as a zipped folder.
- Unzip the folder and load the shapefile into ArcGIS Pro.
- Use the Intersect tool to intersect Aboriginal Lands of Canada Legislative Boundaries shapefile with the Alberta provincial boundary shapefile to have a shapefile of boundaries for Indigenous communities in just the province of Alberta.
Water Bodies in Alberta:
- Download the shapefile for Water File - Lakes and Rivers (polygons) - 2011 Census from the Government of Canada Open Government portal as a zipped folder.
- Unzip the folder and the load the shapefile into ArcGIS Pro.
- Use the Intersect tool to intersect the water bodies shapefile with the Alberta provincial boundary shapefile to have a shapefile of water bodies in only the province of Alberta.
Drinking Water Advisories in Indigenous Communities:
- Download the file geodatabase for Drinking Water Advisories in First Nations Communities from the Government of Canada Open Government portal.
- Load the Drinking Water Advisories in Indigenous Communities point feature class into ArcGIS Pro.
- Use the Intersect tool to intersect the Drinking Water Advisories in Indigenous Communities point feature layer with the Alberta provincial boundary shapefile to create a shapefile of Drinking Water Advisories in Indigenous Communities in only the province of Alberta.
- Two Advisory Types of “Do not consume” and “Boil Water Advisory” can be visualized.
Incorporate Data:
- Using ArcGIS Pro, load in all point data (Water Advisories, all three incident types), line data (pipelines), and polygon data (Indigenous territories, water bodies). Load in raster data (Alberta DEM).
- Combine the incident point data into one dataset.
Set Up 3D Scene:
- Open a new map. Convert to a 3D scene. Add in a basemap.
- Make sure that the scene is set to Global Scene, rather than Local Scene.
- Project the scene to WGS 1984.
- Use the DEM as the elevation source by right-clicking Elevation Sources and adding a new one using the DEM as the source. Remove the previous Ground source. Keep the DEM raster to verify that elevation is correct, but do not publish it to ArcGIS Online in later steps.
- Change the vertical exaggeration of the Elevation source to reflect uphill/downhill and upriver/downriver dynamics between communities and pipeline incidents.
Symbolize and Process Data:
- Symbolize the incident point data based off of incident type as unique values.
- Symbolize the pipeline data using a Tube profile using a single marker.
- Process the pipeline data by adding in a field called “segment_length” and using field calculator to calculate the following Python snippet:
int(seg_length)
- Symbolize water advisory data as unique values based on advisory type.
Upload to ArcGIS Online:
- Remove the raster DEM from the contents stack. Keep the elevation source.
- Under the Share tab, share the scene as a Web Scene to ArcGIS Online.
- If issues around uploading point data as Scene data occur, move the layer to the 2D layers section and upload them individually.
- Convert the scene to a 2D map. Share the map as a web map to ArcGIS Online.
- Open the 2D map that was uploaded and change the view to the desired default extent and view. Change pop-up attribute visibility to be concise and to-the-point. Save your map.
- Open the 3D scene and move to views that are desired for highlighting. Add these areas as new slides with the names of the areas involved.
- When slides are completed, move to desired view and extent that will be default to the scene. Save your scene.
- In the share menu, export your scene to a web app.
- Inside of the web app, go into the share tab again and copy the embed link.
Create Operations Dashboard:
- In ArcGIS Online, go to the Operations Dashboard app in the apps menu.
- Create a new operations dashboard with a unique title.
- Add in a new map. Select the 2D map that was created before.
- Add in a new Rich Text element. Add in the following code snippet but replace [XXX] with the embed code copied earlier:
<p></p> [XXX] - Change the “width” and “height” attributes in the copied text to reflect the desired iframe dimensions. Trial and error will be required to get the proper dimensions.
- Add a new pie chart element. Use the pipelines layer. Call it “Pipeline Length by Corporate Holder” and make the categorization field “COMP_NAME”. Change the statistic to Sum and make the value field “segment_length”.
- Add an indicator element. Use the water advisory layer. Change the statistic to count. Use the filter “Advisory Type Equal Boil Water Advisory (BWA)”. Give it the title of “Number of Boil Water Advisories in Extent”. Save the element.
- Add an indicator element. Use the water advisory layer. Change the statistic to count. Use the filter “Advisory Type Equal Do Not Consume (DNC)”. Give it the title of “Number of Do Not Consume Water Advisories in Extent”. Save the element.
- Add a serial chart element. Use the incidents layer. Use Grouped Values for Categories From, Incident Types for Category Field, and Count for the statistic. Label the chart axes accordingly. Colour the bars as desired. Give the chart a name of “Number and Type of Incidents in Map Extent”. Save the element.
- In the map element, go to settings. Under Map Actions, under “When Map Extent Changes” under the Filter tab, add in “Serial Chart (1)”, “Pie Chart (1)”, “Indicator (1)”, and “Indicator (2)”. Save the settings. Move the map around to see if the charts and indicators change as the map is shifted.
- Add in a Rich Text element. Edit the element to include instructions for use as well as an introduction to the project.
- Arrange the elements to be pleasing to the eye and understandable.
Figure 1: Peace River, Upstream Pipelines with Incidents, and Surrounding Indigenous Lands with a Do Not Consume Water Advisory and a Boil Water Advisory
Figure 2: Lesser Slave Lake, Uphill Pipelines and Incidents, and Surrounding Indigenous Lands with Two Boil Water Advisories
Figure 3: Woodland Cree Community with a Boil Water Advisory and Surrounding Pipelines with Incidents
Figure 4: O’Chiese Indigenous Lands with Do Not Consume Water Advisory and Boil Water Advisory and Surrounding Pipelines with Incidents
Figure 5: Hay Lake Indigenous Lands has a Boil Water Advisory with Land-Crossing Pipelines that have Nearby Operations Beyond Design Limits incidents
Figure 6: Beaver Lake Indigenous Lands with Nearby Pipelines and Release of Substance Incidents
Figure 7: Saddle Lake Indigenous Lands, Nearby Water Bodies, and Nearby Incidents and Pipelines
[1] Alberta Energy Regulator. (2019). Pipeline Performance. AER.
[2] Canada’s Oil and Natural Gas Producers. (2019). Fifty facts about Canadian oil and natural gas. Context: Energy Examined.
[3] Canada’s Oil and Natural Gas Producers. (2020). Oil and natural gas: backbone of the Alberta economy. Context: Energy Examined.
[4] Chen, R. (2020). Everything You Need To Know About Pipelines—And Why They’re So Controversial. Chatelaine.
[5] First Nations Health Authority. (2020). Drinking Water Advisories.
[6] Government of Alberta. (2016). Indigenous community data. Alberta.
[7] Heidenreich, P. Edmonton drinking water ‘perfectly safe’ despite pipeline spill into tributary of North Saskatchewan River: EPCOR. Global News.
[8] Hussey, I., Hill, N., and Alook, A. (2017). Ten things to know about Indigenous people and resource extraction in Alberta. Parkland Institute.
[9] Jonasson, M.E., Spiegel, S.J., Thomas, S. et al. (2019). Oil pipelines and food sovereignty: threat to health equity for Indigenous communities. J Public Health Pol 40, 504–517.
[10] Kohut, T. (2016). Feds can’t overlook health risks of Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion: experts. Global News.
[11] The Canadian Encyclopedia. (2019). Alberta. Historica Canada.
[12] The Canadian Encyclopedia. (2020). Pipelines in Canada. Historica Canada.
[13] The Canadian Press. (2019). Pipeline rupture sends 40,000 litres of oil into Alberta creek. CBC News.
[14] United Nations. (2015). Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform.