g-hacks 2024

On February 16th, 2024, the first-ever Geomatics Engineering-focused hackathon was held at the University of Calgary for first-year engineering students. This event created a great opportunity for firstyear engineering students to challenge themselves and solve a real-world Geomatics Engineering problem. The hackathon was a collaboration between, the Geomatics Engineering Student’s Society (GESS), the Geomatics Engineering Department, and Hexagon Autonomy and Positioning.

The theme of the challenge was GNSS interferences, where students got to use Hexagon | NovAtel PwrPak7 GNSS receivers to detect the signals. Geomatics Engineers from Hexagon explained the importance of GNSS interferences in GNSS positioning and the real-world impact of solving the problem. First-year students were tasked with creating an algorithm that detects signal interference over a wideband of GNSS radio-frequency spectrum. With that, students had to collect their own power spectral density data using the Hexagon | NovAtel PwrPak7 GNSS receivers through NovAtel logs. They were tasked with parsing and understanding the data collected from the receiver. After that, the students were faced with the challenge of creating an algorithm that detects these interferences.

The event sparked a high level of interest from first-year engineering students. Ultimately, 60 participants were selected to compete in the hackathon. Among the participants, it was observed that there was a very high level of dedication and interest in learning more about the opportunities in the field of Geomatics Engineering. Participants were also given the opportunity to network with upper-year students, professors, and industry partners. This allowed them to ask questions, fostering interest in the field of Geomatics Engineering.

A big thank you to everyone involved, especially the organizers: Spencer Rambold, Rafiu Hossain, Kendrick Lao, Kaitlyn Moore, Sydney Novecosky and Eric Magnusson. As well a big thank you to the judges from Hexagon Autonomy and Positioning: Paul Alves, Matthew Clampitt and Randy Ho.