The Pulse: Nov. 16, 2022

An Edmonton-based non-profit focused on extended reality is marking Virtual Reality Day by celebrating a new partnership that will give thousands of Alberta students access to XR development tools.

ELIXR, which seeks to advance the use of XR experiences in education and healthcare, is hosting an event at MacEwan University on Nov. 19 at which it will announce a collaboration with EON Reality, a California-based company that specializes in XR education.

The new partnership is a big step in furthering ELIXR's goal of greater adoption of XR to benefit students, said biomedical engineer Martin Ferguson-Pell, who founded ELIXR and serves as its president.

"The cool thing about this is that we now have through this collaboration 4,100 licences that we can provide to post-secondary students across Alberta. Open source. No cost. This gives them access to the whole EON platform," he said. "That means educational material development tools, digital assets that they can use to make their own XR experiences, and the distribution system. So if they create something, then the distribution system will enable them to market internationally."

Since 2019, ELIXR has brought together 11 Alberta post-secondary institutions and industry partners to find ways to take the XR developments happening in the province and get them into the hands of people "that can make them work for them and add value."

Post-secondary education is one of the big markets for this kind of technology, said Ferguson-Pell, a former dean of the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Alberta and one of the leaders of the Rehabilitation Robotics Lab. He estimated that in the English-speaking world alone, there are nearly a billion instructor hours every year, and broad potential for learning experiences to be improved by incorporating XR elements.

"The reason for that is because a lot of things that we learn are either multi-layered or three-dimensional," Ferguson-Pell explained. Studying anatomy, for example, and trying to learn the workings of a lung or structure of a joint by flipping through two-dimensional pages is challenging "because it's not natural for us to learn a three-dimensional object in two dimensions," he said.

• Arc, the new electronic transit payment system for Edmonton and its regional transit partners, will be available to Standard Adult riders starting Nov. 21. Users will be able to tap on and off busses and the LRT using their Arc card, which they can load money to online. The system will also introduce price caps for daily and monthly maximum fares. "This is an important milestone toward building a strong, integrated transit service that gives people a more modern, reliable and seamless way to travel around the greater Edmonton region," said Carrie Hotton-MacDonald, branch manager of Edmonton Transit Service. Arc will be expanded in 2023 to discounted fare groups, including seniors, youth, people classified as low-income, and paratransit users. The city is encouraging people who qualify for discounted fares to continue using paper fare products until then.
• The city's proposed base budgets do not include any funding for Edmonton's On Demand Transit service, which was described in a separate optional funding package as a "cost-effective service model that meets the needs of communities with low demand for fixed route service." On-demand transit was launched as a two-year pilot in 2021 and has since expanded to 50 neighbourhoods and 18 seniors' residences. Continuing the service would require about $12 million. "For such a core service to not be built into the base budget feels like something went wrong somewhere," said Coun. Andrew Knack, "because there's no doubt in my mind that every single member of council would say this is a service that has to continue beyond April 30." Mayor Amarjeet Sohi told reporters that recently announced increased revenue from Epcor could be put toward public transit and that he would "highly recommend" council fund the on-demand service.
• The city wants to build four new fire stations and upgrade four of the 30 existing stations in the coming years. If council approves the 2023-2026 capital and operating budgets, new stations would be planned first in the neighbourhoods of Cumberland and Walker, with stations in Big Lake and Wedgewood targeted for future budget cycles. Coun. Keren Tang believes the new stations are necessary to achieving future response time targets as the city grows. The city is also replacing Fire Station No. 8 West Yellowhead, which is in the way of the Yellowhead Trail freeway conversion project, with a fire station in Blatchford expected to open in 2025. Coun. Erin Rutherford is worried about service gaps for residents of northwest Edmonton when Fire Station No. 8 moves, with the new Cumberland station not expected to open until 2026. "I want to make sure that there's either really a good safety plan for how we're going to make sure those times aren't reduced, or how can we make sure that that Cumberland fire hall is fast-tracked," she said.
• The Edmonton Police Commission said in its annual report that overall crime in Edmonton was down 17% in 2021 but that Edmontonians who were surveyed felt less safe and have lower confidence in police. Survey respondents whose confidence in police was excellent or good dropped to 57% in 2021 from 64% in 2020, and those whose confidence was poor or very poor increased to 19% from 10% in the same period, the report showed. The commission also reported that police use of force increased nearly 20% in 2021. Lori Lorenz, executive director of the value & impact division of the Edmonton Police Service said that while the number of reported crimes decreased, the "level of violence within the crime" increased. Likewise, while 911 received fewer calls overall, the calls were more complex.
• Edmonton Public School Board trustees voted to write a letter to the chief medical officer of health requesting guidance about when schools should bring in mandatory isolation, masking, and other health protocols to deal with illness outbreaks. Nearly 70% of Edmonton's 218 public schools are currently experiencing student absence rates at or above 10% due to influenza, RSV, and COVID-19, with rates exceeding 13% on Nov. 7. According to Supt. Darrel Robertson, masking is "so divisive in the community that it makes it, practically speaking, a challenge for schools to enforce in the absence of health orders." Premier Danielle Smith has said her government will not introduce mask mandates in schools.
• The annual Holiday Light Up event will take place at Rice Howard Way on Dec. 3. Organized by the Edmonton Downtown Business Association, the one-day event will feature art installations, live music, lantern-making workshops, Indigenous performances, chestnut roasting, Oilers viewing, an Italian Christmas market, a life-sized illuminated polar bear, and more.
• Premier Danielle Smith wrote a letter to Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek expressing support for the city's desire to extend Calgary's LRT to the airport and possibly create a rail link between Calgary and Banff. Liricon Capital Inc. and Plenary America have submitted a proposal for the $1.5-billion Calgary Airport-Banff Rail project, which they hope to complete by mid-2025. The rail line and the importance of tourism were included in the UCP government's economic mandate issued Nov. 15. Marlin Schmidt, NDP critic for environment and parks, said Smith's communications are too vague and focus on "things that are already happening, or maintaining business as usual."

A report commissioned by Edmonton Global on supporting innovation in the region recommends continuing to build upon the Edmonton Research Park, a facility the city has just finished consulting stakeholders on after deciding to sell two of the buildings.

The report, titled Fostering a Technology and Innovation Ecosystem: Insights for the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, contains five recommendations to support Edmonton Global in its mandate to attract new investment to the region, based on lessons drawn from more advanced ecosystems in Helsinki, Toronto-Waterloo, and Austin. Among them is a recommendation identifying the Edmonton Research Park as a useful asset.

"There is potential to increase the scope of the Edmonton Research Park to become a vibrant hub for technology and innovation or to explore the development of an innovation hub elsewhere, such as downtown Edmonton," the report says, noting that such a project would have to consider the needs of entrepreneurs, startups, and established companies, and would need to be developed with the involvement of various players in the ecosystem. "A key to any successful innovation hub or district is the ability to bridge the gap between academia and large industry," the report adds.

Edmonton Global would "have to do a little bit more digging with the City of Edmonton and some other partners" before it would do anything about that recommendation, said Brianna Morris, senior manager of policy and advocacy.

"It's been identified as an interesting asset, and it's really about how do we take advantage of it," added Chris McLeod, vice-president of global marketing and communications for the regional economic development agency.

Some companies based at the research park were disappointed when Edmonton city council's executive committee green-lit the sale of the Advanced Technology Centre and Research Centre 1, two buildings among the 18 on the 41-hectare site in south Edmonton. The Edmonton Research Park Business Consortium opposed the sale and called for more consultation, which the city has been working on since spring, closing its final round of input on Nov. 11.

Meanwhile, Edmonton Unlimited has been working on an "innovation destination" at 10107 Jasper Avenue in downtown Edmonton, which it is now planning to occupy in spring 2023, later than originally envisioned and after it bade farewell to the Mercer Building on 104 Street.