This story is Part 3 of an eight-part series, Global Engineering Impact, running throughout fall 2015.
For North Americans, it can be easy to take emergency medical services (EMS) for granted. But in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh there is no EMS system, no centralized ambulances, and no 911 service. Justin Boutilier, a PhD candidate in industrial engineering working under the supervision of Professor Timothy Chan (MIE), hopes to close this health-services gap in developing countries.
In Toronto, simply calling 911 gets an ambulance to the scene in approximately six minutes. From there, the ambulance takes the fastest route to the hospital — sirens blaring — as cars on the road yield or move out of the way. In Dhaka, the 11th largest city in the world where the population is five times larger than Toronto’s, the situation is very different.
In September, Boutilier spent three weeks in Dhaka working with local collaborators. Among his findings were the following:
- 34 per cent of patients took a rickshaw, 25 per cent took a CNG (a three-wheeled cab that runs on compressed natural gas), while only 8 per cent took an ambulance;
- Ambulances are by far the most expensive method, costing anywhere between 500 to 5,000 Taka (BDT), which is approximately $9 to $87 CAD;
- The average response time for ambulances is 60 to 80 minutes; and,
- Some patients spent more than 5 hours to get to the hospital.
These results are alarming when considering that more than 33 per cent of deaths in developing countries are attributed to time-sensitive medical emergencies, from cardiac arrests to maternal or child health issues.
Boutilier and Chan, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Novel Optimization and Analytics in Health aim to vastly improve these numbers — and save lives — by optimizing emergency medical response.
“Our goal is to reduce ambulance response times by developing a software system leveraging existing infrastructure that optimizes ambulance pre-positioning locations, and provides real-time travel estimation and route optimization information to drivers,” said Chan.
“Our research has two components: first, locate the ambulances throughout the city, and second, routing them to the patients,” said Boutilier. “If the city of Dhaka is going to implement an ambulance service, where should these be stationed around the city, how many are needed, and what are the most effective routes?”
To find the answers, Boutilier and local collaborator Moinul Hossain, a traffic engineer and professor from Islamic University of Technology (IUT), collected data through a patient survey and created a GPS device with an android app to put into rental cars. They then had the cars drive around the city throughout the day in order to collect their locations and learn about the traffic patterns.
With traffic congestion being a constant issue in Dhaka, finding an optimized route is a big hurdle in Boutilier’s research. “Once it took me three hours to drive 11 kilometres,” said Boutilier. “Even if cars wanted to move out of the way [for an ambulance], there is no space to move aside.”
That is why implementing a North American system in a developing country is not an option.
“Some people think, why can’t you just use the existing system from North America and bring it there? But the challenge is the cultural differences. A lot of the assumptions we make in North America are not valid there,” explained Boutilier. “For example, it is not the norm to yield for ambulances, a common assumption that allows ambulances to quickly reach the scene in North America.”
“Because people are not able move out of the way, location actually becomes more important because you want to avoid really busy roads and route accordingly,” said Chan.
With these kinds of challenges, Boutilier and Chan are focusing on the policy side of the Dhaka ambulance system. “We hope we can use our model to go to private companies to recommend spatial positioning for better service,” said Boutilier.
In addition to developing an optimization model for ambulance services, Boutilier and Chan will be evaluating other forms of transportation, such as CNG or Rickshaw ambulances, in order to address issues with reaching patients in areas without adequate access to ambulance transport, such as slums.
In the long term, Boutilier hopes to bring health optimization to other cities in developing countries. “North America is already quite optimized, so the gains made by optimization are marginal,” he said. “But in developing countries, operations research can make a huge impact.”
This story is adapted from an article written by Cynthia MacDonald in Re:New, the New College Alumni & Friends Magazine 2015.
Sylvia Mwangi, a second-year U of T Engineering student, was raised in the mountainous central highlands of Kenya, and developed a passion for science and math early on. But in sub-Saharan Africa, where education beyond high school is rare, her odds of being able to fulfill her ambitions were low.
Fortunately, Mwangi discovered an initiative that could help her do just that. While interning at a bank in Nairobi, she learned about the MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program, which has given her the education that had once seemed unlikely.
The MasterCard Foundation has committed $500 million over ten years to provide disadvantaged students, primarily from sub-Saharan Africa, the opportunity to study at universities around the world. In addition to covering tuition and books, MasterCard also supports Mwangi’s living expenses, and helps her source internship, volunteer and social activities. She is now in her second year with the program, and one of 23 such Scholars currently studying at U of T.
With 60% of its citizens under the age of 25, sub-Saharan Africa is rich with the potential and promise of youth. Unfortunately, fewer than 7% are ever educated beyond high school. Within that small group, far fewer than half are female. Which is why brilliant students like Sylvia Mwangi are true trailblazers.
Now in residence at New College and studying industrial engineering, she also considered programs in law or pharmacy. But as a result of her experience in Toronto, she is newly motivated by the prospect of working in health care or the relatively new area of oil and gas exploration back home.
“I’m not just interested in mining, but in community development,” she says. “How do we make sure we give back? We must always remember that the resources belong to the people, and that they should see benefits, too.”
Giving back is a theme that recurs in conversation with Mwangi. A key program requirement is that she will spend the summer after her third year interning in her home country. After graduation, her ultimate plan is to return to where she came from.
This is no small point, as sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a “brain drain”: for example, even though few people living there can take advantage of medical training, in many African countries, the majority of locally-trained doctors ultimately take their skills elsewhere — instead of staying home where they are often badly needed.
This situation reflects both the good and bad news emanating from countries like Kenya. On the one hand, government funding and newly booming economies have resulted in greater school enrollment at early levels (the MasterCard Foundation also funds secondary education). But lacking teachers, school buildings, transportation and money for school fees, there is a limit to how far education can currently go for most students. This is especially true for girls, who are often forced to give up school in favour of domestic responsibilities.
So it is up to the brightest of these students to create change. Because Canada has a well-established mining industry, Mwangi knows that many in the burgeoning resource sector in Kenya can profit from the lessons she will bring back from her classwork and internships. In a way, teaching her means teaching many other Africans as well.
“Canada has the resources, and we students have the skills,” she says. “This program gives a perfect opportunity to match the two. I really look forward to going home and sharing what I’ve learned.”
MasterCard Foundation Scholars are also offered counselling and mentorship, to help her adjust to the culture and climate shock of their home away from home. Though she’d never travelled from her infinitely warmer homeland before, she didn’t have much trouble fitting in.
Gregarious, kind and funny, she’s adjusted easily to her “home away from home” (while admitting she could certainly do without the cold of winter). On top of studying and volunteering, Mwangi has tried her hand at martial arts and leadership opportunities through the Rotoract Club.
She has found Canada to be safe and friendly, and appreciates the range of viewpoints on offer in a diverse city like Toronto. This is something Mwangi has absorbed through the frequent group work in her engineering classes, something she’d never done in Kenya: “That was a whole new concept for me,” she says.
Mwangi has already learned a great deal in Canada — but Canada has much to learn from her, too. Her courageous journey is a powerful reminder that North Americans should never be complacent, bored or cynical about the rewards of education. And that even a young person is capable of taking on the biggest challenges.
Following the horrific attacks on Paris and other cities in November, speculation swirled that the plotters may have been using smartphone apps to encrypt their communications. Thanks to support from a Connaught Global Challenge Award, Professor Amr Helmy (ECE) is leading research that could break open such encryption while ensuring the security, privacy and confidentiality of legitimate communications.
The Connaught Global Challenge Award — funded by the University of Toronto’s Connaught Fund — was established in 2011 to support interdisciplinary approaches to problems of global significance. . As more people and businesses move crucial operations online, digital security has become one of these key challenges.
Moderns encryption ciphers can only be broken with powerful computers, much faster than those commercially available today. Quantum computing and quantum cryptography harness the physical laws of quantum mechanics to provide both speed and security improvements many orders of magnitude better than today’s state-of-the-art.
“A technological platform that provides a significant leap forward is sorely needed,” says Helmy. “My personal vision is for a quantum Internet that can go farther beyond quantum-based security — that can afford distributed quantum information processing, where quantum computers are connected by quantum communications.”
Helmy is leading the effort to gather a critical mass of quantum Internet researchers and identify pressing research questions in this field. The group includes investigators from across the University of Toronto, including in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Physics, and Chemistry, as well as industry partners from Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in Japan and Burnaby, B.C.-based quantum-computing company D-Wave Systems.
One of the group’s first objectives, says Helmy, will be to study how quantum states encoded in light, as photons, can robustly exchange information, with quantum states generated and manipulated in matter, as ions.
“Currently there’s no robust way to couple quantum states of the two systems—photons and ions—whereby one can share the generated quantum states between different network nodes,” says Helmy. “While there are promising approaches out there, they mostly lack the practical finesse, which propels them to fuel demonstrations out of the lab and into the field.”
The Connaught Fund was founded in 1972 when U of T sold the Connaught Medical Research Laboratories for $29 million. It is the largest internal university research funding program in Canada.
On November 21, 2015 Dean Amon and three U of T Engineering alumni were honoured at a gala dinner hosted by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE) and Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO). The Ontario Professional Engineers Awards honour outstanding contributions to the engineering profession and the wider community.
Learn more about each of the winners through the video vignettes below.
U of T Engineering Dean Cristina Amon received the Gold Medal, Ontario’s most prestigious engineering honour. The award recognizes public service, technical excellence and outstanding professional leadership.
Alumnus Michael Butt (CivE 6T3) received the Management Medal for innovative management practices that have contributed significantly to the engineering profession.
Alumna Claire Kennedy (ChemE 8T9) received the Citizenship Award, recognizing engineers who have made significant contributions to society.
Alumna Jeanette Southwood (ChemE 8T6, MASc 8T8) received the Engineering Excellence Medal, recognizing those who have contributed substantially to advancing the engineering profession.
This story originally appeared on U of T News.
For years, the University of Toronto has been an “under-utilized resource” for the City of Toronto, Professor Eric Miller (CivE) says — but he is at the forefront of changing that.
A civil engineering professor and the director of U of T’s Transportation Research Institute, Miller has had a close working relationship with the City of Toronto for many years.
But with both President Meric Gertler and Mayor John Tory stressing closer ties, that relationship has intensified.
Earlier this year City Council awarded a contract to Miller and the institute to do a major study on the transit needs of Toronto, including an examination of Tory’s SmartTrack proposal he made during last year’s mayoral election campaign. The report is due in January.
Miller told U of T News that “it is very important that we not look at just one project is isolation,” suggesting that the study could make recommendations about walking and biking as well as public transit.
During the municipal election campaign Miller wrote in an op-ed column for The Star that Tory’s SmartTrack plan, tabbed a “regional relief line,” was a good idea. But he also said Olivia Chow’s proposal for more buses was welcomed as well, because “increasing the capacity of the surface transit network is essential.”
The TTC is planning to add more buses, though its attempt to add more streetcars has been stymied by manufacturing delays.
Many transit advocates are pushing for a downtown relief line to ease the congestion on the Yonge/Spadina line. Miller noted though that the SmartTrack plan would also offer such relief. The SmartTrack line will provide service from the Airport Corporate Centre in the west, southeast to Union Station and northeast to Markham in the east. It would have 22 new station stops and five interchanges with the TTC rapid transit network.
Tory promised that the line would be built in seven years with service starting in 2021.
Miller stressed that the institute is not an advocate for any one plan. “We are non-ideological. It has to be evidence-based and, technically, make sense or not.”
While not coming out in favour of any plan, Miller made it clear that one of the frustrations for transit planners is the lack of political will to get things done.
“The root problem is the total unwillingness [of politicians] to deal with transit funding. The idea that they are not willing to pay for it is so ridiculous. We are setting ourselves up for failure” by not coming to grips with the issue.
Gertler and city manager Peter Wallace attended a session recently on funding for municipalities during which they discussed alternative sources of revenue and alumna Anne Golden, former head of the United Way of Greater Toronto, suggested raising revenue for transit through a city sales tax. Golden made the recommendation to the provincial government in December, 2013 along with former city planner Paul Bedford.
“The reports were fantastic,” Miller said. “It could have been the solution” to the problem of finding money for public transit. Instead, we got a “totally mindless, kneejerk reaction” from politicians. “They don’t want to bite the bullet to pay for things that will make your life better.”
One group of people whose lives could be made better by improved public transit are university students, who often commute for hours just to get to class.
Miller was heavily involved in the creation of StudentMove TO which launched an unprecedented public transit survey of 170,000 post-secondary students in Toronto last September. One of his PhD students, Chris Harding (CivE PhD candidate), helped designed the survey.
Miller said “I am very, very excited” that the survey results will “lead to better policy decisions” that will help students. The results will be analyzed after the survey is concluded in January.
The strengthening of ties between U of T and the City of Toronto is critical to the success of both, he suggested. The relationship “has always been a little ad hoc” and formalizing it in a wide array of areas makes sense, Miller said. But he said “we have to be a little careful in making sure our [U of T’s] work is objectively based, and not politicized.”
Last Friday, more than 40 high school science and math teachers from across the Greater Toronto Area joined U of T Engineering for a series of interactive and collaborative workshops on teaching and learning.
Engineering for Educators (E4E) is an annual event in which secondary teachers and U of T Engineering faculty and staff discuss innovative ways to bring STEM into the secondary classroom. This year, E4E was expanded to a full-day event with a strong emphasis on practical strategies that are classroom-ready.
“We wanted to go beyond building relationships with teachers and provide take-aways that they could apply immediately,” said Dawn Britton, associate director of outreach at U of T Engineering. “It’s a unique opportunity for secondary and post-secondary educators to share effective strategies with each other.”
Following a welcome by Micah Stickel (ECE), chair of first year engineering at U of T, the day kicked off with a dynamic presentation from the University of Toronto Human Powered Vehicle Team, who recently set a new world record for the fastest bicycle ever created. This project gave teachers a glimpse of the amazing feats engineering students achieve as well as the learning that occurs outside of the classroom.
Over the course of the day, the participants got to tour U of T labs in the Department of Civil Engineering and the Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (IBBME), and speak with undergraduate and graduate students about their research projects.
The day also included round-table discussions with U of T Engineering educators on topics that affect both secondary and post-secondary educators, such as academic support, curriculum design and leadership development.
Following the discussion was a student panel with four undergraduate engineering students from industrial, electrical, computer and chemical engineering. Participants were given the opportunity to ask the panel questions about self-directed learning, transitioning from high school to first year engineering, and peer support and community.
“The day was very valuable. It provided information that I can take back to the classroom, and be mindful when I look at my students,” said teacher and U of T Engineering alumnus Lubi Uzunovski (Chem 9T4). “I want to give them the best chance at succeeding in engineering. I enjoyed the whole day, but if I had to select my favourite part, it’s the student panel. Hearing from engineering students about the environment, what their day is like, and the types of projects they are involved in was educational.”
The day concluded with three different workshops on assessment and learning outcomes, engineering design and problem solving, and engineering-related classroom activities.
“My purpose with my students is to prepare them for university; I think it’s important to prepare them at an early age. E4E was a learning experience for me — it answered a lot of questions about what is required, how students adjust to first year and what they need in order to succeed in university,” said U of T Engineering alumna Mariana Gavriliu (ChemE 9T3), who is also a teacher. “I want to empowered students to investigate topics in science independently. Engineering plays a major role in the progress of society by bringing scientific discoveries into our daily life.”