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The Oil Sands Leadership Initiative (OSLI) is borrowing a page from the Charles Lindbergh story to encourage innovation in Canada’s oil sands industry.

Lindbergh helped design a special plane that allowed him to make aviation history in 1927 with the first solo transatlantic flight. While many people are familiar with “Lucky Lindy’s” story, few know the feat was encouraged by a $25,000 incentive prize first offered in 1919 by a local hotel owner named Orteig — to anyone who could overcome the challenges of transatlantic flight.

Now, OSLI is offering its own incentive prize to anyone, anywhere, who can overcome the challenges of accurately counting and identifying mammals in the boreal forest of Northern Alberta, where oil sands operations are concentrated.

“We’ve identified a challenge that we would like a cost effective, quicker answer to and someone out there in a completely different field may already have the solution” explains Larry Frederick, of OSLI’s Technology Breakthrough group. “OSLI is offering an incentive prize to anyone who can meet this challenge through a process called open sourcing, which means we’re open to everyone’s ideas and new ways at looking at things the oil sands industry has been working on for years.”

While the Orteig Prize is one example of incentive challenges and open sourcing, the practice is used by NASA and others today, including, the original X Prize, to source technology for commercial space flights, and, the Earth Challenge, to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.

“These are all examples of someone coming up with a really good question, and then putting it out to the world to answer,” says Frederick.

OSLI’s first open-sourcing project is being managed by NineSigma, one of the most experienced and advanced providers in this emerging field. NineSigma will post details of the OSLI mammal counting challenge online and distribute to some 1,500 highly connected groups in the academic and research world. These groups will pass the information along to others who might have an interest. The challenge will remain open for four weeks before the proposals will be evaluated by OSLI.

In Phase 1 of the incentive challenge, OSLI will determine which new idea or technology to support until it is proven to work and be accurate. This phase is anticipated to involve up to $50,000 worth of support to one or more really good ideas. Depending on the results of Phase 1, OSLI may continue support or partnering with the vendor or inventor in a demonstration phase if a really promising idea is sourced.

The NineSigma animal counting incentive challenge is potentially the first of several planned challenges.  Details about the OSLI NineSigma challenge can be found here.

While OSLI is open to all new ideas, it is very specific about what it doesn’t want.

“We’re not doing this to find a conventional practice that’s already in use by the industry,” says Jon Hornung, of OSLI’s Land Stewardship group. “We have specifically asked for no cameras, no (scat detection) dogs, and no visual aerial surveys.”

Land Stewardship Chair Will Hughesman points out that government, industry and academics have used these traditional methods as well as collaring with GPS/telemetry units to count large ungulates such as caribou, moose, deer, wood bison and predators like coyotes and wolves.

Accurate counts are needed in a timely manner, explains Hughesman, to determine if there is an issue with an animal population and whether or not OSLI’s mitigation programs are working. This is particularly important given the industry’s expansion activities.

“Essentially we are looking for a better method that can give us more accurate animal counts, in a cost and time effective manner. We think there must be stuff out there, whether it’s infrared technology, or perhaps something from the military. Someone else must be looking at ways to count animals accurately without being invasive.”

According to the NineSigma request for proposals, the successful counting method/technology should:

• differentiate among mammal species as well as individuals of the same species;
• have an ancillary benefit if it can be expanded to other large- and medium- sized boreal forest mammals such as coyotes, cougars and bears;
• have an additional benefit if demographic data such as the age and sex of the animal can be determined.

While it’s a tall order, Hornung is optimistic about the joint effort between OSLI’s Land Stewardship and Technology Breakthrough working groups.

“OSLI stands for pushing boundaries and doing things like going to open-source processes to get better answers faster,” he says. “We’re about creative thinking, open to bringing everyone together to find better solutions faster.”

Comments

• Nathalie Dubois Calero
  February 18, 2011, 1:05 pm
  I don't know if measuring animals pheromones in air or hormones in air during the mating season could be a good idea. If animals can find a partner with the smelt, perhaps we could estimate the number of animal measuring the concentration of pheromone. Of course, we need a bracket of the emission of one animal and the distance of detection.
• Will Hughesman
  March 1, 2011, 12:07 pm
  Thanks Nathalie, for your comment and interest. It’s these kinds of new and unique ideas that the incentive prize is designed to bring to the forefront. Please check out the NineSigma incentive prize site if you'd like to submit your concept. Regards, Land Stewardship Chair Will Hughesman
• Charles J. Cohen
  March 7, 2011, 3:45 pm
  Just curious: why the "no cameras" limitation?
• Will Hughesman
  March 9, 2011, 10:04 am
  That’s a good question. The OSLI companies are familiar with using cameras to detect and analyse animal numbers in the boreal forest. We are looking for new and different ways of acquiring animal population data separate from those methods currently used. Will Hughesman, Chair Land Stewardship Working Group
• Will Hughesman
  March 14, 2011, 12:29 pm
  The OSLI member companies would like to thank all participants in our first incentive prize competition. We will be working with NineSigma to evaluate the submissions. Please keep checking this website for updates as we’ll be announcing the incentive prize results here. Thanks again. Will Hughesman, Chair Land Stewardship Working Group.
• Brian Moore
  June 22, 2011, 11:44 am
  Will:
  
  ACAMP just did a introduction between the ex-CEO of Lougheed Martin and four local technology companies here in Edmonton. One company showed some very advanced technology normally of interest to the military. Seems to me to that this technology fits well with your goals. Should I direct them to NineSigma, is that avenue still open, or is there some other avenue?
  
  -Brian Moore P.Eng.
  ACAMP (Alberta Centre for Advanced Micro-Nano Products)
• OSLI Admin
  June 23, 2011, 11:00 am
  Brian,
  Thanks for the information. Will isn't available to respond personally right now. However, here are some answers to your questions. The NineSigma challenge is ended, so they are no longer the avenue to get this information in front of the Land Stewardship Working Group. However, all OSLI Working Groups are committed to being open to recieve and discuss new ideas and technologies. The way to get your ideas infront of the group is to send an email to info@osli.ca. The email will be directed to the appropriate Working Group - Land, in your case.
  Hope that helps,
  Regards - OSLI Web Admin

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