Centre for Indigenous Community Infrastructure

Discover the Centre

The Centre for Indigenous Community Infrastructure plays a key role in partnering and connecting with Indigenous communities and service providers across the Canada with a focus on:

Building relationships and collaborative partnerships
Providing training to support workforce development
Fostering an Indigenous infrastructure innovation ecosystem
Advancing culturally relevant systems initiatives
Improving practice through research and knowledge exchange

The Centre for Indigenous Community Infrastructure collaborates with many programs across the University of Ottawa to develop and deliver training, implement systems initiatives, coordinate knowledge exchange events and webinars, support virtual innovation services, resource for research projects and lead Indigenous engagement for the Faculty of Engineering programs and initiatives.

Areas of research

Water
Sustainable materials
Building energy efficiency
Wastewater
Housing construction
Remote & rural infrastructure
Renewable energy
Building envelope
Climate Change & Infrastructure Adaptation

Core activities

The Centre is a hub for research and collaboration, an incubation centre where partners gather, exchange ideas and build impactful projects together. With our community partners, we have a robust ecosystem within which strong research projects flourish.

The Centre is founded upon respectful and systematic partner and stakeholders’ engagement over four (4) core activities:

Leading-edge research
Collaboration
Knowledge exchange
Youth engagement

The Centre continuously enables connections between uOttawa researchers and community partners with other research centres, within and outside of the University of Ottawa as others come to us to access our expertise or we reach out to others to broaden our capabilities. This diversity of perspectives has created an incubation centre for new innovative ideas.

Members

Joseph Wabegijig

Joseph is Odawa, Makwa (Bear) Clan from the Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory on Manitoulin Island, Ontario. He brings with him a wealth of experience and knowledge in partnering and delivering innovations in Indigenous community infrastructure.

Joseph is a civil engineering professional that has worked at the community and international levels to develop and implement improved systems of housing and infrastructure. He continues to play a leadership role in the design and development of sustainable infrastructure, focusing on community partnerships.

As a former Senior Policy Advisor on Infrastructure and Housing to the Minister of Indigenous Services Canada, he has also been able to support the implementation of the government’s mandate on First Nations housing and infrastructure and has delivered First Nations infrastructure projects nationally in a consulting role for nearly a decade.

As the Centre’s Coordinator, Joseph plays a key role in strengthening and building partnerships in indigenous infrastructure research and innovation and strives towards building the capacity of both academia and community partners for infrastructure sustainability.

Professor Joseph Wabegijig — Coordinator

Colin Rennie

Colin Rennie (Ph.D., P.Eng.) Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Ottawa and the Acting Director of the Centre for Indigenous Community Infrastructure. Professor Rennie carries out research in the areas of river engineering, environmental hydraulics, sediment transport, turbulence, and aquatic habitat. He is expert in field measurements of river hydro-morphodynamics. For CICI Professor Rennie has been investigating feasibility of hydrokinetic energy for remote and off-grid communities in Ontario and Nunavut.

Ousmane Seidou

Professor Seidou obtained his undergraduate degree in civil engineering at École Mohammadia d'Ingénieurs (Rabat, Morocco, 1996). After one year working as a civil engineer in Niamey, Niger, he returned to school and completed a postgraduate degree in applied computing (École Inter-États des Ingénieurs de l'Équipement Rural, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, 1998), a Master and PhD in water resources (École Polytechnique de Montréal, 2002). Before joining the University of Ottawa in 2007, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher then as a research associate at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre Eau, Terre et Environnement (Quebec, Quebec, Canada).

Dr Seidou's research mainly focuses on developing statistical and deterministic hydrological models that are used for climate change impacts estimation and the development of adaptation strategies. He is actively involved in international collaboration as well as capacity building in Africa and he has worked on or is working on various projects in Canada, the United States, Morocco, Ethiopia Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria.

Liam Peyton

Liam Peyton joined the Faculty of Engineering in September 2002 and transitioned to emeritus status as of January 2024. Professor Peyton acted as vice-dean, graduate studies for the Faculty of Engineering (2018–22), director of graduate programs in digital transformation and innovation (2013–2016) and associate director for software engineering (2012–2016).

Before joining the faculty, Professor Peyton had 10 years of industry experience as an independent consultant specializing in innovation, knowledge transfer and mentoring. He continues to mentor Ottawa-based entrepreneurs, startup companies and the Faculty of Engineering student-run Professional Development Club.

His main area of research interest is model-driven data integration and mobile app development, to support business process automation and performance management for health care and other industries. This includes user-experience design, cloud computing, data analytics, AI, quality assurance content management and privacy.

Di Wang

Dr. Di Wang is an assistant professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa, Canada. He received his PhD at the Technical University of Braunschweig (TUBS), Germany, in 2019. Prior to joining uOttawa, he worked as a postdoc researcher at TUBS and at Aalto University (Finland). In 2022, he received Italy’s National Scientific Qualification (habilitation), allowing him to work as an associate professor at any Italian university. He has hosted and participated in over 30 academic and industrial projects in Europe and Canada, publishing more than 120 scientific contributions with over 300 co-authors worldwide, including more than 70 journal papers.

Dr. Wang is a chair and member of several academic associations and has helped organize numerous national and international workshops, symposiums and conferences. He has been a keynote speaker or lecturer, and regularly acts as a reviewer for scholarly committees, peer review journals and funding agencies.

Member

Together we can help make the future.

Your support will enable students to reach their full potential within a thriving network of professionals who are reshaping industry.

Donate to the Centre for Indigenous Community Infrastructure fund

The National Indigenous Climate Compass

The National Indigenous Climate Compass (NICC) is an online tool that will equip indigenous communities with information enabling them to better prepare themselves for the risks associated with climate change. The NICC is currently being developed at the Centre for indigenous Community Infrastructure in collaboration with community partners and indigenous communities across Canada.

Learn more about the NICC

Capstone projects

Discover some of our student's capstone projects that the Centre has been working on.

Arctic Research Station

Cambridge Bay Research Station represents a major Canadian investment in the high Arctic, and has been constructed over the last several years in Cambridge Bay. Researchers from across Canada and internationally work here for specific research projects focused on high Arctic needs. The Research Station requires environmental infrastructure to meet the needs of its critical functioning, especially solid waste, incineration, water and sewage, and power and heating. Given its location and functioning, conventional solutions effective in the south are not readily applicable.

This is a leading-edge facility that, when serviced with low carbon and carbon neutral services, will provide a demonstration that can be replicated across the high Arctic for similar facilities.

Feasibility report documenting alternatives, and design report on the preferred solution.

Industry Collaborator: Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), Matthew Hough, P.Eng

Cambridge Bay Airport

Cambridge Bay Airport experiences many weather related problems resulting from rain, snow and frost conditions. Upgrading the airport is necessary to meet growing economic and development needs.

New design and construction methods better able to withstand the harsh climate impacts at Cambridge Bay are necessary. Various earthwork and runway materials need to be investigated, such as chip seal, etc. Cambridge Bay represents Canada’s presence in the high Arctic, and must have dependable and sustainable air travel facilities to meet its needs.

Feasibility report demonstrating new construction and design methods for suitable for runways in the high arctic, and design report on the preferred solution.

Industry Collaborator: Indigenous Services Canada (ISC)
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Dimitrova

Cambridge Bay Community Centre

With a population of 1800, Cambridge Bay requires an integrated new Community Centre to meet its needs, including a large freezer facility to store foodstuffs for the community, as well as communal kitchen and power facilities. Development of the Community Centre will require innovative waste management and power generation facilities. The new community centre is very important to the economic and social development of the community.

Feasibility report on alternatives, and a design report on the preferred solution.

Industry Collaborator: Indigenous Services Canada (ISC)
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Abdulridha

Cambridge Bay Dormitory

The Candian High Arctic Research Station represents a major Canadian investment in the high Arctic, and has been constructed over the last several years in Cambridge Bay. Researchers from across Canada and internationally work here for specific research projects focused on high Arctic needs.

The Research Station requires an 80 person dormitory to house the influx of visitors during the annual field season. This is a leading edge facility that, when serviced with low carbon and carbon neutral services, will provide a demonstration that can be replicated across the high Arctic for similar facilities.

Feasibility report documenting alternatives, and design report on the preferred solution is required.

Industry Collaborator: Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), Matthew Hough

Northern Community Housing

Canada is accelerating its efforts to support improved First Nations housing across Canada. 40 new clusters of 10 residential homes are being proposed for remote communities south of 60 degrees. Innovative housing and servicing solutions are needed in order to devise sustainable housing for remote northern communities.

Students will examine new housing approaches suitable for such communities.“Stick built” housing, meaning conventional housing constructed on-site using trucked in materials is difficult and costly. New approaches using component solutions or “fly-in” solutions offer promising solutions to this long standing problem.

Research and evaluation of new housing solutions and feasibility report, followed by design report for one specified 40 home cluster.

Industry Collaborator: Indigenous Services Canada (ISC)
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Jrade

Permafrost Road Extension

Cambridge Bay, in the Canadian High Arctic, is a vibrant Inuit community with a new Research Station. Gravel roads serve as the main modes of local transportation and maintaining such roads in permafrost conditions is difficult.

Innovative design approaches are needed to reduce both capital and operation and maintenance costs. Cambridge Bay needs a new gravel road extension of approximately five kilometres to meet it economic and development needs.

Innovative design and construction techniques are necessary to adapt to difficult permafrost conditions, especially in view of potential climate changes affecting the far north.

Industry Collaborator: Indigenous Services Canada (ISC)
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Rozalina Dimitrova