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James Ashton

Technology Manager
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

James Ashton completed his undergraduate degree in Geography at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario, and has a post graduate certificate as a Geographic Information Systems Applications Specialist, from Sir Sanford Fleming College in Lindsay Ontario. James has spent most of his 20 year GIS career working for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Regina, Saskatchewan.  James has work experience with Land Information Ontario (LIO) in the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, and has worked as a Geospatial Consultant on Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) enterprise geospatial implementations in Egypt and Ethiopia. James also worked closely with Natural Resources Canada and other federal Departments on the implementation of a Federal Geospatial Platform.

James is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and also has accreditations IT service management, Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

Sessions in which James Ashton attends

Tuesday 1 March, 2022

Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
12:15 PM
12:15 PM EST - 12:45 PM EST | 30 minutes

Planet's constellation of satellites capture the whole of Earth's landmass every day. This unprecedented dataset provides insights to the agricultural sector, helping farmers and the companies that serve them make informed, timely decisions. But translating that data into insights isn’t always straightforward. In this session, Greg Crutsinger will go over the fundamental ways space observation is serving agricultural customers and present new applications in satellite data - everything fro...

Wednesday 2 March, 2022

Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
1:45 PM
1:45 PM EST - 2:15 PM EST | 30 minutes

Inter-annual variability in agricultural production in Canada is largely determined by weather and climate. Climate-related impacts have caused billions of dollars in financial losses in some years, with the incidence of extreme weather and related costs expected in increase in a changing climate. The National Agroclimate Information Service at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada monitors the impacts of weather and climate on agricultural activities using a number of geospatial data sets, mod...

Tuesday 8 March, 2022

Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
2:00 PM
2:00 PM EST - 5:00 PM EST | 3 hours

This workshop will use open tools and standards to create STAC compliant data for a Canadian Federal Dataset.  The workshop will focus on the nuances of working on Canadian Data in a Cloud environment. It will further demonstrate modern geospatial data science tools to create a SpatioTemporal Asset Catalogue.  Sparkgeo will also demonstrate use in leading desktop and cloud mapping software.