Ronald Pelot

Dr. Pelot is a Professor in Industrial Engineering at Dalhousie University, specializing in maritime risk and response for over 20 years. His research work related to the FOCI application comprises four related areas in modelling and investigation. (1) Maritime traffic modelling: much modelling work on maritime traffic depends on a spatio-temporal representation of traffic patterns, usually disaggregated by vessel type, commodity type, activity, etc. (2) Maritime traffic risk analysis: risk analysis encompasses many elements and stages. Dr Pelot’s work has addressed a variety of aspects such as extreme weather impacts on fishing incidents, exposure measures for better risk prediction, ship characteristics correlation with incident rate. (3) Arctic shipping: Ron had been involved in three large-scale arctic shipping studies, including OFI Mod N in Phase 1. Some issues addressed therein were ship routing in ice, remoteness relevance for risk, and cumulative impacts of shipping in the north. (4) Response resource planning: where SAR resources are located (ex. CCG vessels and lifeboat stations) affect response time, coverage, and back-up options. The optimization models are quite relevant to the current SAR WP proposal. Since 2012, Dr. Pelot has also been the Associate Scientific Director of the MEOPAR NCE (Marine Environmental Observation, Prediction and Response Network of Centres of Excellence), a role which allows him to bring a lot of expertise to FOCI in regards to project planning, networking, and knowledge mobilization.