Winter Service and the Sport of Curling; is there really a difference?

Keynote Presentation by: Dr. Max Perchanok

Winter service is essential to transportation systems in high latitudes. The sport of curling is arguably less important to society but has a parallel worldwide distribution and is popular wherever roads are found in Canada. In addition, winter service and curling share the same critical subject matter and employ similar processes to achieve their respectively desired results. Examples are provided to support this thesis. 

The thesis is applied to define epochal challenges to winter service and the technological adaptations with which they were mitigated. A crystal ball is applied to the changing world to predict future challenges to winter service, and approaches are suggested to address them.

Hosted by:

Kathy Le

Speaker Biography:

Max Perchanok is a Geographer specializing in environmental impacts to surface transportation under cold climate conditions. For more than 30 years he developed and coordinated research for highway maintenance and road weather information at the Ministry of Transportation, Province of Ontario, Canada, focusing on innovations to improve road safety and reduce environmental impacts under winter conditions.