I am a cartographer engineer. This profession doesn't exactly have a similar counterpart in Canada but is a mix of surveying engineering, remote sensing, GIS, photogrammetry and, of course, cartography. Canadians created the name "Geomatics" for that. There are only six universities offering this course in Brazil, and I graduated from one of them: the Rio de Janeiro State University.
My final undergrad project was the mapping of a small municipality using conventional photogrammetric techniques at 1:5,000 scale. After preparing the technical specs and accessing the financial costs, we were involved in almost all the stages of the mapping process: GPS surveying, ground truthing, aerial triangulation, etc - only funny stuff!
After that I worked as a project manager in a remote sensing company and took part on some mapping projects, including a 1:100,000 scale topographic mapping using the Canadian satellite RADARSAT-1. That's when my passion for radar started and that's why I'm here.
I'm studying radar polarimetry and investigating the applications potential of the next Canadian radar satellite: RADARSAT-2. This satellite will be the first to generate fully-polarimetric radar data when imaging the earth surface from 2004 on, and will be a rich and new source of geographical information. How is this going to improve radar maps accuracies and information content? In which extent can we discriminate targets using polarimetric data? My research is going to explore something in this field.
I like going to the mountains and being there for as long as possible. Climbing and hiking are my favourite activities, although I really like beach sports such as beach volleyball and "frescobol" (a very popular racketball game in Rio). I like searching for good books in used bookstores (Vancouver is a paradise for books!) about poetry, history or mountaineering, which I carry to Vancouver coffee houses or the UBC library to read.
And I'm trying to get more integrated in Canadian life and habits. I love the snow and the Vancouver atmosphere, and since I was able to follow the puck on the TV screen, I can say that I am quite interested in hockey!
Here's an aerial photo of my favourite mountain in Rio! RRSG / UBC / email: Flavio@ece.ubc.ca /
Updated February 6, 2003
