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GIS Applied Research Collaborative Project

A client's guide to Fleming GIS applied research projects



What are Collaborative Research Projects?

This classroom-based unpaid team project helps students apply their 10 months of study to promote the research, development, testing, and analyzing of real world information for you. In 2024 the post-graduate GIS programs are:

  • GIS Applications Specialist
  • GIS Cartographic Specialist

Update: For 2025 (next academic year) these programs are being relaunched as the names:

Students from the post-grad programs work in groups of 3 and are advised by an experienced faculty member. Throughout the process they will maintain contact with you, accept feedback, meet your project deadlines, manage the production of deliverables to industry standards, and formally present their results, solutions and findings back to you. The group must present to a faculty committee for grading and approval. Students are compensated by marks as this forms part of their program requirements.

Submit your 2024 projects now!


Example Projects and Reports

Click for a list of last year's projects that were presented in 2023's June open house.

Our projects are Spatial-data focused solutions. Below are completed student final reports from past years.

  • Port Hope Wastewater System Digital Location and Hydrological Modelling
     View Report
  • Prince Edward County mobile collection tool development for water department workers
     View Report
  • Algonquin Provincial Park Spatial Data Management and Visualization
     View Report
  • City of Peterborough Rooftop solar potential analysis
     View Report

We try our best to assign all projects to students, but occasionally there are more projects than student groups available.



Project Scope

Projects can be quite large, start work in March and are completed by June of each year. Working on-campus, students in groups of 3 plan your project in March and April. For May and June, students work 4 days per week on your project. This is about 100 hours of planning and 500 hours of working on your project! To have your project selected, it is important to make it interesting, challenging, and (ideally) results that can be shared publicly.

For a project to meet academic requirements, it must have at least 4 of these 6 items:

Throughout the project duration students communicate with you (we recommend at least one meeting per week), with oversight by academic and professional industry advisers.

Your project should be submitted by end of November to have students to select their projects in early January.


Submit your Project Ideas

Our 20+ years of clients have included companies, NGO's, federal, provincial and municipal governments, with people that may or may not have the technical experience to complete the project themselves. We provide the newly educated experts and an experienced advisor, for free! All we ask is to be responsive to the groups for data, requirements, weekly meetings and answering questions in the April through June period.

Each year projects are to be submitted by the end of November, with the bulk of the work being performed in May and June. Projects are demonstrated by students at our public open house, scheduled for June of each year. More information for the open house will be provided on this website in Fall of each year.

Have a project? Submit it here.

Interested in what we did last year? See last year's projects and see the recording

Thank you for Helping!

A tax-deductible donation per completed project is encouraged (but not required) to help innovate and improve the program. Make donations directly to the GIS programs collaborative project fund to support the program, future projects and our students.

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