ABOUT Us
Great Gray Owl-Strix
nebulosa
Education
- Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta, 1992
- B.Sc., Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta, 1984
Affiliations
- Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA)
- Air and Waste Management Association (AWMA)
- Canadian Prairie and Northern Section of AWMA
Overview
Brian Zelt is a professional engineer with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in air dispersion modeling and the time series analysis of concentrations fluctuations. He has strong academic fundamentals in turbulence, dispersion, probability distributions of concentration fluctuations, numerical analysis, time series analysis and digital filtering, meteorology, climate, heat transfer, thermodynamics, boundary layer theory and of random processes which form a valuable background to his assessment of data sets and problem solving.
He has more than twelve years of industrial applied experience in the fields of air quality modelling, surface water quality modelling, exposure assessment, environmental and human health risk assessment, report writing and project management. He also has strong computing skills and has developed many private and public applications in DOS, Windows and Unix in Basic, Fortran, C/C++ and assembler. He has also developed specialty applications in VisualBasic for Access database and Excel spreadsheet including: environmental inspection and management systems, water quality dispersion model, project management, air quality windrose graphics. His technical background is combined with graphics art background in the development of intuitive and user-friendly interfaces to his programs.
Dr. Zelt has three principle areas of application in his consulting practice: air quality, water quality and risk assessment:
- His air quality experience includes: modelling using Alberta Environment or USEPA dispersion models for environmental impact assessments (EIA) for Oil Sands, oil and gas, pulp and paper, landfill, fugitive dust and hazardous/toxic gas applications; EIA management; EIA air quality report writing; peer review; fugitive dust dispersion modelling; greenhouse gas estimates; training and presentations. Dr. Zelt's strong academic fundamentals are also applied to the estimation of air quality emissions, an important aspect of the air quality modelling, which includes monitoring data assessment, thermodynamics and estimation techniques.
- His surface water quality modelling experience includes: development of methodology and computer programs to determine mixing zones; combined seepage, stream and river mixing; municipal mixing zone assessment; EIA surface water quality modelling; probabilistic and stochastic assessments, and sediment transport.
- His risk assessment experience includes the above air quality and water quality modelling in the application of exposure estimates to: bioaccumulation; bioconcentration; aquatic health; terrestrial wildlife health; human health; probabilistic (@Risk, Crystal Ball, and code developed personally) assessments; and expert testimony. Applications range: from ice loading of the Confederation Bridge; decision analysis; contaminated sites including super fund sites; Oil Sands landscape impacts on wildlife and human health; oil and gas developments on human health; and to fugitive dust exposures.
Dr. Zelt is an accomplished C/C++, BASIC and FORTRAN programmer. He has developed several programs in the private and public domain:
Private Domain
- UsEIRS (Alliance Pipeline): Electronic Environmental Inspectors Reporting System (U.S.A.) - multiuser database including remote updates, security, searching and reporting.
- CanEIRS (Alliance Pipeline): Electronic Environmental Inspectors Reporting System (Canada) - multiuser database including remote updates, security, searching and reporting.
- CanCommit (Alliance Pipeline): database to track environmental commitments
- PlanMan (Tera Environmental): multiuser project planning/management database
- CROSSING (GRI): pipeline
crossing decision support
Public Domain
- SHELTER/EXPOSURE (Alberta Public Safety): indoor/outdoor toxic gas model (now imbedded in EUB's GasCon2).
- PREPO (Alberta Environment): user interface to USEPA-WASP river dispersion water quality model,
- SPILL (Norther Rivers Basin Study): water quality spill model and emergency response management system for the entire Athabasca River system.
