Welcome to the inaugural Spatial Infrastructure News, I am Kylie Armstrong the Program Director and I would love to share with you some of the exciting developments and initiatives I have been involved in over the last few months and I hope you can participate in them in the near future.
My first announcement is to welcome Mike Bradford (CEO Landgate) as the new Chair of the Program 3 Board. Mike is a Member of ANZLIC, a PSMA Board Member and has many battle wounds in his pursuit of delivering one of the world’s most successful SDI’s (SLIP). Bruce Thompson our former chair has an exciting new role as the CIO of DSE in Victoria and we wish him all the very best.
The first part of 2011 has seen a number of initiatives being developed across Australia and New Zealand that require access to large amounts of spatial data from across all levels of government, industry and academia. This highlights the ever increasing need for a marketplace solution that these initiatives can tap into so there is not a continual duplication of effort.
One such initiative, the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) requires large amounts of data to service the planning research community and the CRCSI with its significant network and partners across Government is seen as a significant partner to support this initiative. We have a number of researchers now on the various technical committees that are designing the AURIN structure. To find out more about AURIN click on the AURIN link. If you would like to find out more about how your organisation can participate, contact me.
An in-principle agreement has been developed to partner with NICTA (National ICT Australia) and the Municipal Association of Victoria to establish the Virtual Australia initiative that will draw on the ANZSM as its data source for tackling large and complex planning challenges. The Victorian government are in discussions with these organisations to have Virtual Australia used as the vehicle to tackle the Port of Melbourne expansion.
This proposed project seeks to marry the SDI's with logistics, simulation, asset modelling and visualisation to have a fully functioning 'virtual' port looking 20 years out before any decision is taken to commit to investment in the physical infrastructure. In this way Virtual Australia becomes a significant project for Program 3. It is expected that dozens of our Participants are likely to be involved. A technical committee has been established and if you would like to be involved, please let me know.
Australia New Zealand Spatial Marketplace
I have been alluding to the Marketplace but what is it and is it real? A demonstrator will be developed in the next few months in the form of a portal and will catalogue up to 500 datasets from linked sites and allow access to services and web-based Apps. It will act as a one-stop-shop. The EOI which was sent out to our 43plers and SSSI members has closed. I will provide a full update next month.
Research
We are ready to start the 'Alignment Study' which will be lead by Maurits van der Vlugt. It will identify the existing spatial infrastructures, owned and operated in both the public and private sectors, that could be linked to the marketplace. The government agency SDI's are relatively well known and easily catalogued. Of greater interest are the significant number of large research SDI's, most of which have been created in recent years, and which are operating in relative isolation of each other and the spatial community more generally. This will provide the program with a Best of Breed Conceptual Architecture and a real insight into the specific capability gaps. We have also added another output which will be a Scientific Review. This scientific review coupled with the technical review and the business and capability gaps that are identified during the ANZSM Demonstrator Review will provide the P3 Board and its participants with a clearer picture of the significant gaps that Research can provide solutions to. Watch this space!!
If you have any topics that you would like me to cover in more detail for next month please contact me kylie.armstrong@landgate.wa.gov.au