Position 107 June-July 2020

June/July 2020 – No. 107

The Australasian magazine of surveying, mapping & geo-information

CLIFF’S EDGE Tech to pull construction back from the brink

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inside Building capacity On developing robust GSOs

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contents

June/July 2020 No.107

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features 14 Q&A with Dr. Karen Joyce We sit down with Dr. Karen Joyce of She Maps to learn about the next generation of Australian spatial scientists.

16 Navigating the cliff’s edge Amid grim predictions for the immediate future of the construction industry, can geospatial technologies help get us back to work safely?

22 Q&A with Denita Wawn The CEO of Master Builders Australia on the challenges facing the sector.

24 Capacity development for geodetic survey organisations Robert Sarib, chair of FIG Asia Pacific Capacity Development Network, on best practice in developing capacity in GSOs.

26 Thinking differently about difference One year on, the Spatial Sector Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan has made strong progress against its goals, writes Amelia Davies.

32 How is the pandemic changing the market for cadastral surveyors?

Daniel Paez on considerations for cadastral reform in the wake of Covid-19.

34 Q&A with Tony Wheeler We sit down with the new CEO of the Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute, Tony Wheeler.

regulars 4 Upfront, calendar 7 Editorial 8 News 38 SSSI www.spatialsource.com.au 3

upfront

Dr. Scott Hocknull with a megafauna fossil recovered from the site.

Upcoming Events 26 June: Locate Connect webinar: Q&A with Peter Sippel & Nathan Quadros, Veris Australia https://www.locateconference.com/2021/ qa-with-peter-sippel-nathan-quadros/ 8-10 July: Locate Connect mini conference https://www.locateconference.com/2021/ mini-conference/ 22 July: Locate Connect webinar: Q&A with Peter Woodgate, Esus: 3D beyond the 2026Agenda https://www.locateconference.com/2021/ qa-with-peter-woodgate-esus/

A new light on extinction

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xtinction. Almost elegant in its finality, the phrase takes on a new cast at a time when human populations are being ravaged by coronavirus, in the country with the highest mammalian extinction rate in the world.

New research led by the Queensland Museum has discovered the cause of a most significant local disappearance, one whose cause has been debated fiercely – the megafauna of tropical Northern Australia.

The fossilised bones of gargantuan kangaroos, goannas, wombats and crocodiles were painstakingly excavated from South Walker Creek Mine, around 100 kilometres west of Mackay. These artefacts were studied for almost a decade, the research team also comprising scientists from Griffith University, Southern Cross University, University of Adelaide, University of Queensland, Australian National University and the University of Wollongong.

The results of their work were published in Nature Communications on May 18 and represent the first reliable dossier of the fate of these monsters of the Australian tropics, 40,000 to 60,000 years ago.

The first bones were found during cultural heritage surveys by the Barnda Barnda people on their traditional lands – the largest land animals on the continent since the dinosaurs. Six-metre goannas and a cast of other mega-reptiles, a 275kg kangaroo and a three-tonne predatory marsupial Diprotodon stand among the 13 former residents discovered at the site.

These colossal beasts co-existed with the First Australians for between 15,000 and 20,000 years. A dominant theory as to their disappearance holds humans responsible for their extinction through over-hunting – but evidence newly uncovered by this mammoth project suggests that this is not the case.

‘The extinctions of these tropical megafauna occurred sometime after our youngest fossil site formed, around

4 position June/July 2020

40,000 years ago. The timeframe of their disappearance coincided with sustained regional changes in available water and vegetation, as well as increased fire frequency. This combination of factors may have proven fatal to the giant land and aquatic species,’ lead author Scott Hocknull, senior curator of Geosciences at Queensland Museum, writes in The Conversation.

Hocknull writes that the huge that people and these many megafauna shared country begs the question – how did people survive among these beasts in an era of such drastic environmental change?

Other evidence from the site indicate the extent of this momentous upheaval.

A dire climactic change around 280,000 years ago wiped out a diverse set of rainforest fauna, setting off a sustained, but irreversible set of change processes that ultimately wiped out Walker Creek's megafauna 40,000 years ago.

Hocknull holds that the trend of extinction continues, with the mantle taken up by major environmental change driven by human activity, that the geological record sounds an alarm.

‘The fossil record provides us with a window into our past that can help us understand our present. As our study shows, dramatic environmental change takes a heavy toll on species survival, especially for those at the top of the food chain. Will we heed the warnings from the past or suffer the consequences?’ n

An artist’s impression of the giants that roamed Queensland.

Image: Queensland Museum.

31 July: Locate Connect webinar: The Hub session 20 August: Q&A with Melissa Harris, Land Use Victoria: ANZLIC Strategic Directions 3 September: ITS Australia presents Mobility 2020 Sydney virtual conference https://its-australia.com.au/ 4 October: 27th ITS World Congress 2020 Los Angeles https://www.itsworldcongress2020.com/ 14 October: Rotortech 2020 https://www.rotortech.com.au/index.asp 12 November: World of Drones & Robotics Congress 2020 https://www.worldofdrones.com.au/ 28 January, 2021: 43rd COSPAR Scientific Assembly https://www.cospar2020.org/index.php 30 March, 2021: Locate 2021 https://locateconference.com/

An extinct giant freshwater crocodile tooth exposed at South Walker Creek.

Image: Rochelle Lawrence.

partner feature

The Surveyors’ Trust - Intellectual Property Award 2020 Award Announcement

Majid Doost — PointSharePlus Pty Ltd

The Surveyors’ Trust has instituted an annual award for projects or activities that are of significant impact to the recognition of the surveying profession in the following categories: 1. T he creation, identification, and definition of new intellectual property 2. The management of existing intellectual property 3. The commercialisation of intellectual property 4. The protection of intellectual property 5. T he raising of awareness of surveying and spatial intellectual property The annual award for the project or activity with the most impact is a cash prize of $50,000. If no submissions reach the level of impact sought by the judges, up to two encouragement awards of $5,000 may be awarded in any year.

PointSharePlus (PSP) is an online point cloud platform for storing, viewing, sharing and analysing any type of point cloud datasets and 3D models. Its objective is to become a leading provider of online viewing of point cloud data across many different industries.

Development appears to be advanced and has potential to be an important tool for the surveying industry. The application does not address the issue of intellectual property ownership of the point cloud data and how that is to be handled in terms of protection, commercialisation, etc. but there is scope to complete the development to include that area for the benefit of the business and the surveying industry.

Results in 2020 Five submissions were made for the 2020 Intellectual Property Award. In the opinion of the judges none were demonstrated to be sufficiently impactful to earn the major prize.

Two submissions were awarded an encouragement award:

Ian Mathieson — Tenure Solutions This company is developing a tenure system which is much wider than the commonly recognised land registry to take into account formal cadastral systems and other tenures based on use, custom, etc. The development seems well advanced but the application of intellectual property principles is in its early development.

It does involve measurement of the tenure and proposes the involvement of surveyors to significant extent. There is opportunity for the incorporation of surveyor’s intellectual property to be advanced with future developments of the system.

The PointSharePlus platform enables storing, viewing, sharing and analysing any type of point cloud datasets and 3D models

Information provided by The Surveyors’ Trust

For more information, please visit www.thesurveyorstrust.org.au www.spatialsource.com.au 5

partner feature

PointSharePlus Technical Director Majid Doost

T

The Surveyors’ Trust Recognises PointSharePlus

he Surveyors’ Trust has awarded PointSharePlus an Encouragement Award during its recent Intellectual Property Award round.

PointSharePlus is an online point cloud platform launched by the PointSharePlus team in 2018.

The platform was developed with the goal of making point clouds accessible for everybody in the spatial industry without the need to purchase or install expensive point analysis software.

However Nat Marsden and Majid Doost say the greatest benefit of their platform is its sharing capabilities.

“Our platform has been designed to give individuals access to large amounts of data from laser scanners and drone flights, as well as the ability to share this data across large construction teams,” said Majid.

“Gigabytes and gigabytes of data including 3D models can be uploaded, measured, shared and analysed quickly across large teams locally and globally. This storage, analysis and sharing capability was very limited prior to our platform and surveying firms faced challenges dealing with slow and cumbersome files,” added Nat. Point cloud data is the product of 3D laser scanners and photogrammetry that capture millions of points at very high speeds, creating a 3D visual environment of the points around the objects. The platform incorporates data from lidar, 3D models and UAV images.

PointSharePlus allows users to browse large amounts of data very smoothly using an internet browser. The user can conduct measurements of distances, angles, heights, radiuses and coordinates. Large 3D model importing and analysis will also be released this week, which is a major development milestone.

Intellectual property ownership has also been strongly considered in the development of PointSharePlus with the owner retaining protection over their data and strong ability to determine how the data is shared and manipulated.

In the future PointSharePlus will include cloud computation for volume calculations and comparisons as well.

Anthony Schmidt, Chairman of The Surveyors’ Trust has applauded PointSharePlus on its vision and commitment to the surveying industry.

“We believe that five years from now this platform may well be adopted globally to benefit surveyors in all locations. It is our pleasure to work with PointSharePlus to bring this vision to life and add value to the spatial industry worldwide,” he said.

For more information, please visit www.pointshareplus.com to see what has been done and to look at work samples.

Become a member of The Surveyors’ Trust The Surveyors’ Trust champions the recognition, protection and commercialisation of intellectual property for spatial professionals across Australia.

We pool the royalties from the sale of plans developed by our member surveyors and apply these pooled funds to finance projects that advance the expertise of surveyors, recognise the work of surveyors and protect the ongoing sustainability of Australia’s spatial industry and associated intellectual property.

Visit www.thesurveyorstrust.org.au for more information on our free and simple membership process. Plus, gain access to past and future plans at a reduced rate and superior searching and document management systems for survey plans.

War Memorial, Kings Park point cloud available on the PointSharePlus platform

Information provided by The Surveyors’ Trust

For more information, please visit www.thesurveyorstrust.org.au 6 position June/July 2020

from the editor The Australasian magazine of surveying, mapping & geo-information

Publisher Simon Cooper Editor Daniel Bishton dbishton@intermedia.com.au National Advertising Manager Jon Tkach jon@intermedia.com.au Art Director Chris Papaspiros Prepress Tony Willson Production Manager Jacqui Cooper Subscribe Position is available via subscription only.

A 12 month subscription (6 issues) is AUD$76.00. To subscribe visit www.intermedia.com.au, phone: 1800 651 422 or email: subscriptions@intermedia.com.au website: www.spatialsource.com.au Position is published six times a year, in February, April, June, August, October and December by Interpoint Events Pty Ltd. ABN: 9810 451 2469 Address: 41 Bridge Road, Glebe NSW 2037 Ph: +61 2 9660 2113 Fax: +61 2 9660 4419 Reprints from Position are permitted only with the permission of the publisher. In all cases, reprints must be acknowledged as follows: ‘Reprinted with permission from Position Magazine’, and must include the author’s byline.

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Existential unease

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he extraordinary events of the last few months have been a challenge to all. Even with Australia’s stellar results in suppressing the Covid-19 pandemic to a manageable level (touching wood as I type) with a relatively low mortality rate, just understanding the extent of what’s occurring is taxing. The USA has cruised well past 120,000 deaths, with the UK over 42,000 and the carnage spirals upwards – seemingly unchecked – in the developing world. It’s a lot to process and to mourn, especially with social distancing and lockdown regimes adding strain on households and providing fewer channels to dissipate stress.

Thankfully, Australian case numbers remain fairly stable to date, as states and territories warily lift regulations and shuttered pubs start to reopen. But uncertainty and tension remain – especially as September 27 approaches – the end date for stimulus measures JobSeeker and JobKeeper, widely tipped to coincide with peaking economic bloodletting. With recent confirmation that we are in fact in recession and Q2’s economic results looking bleak, it certainly feels too early to celebrate our successes and count blessings.

That’s the underlying leitmotif of this issue – taking stock, and considering what comes next. On page 16, we examine the challenge’s faced by one of Australia’s economic powerhouses, the construction sector, and how geospatial techniques may provide a lifeline in navigating a safe way back to work. Around this theme, Master Builders Australia CEO Denita Wawn gives us a lowdown on the challenges for construction (page 22) and Daniel Paez muses on what the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic will have on the efforts to reform cadastral systems around the country on page 32.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however. Amelia Davies gives us a detailed update on the remarkable results from the Spatial Sector Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan a year since its inception on page 26, and hear Dr. Karen Joyce in a dynamic, inspiring Q&A on the stellar rise of She Maps’ initiatives to engage girls in a new understanding of STEM with a strong spatial emphasis (page 14).

We sit down with incoming CEO of the Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute, Australian geospatial veteran Tony Wheeler, on page 24 for a refreshing and strong vision of the future for our peak professional body.

I hope you’re staying safe and sitting tight – enjoy issue 107 of Position magazine.

Daniel Bishton EDITOR

As part of our company policy we ensure that the products and services used in the manufacture of this magazine are sourced from environmentally responsible suppliers.

This magazine has been printed on paper produced from sustainably sourced wood and pulp fibre and is accredited under PEFC chain of custody.

PEFC certified wood and paper products come from environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable management of forests.

The wrapping used in the delivery process of this magazine is 100% biodegradable.

August/September 2020 - ISSUE 108 Digital Twins – the new dimension in infrastructure

NEXT ISSUE

Hydrography and bathymetry – surveying and sounding

the distant depths Optimising the plot – the technology reshaping agriculture Advertising booking date: 17/07/2020 Advertising material date: 22/07/2020 Publication date: 11/08/2020

www.spatialsource.com.au 7

news Brian Nicholls and Zaffar Mohamed-Ghouse join WGIC board Two prominent figures in Australia’s geospatial business community have accepted leading roles within World Geospatial Industry Council (WGIC).

Brian Nicholls, executive director of AAM, has been nominated to the WGIC executive board, and will replace Mark Freeburn, outgoing CEO of AAM. Mr. Nicholls has over 25 years’ experience in the geospatial industry, and has been has been at the forefront of AAM’s technology leadership, as well as the expansion of AAM internationally over the past 15 years.

Brian has a particular passion for promoting geospatial technology as a fundamental ‘enabler’ for business, government, and society in general. Further, Brian is also nominated as a member of the WGIC public-private partnership (P3) committee that is aiming to bring out the possible P3 business models that the geospatial industry would operate in close cooperation with governments in the developing economies.

Dr. Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse, executive director at Spatial Vision and & Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne, has been nominated as the chair of the Industry-Academia committee. Mr. Mohamed-Ghouse was already serving on the executive board and policy committee of WGIC, and will head up development of an education strategy to foster collaboration between industry and academia.

Position Partners expands into Malaysia Position Partners has announced the opening of its Malaysian office, expanding the firm’s presence in Southeast Asia.

“Our Malaysia team has extensive experience with Topcon grade control and 3D GPS positioning technology, with the ability to support sitewide solutions for the construction industry,” said Martin Nix, Position Partners CEO. “With additional support via our remote access platform Tokara, Malaysia customers will have both local expertise and the ability to tap into the wider group’s technical knowledgebase. If the situation called for it, a Position Partners technician could support the customer from another hub in Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Australia or New Zealand,” he added.

As exclusive distributors for Topcon in Australia, Position Partners South East Asia Manager Mathew Connelly said that they also offer complimentary systems, including 2D excavator grade control system iDig. The Malaysian operation will also provide Topcon and aLine laser levels, and RDS on-board weighing technology, fleet management and high precision machine guidance systems for mining and quarrying applications.

SpaceX makes history as first company to launch humans into space Elon Musk’s SpaceX corporation has become the first private entity to successfully launch humans into space.

The launch at 3:22pm local time (5:22am, May 31 AEST) from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral was also the first time astronauts had been launched into orbit from the US, since the discontinuation of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.

Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley were

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inside the Crew Dragon capsule as it was lofted aboard a Falcon 9 launch vehicle for an anticipated rendezvous with the International Space Station.

Speaking to CBS News, Hurley described the launch relative to the space shuttle.

“Shuttle had solid rocket boosters, those burned very rough for the first twoand-a-half minutes. he first stage with Falcon 9 … was a much smoother ride,” he said.

Adam Gilmour, CEO of Queensland-based Gilmour Space told ABC Radio that the launch had inspired his team.“It’s a big milestone as traditionally governments control putting people into space,” he told ABC Radio Brisbane.

“This is the first time a private company has designed, developed, tested and launched people into space.

It’s a huge deal as it shows that commercial companies can do what is deemed so hard by themselves.”

The 2018 APSEA Awards being presented at Locate19: Gone are the days of packed galas — but the show must go on.

Industry excellence recognised online Excellence and achievement in the spatial community of the Asia-Pacific was awarded at the APSEALIVE virtual awards event.

We may not have been able to gather in groups of more than ten — but the wheels of the regional geospatial industry have never stopped turning.

SIBA|GITA presented the annual Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards via Zoom, in a bright and breezy event attended by 212 virtual delegates, presented by SIBA|GITA Chair Daniel Harvey alongside SSSI President Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse on Thursday May 28.

SIBA|GITA Industry Award Winners 2019 Environment and Sustainability Award Spatial Vision – Embedding Climate Change into Agriculture (ECAiA) North East Catchment Management Authority Highly Commended: GHD, Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Peel Development Commission

Export Award Spatial Vision, FrontierSI & General Commission of Survey, KSA Innovation & Commercialisation Award Trimble Inc – Trimble SiteVision People & Community Award FrontierSI and QUT – Virtual Reef Diver Spatial Enablement Award and JK Barrie Award Australian Cancer Atlas Highly Commended: Inner West Council Technical Excellence Award Land Surveys, FAL Team – Forrestfield-Airport Link Refectorless Airside Monitoring Award for People and Community Winyama

SIBA|GITA Chair’s Award Narelle Underwood SSSI Individual Award Winners 2019 Professional of the Year Craig Sandy, Surveyor General of Victoria Young Professional of the Year Melissa Harrington, Chair, Young Surveyors Network, FIG and General Manager, SITECH Hawai’i Women’s Leadership Award Winner: Dr Charity Mundava Spatial Scientist, WaterNSW Highly Commended: Eva Rodriguez

Rodriguez, Program and Strategy Manager, FrontierSI Undergraduate of the Year Winner: Kent Olive, Spatial Analyst, University of the Sunshine Coast Highly Commended: Andrew Campbell Spatial Developer, City of Melbourne Postgraduate of the Year Dr. Mehdi Khaki Lecturer, School of Engineering, The University of Newcastle Vocational Education Training (VET) Student Award Natasha Crook Educational Development Award Prof Stephan Winter Professor of Geographic Information Science, University of Melbourne AND Michael Neitschke Senior Licensed Surveyor & Project Manager, Alexander Symonds Professional Eminence Award Chris Body, Geospatial Standards Architect and Chair, Standards Australia IT-004 Geographic Information Committee, Office of Spatial Policy President’s Award SSSI National Young Professionals Committee Nominations for the 2020 APSEA Awards are now open. See the full list of winners and awards on the APSEA website. www.spatialsource.com.au 9

news Wingcopter nabs a win at Covid-19 hackathon German UAV startup Wingcopter has been named one of nine winners of a global hackathon aimed at tackling the challenges caused by the coronavirus outbreak in low and middle income countries. The autonomous delivery drone manufacturer joined forces with UNICEF and the African Drone and Data Academy to develop a concept to deploy humanitarian drone delivery services.

The winning concept aims to improve health supply chains during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. Wingcopter and

its partners will receive as much as $3.6 million USD to make the plan a reality.

The German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development launched in a bid to solicit innovative digital solutions to tackle the challenges caused by the coronavirus outbreak in low-andmiddle-income countries.

Wingcopter’s winning concept outlined the development of a locally operated humanitarian drone delivery network in the east African country of Malawi. In an effort to support

community healthcare systems, the delivery drones would provide ondemand access to medical supplies such as coronavirus test kits and, hopefully, future vaccines.

Bentley, NSW join new Digital Twins Consortium Bentley Systems has signed on to a new international effort aimed at advancing digital twin technology.

The NSW state government also joined in as an early member of the Digital Twin Consortium, launched in May by founding members, Ansys, LendLease, Microsoft and Dell.

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The new group is aimed at creating a global ecosystem of users who are accelerating the digital twin market, bringing together industry, government, and academia to drive consistency in what it calls the vocabulary, architecture, security, and interoperability of digital twin technology.

Bentley Systems brings strong infrastructure experience to the effort, with a long track record of providing software and digital twin cloud services for infrastructure projects. The company has invested heavily in digital twin technology across the board, including

the acquisition last year of 3D mobile mapping innovator Orbit GT. In a release, Bentley says its collaboration with Digital Twin Consortium and its global ecosystem of digital twin users underscores its commitment to advancing an open-source platform for digital twins.

McMullen Nolan Group appoints new CFO Surveying and spatial services firm McMullen Nolan Group (MNG) has announced a new Chief Financial Officer.

MNG has appointed Jamie Scoringe Chief Financial Officer and General Manager of Corporate Services.

CEO and managing director Scott Anderson said that Mr. Scoringe brings financial acumen and a strong background in the spatial market to the company.

“A culturally good fit with the existing MNG team, Jamie joins us as we continue to expand MNG’s presence across Australia as highlighted by our recent investment in our newly expanded Melbourne office,” he said.

Mr. Scoringe welcomed his comments and said he was pleased to be joining the firm’s senior executive team.

“MNG has a strong positive culture with an excellent reputation in the marketplace, and I’ve been impressed by the systems and quality processes that ensure our clients are pleased with the work we do for them,” he said.

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news World’s largest satellite herdtracking program to kick off in NT

Aerometrex acquires Spookfish for $1.5m Australian aerial imagery and analytics provider Aerometrex has announced its acquisition of fellow imagery firm Spookfish.

The news was released in an ASX announcement on April 24, pending due diligence investigations. The acquisition includes the shares held by US analytics provider EagleView, which bought out Spookfish in December 2018.

Aerometrex’s acquisition represents a strengthening of the firm’s reach for its 3D modelling services in the US market, and signals collaboration opportunities with EagleView and its range of analytic tools, according to Aerometrex managing director, Mark Deuter.

“We are very pleased to have established a strong relationship with EagleView as we see the activities of both companies as highly complementary. We are looking forward to continuing to work with EagleView both in Australia and the United States,” he said.

Exploration of these opportunities is made explicit in the agreement, which will see Aerometrex purchase all of EagleView’s Spookfish shares for $1.5 million.

The world’s biggest herd-tracking program will tag and monitor over 1,000 water buffalo from space.

The CSIRO announced the $4 million, 3.5 year project to coincide with National Reconciliation Week, and will see the destructive feral animals tagged and tracked over 22,314 square kilometres.

The project’s area will cover the Arafura swamp catchment in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, and the Upper Normanby and Archer River on Cape York Peninsula in Queensland.

CSIRO Chief Executive Dr. Larry Marshall said that the project’s purpose is to create economic, cultural and environmental opportunities for Indigenous communities in the region.

“This unique partnership is a reminder that the new frontier of

space is an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of our past, and work alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to ensure that space-enabled technology is being put to best use to improve the land we all share,” he said.

The CSIRO will partner with Charles Darwin University to develop data management tools; James Cook University to engineer the tracking tags, and will use satellite company Kineisis’s nanosatellite fleet and network.

The North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance Ltd (NAILSMA) drive efforts on the ground in partnership with Mimal Land Management Aboriginal Corporation, Aak Puul Ngangtam Ltd, and Normanby Land Management.

Artist’s impression of a Kineis nanosatellite that will be used to track water buffalo in the Northern Territory.

Image: David Ducros.

POSITION’S NEWS ORIGINATES FROM Australia and New Zealand’s only site for surveying and spatial news.

Subscribe now for your FREE weekly newsletter at www.spatialsource.com.au 12 position June/July 2020

news Meet ‘Eric’: the new dinosaur discovered in Victoria

Farewell Pitney Bowes, welcome Precisely Global data solutions provider Syncsort has rebranded to Precisely with a new strategy, following acquisition of Pitney Bowes software and data business late last year.

‘I can recall the exact day that it was evident a new company name was all but certain: August 26, 2019, the day Syncsort announced it was acquiring the Pitney Bowes Software & Data business,’ writes Chief Marketing Officer Kevin Ruane on the company’s blog.

Syncsort has gone from strength to strength in recent years, with its revenue and enterprise value nearly doubling under the stewardship of CEO Josh Rogers, according to Mr. Ruane.

Under the new Precisely brand, the firm’s solutions portfolio is now divided into five new classes.

Locate is Precisely’s location intelligence line, taking in MapInfo, streets, points of interest, Spectrum spatial and geocoding.

Verify contains data quality tools including Trillium, Spectrum Context and Spectrum Quality, Integrate is the data integration line for optimising legacy data in today’s systems, while Engage contains solutions for managing customer engagement.

“Advancements in storage, compute, analytics, and machine learning have opened up a world of possibilities for enhanced decisionmaking, but inaccuracies and inconsistencies in data have held back innovation and stifled value creation.

Achieving data integrity is the next business imperative,” said Josh Rogers, CEO of Precisely.

A discovery by a volunteer has led to the identification of a new Australian dinosaur by researchers at Swinburne University.

In 2015, a volunteer excavator at the Dinosaur Dreaming palaentology project discovered a large, delicate and most unusual bone at a Cretaceous fossil site known as Eric the Red West near Cape Otway, Victoria.

Almost five years later, palaentologists from Swinburne University have determined that the vertebra belongs to the first Australian elaphrosaur, a Cretaceousera toothless, land-dwelling dinosaur – a far cry from the flying pterosaur it was originally thought to be.

Swinburne’s Dr. Stephen Poropat and PhD candidate Adele Pentland said that the discovery was initially puzzling.

“Pterosaur neck vertebrae are very distinctive. In all known pterosaurs, the body of the vertebra has a socket at the head end, and a ball or condyle at the body end.

This vertebra had sockets at both ends, so it could not have been from a pterosaur,” Ms. Pentland said.

“We soon realised that the neck bone we were studying was from a theropod: a meateating dinosaur, related to Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptor, and modern birds,” said Dr. Poropat.

Elaphrosaur vertebra discovered in Victoria.

Image: Stephen Poropat; Museums Victoria.

Global drone use, incidents climb under Covid-19 Melbourne-based UAV cybersecurity firm DroneSec has tracked a rapidly increasing number of RPArelated incidents in 2020.

The security firm published some interesting numbers in its most recent DroneSec Notify Threat Intelligence briefing, which monitors recorded incidents worldwide for incidents affecting UAVs, counter-UAV systems and Univeral Traffic

Management (UTM) systems.

DroneSec has collated a total of 448 incidents in 2020 to date, with the global number of incidents rising from 135 in January to 174 in March, up from 4.3 to 5.6 incidents per day.

Analysis by DroneSec that accompanies the report suggests increase use of drones by authorities may account for the rising number of incidents.

www.spatialsource.com.au 13

q&a

Q&A with Dr. Karen Joyce For the three last years, one passionate woman has started an enterprise that’s laying the foundations for the future of the geospatial science in Australia – and potentially the future of the planet.

DB: Dr. Karen Joyce, it’s a pleasure to have you join us. To our readers that may not know, what is She Maps and what is its driving purpose?

KJ: Well, to that I always ask a question back can you picture a scientist in your head?

Our driving purpose is to evolve that picture away from a man in a lab coat with a microscope or test tubes. Because it’s that stereotype, both of the person who does it and the type of work involved, that prevents diversity in the STEM workforce. And a lack of diversity in the STEM workforce means that we don’t have all hands on deck to solve the world’s problems.

I created She Maps with my husband to bring diversity into STEM - what it is, and who can be involved. We use drones as the tool to do this because drones just feel expansive. The confidence-boost that girls get when they learn how to take-off and fly a drone for the first time is incredible to watch - and it’s an essential part of tackling the gender gap in a learning environment to support young girls to flourish.

It also helps that I’m a geospatial scientist and I use drones as part of my research on the Great Barrier Reef. This industry knowledge means that we have been able to develop incredibly comprehensive ‘real life’ experiences and resources for students and teachers around the world. These real life applications are also important to educate a new generation of kids to consider how they use technology for a purpose.

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While we still focus on girls, we’ve broadened our mission to make STEM accessible to everyone. This felt like a natural and necessary evolution as we grew and were able to scale what we do. As an Australian Certified Social Enterprise, 50% of our profits support underrepresented groups to access STEM training through our Impact Program.

DB: How does this define and inform She Maps’ strategy and main activities? Can you describe these?

KJ: As a purpose driven company, we are responsible for making a positive contribution to society. To achieve this, we use four of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) – Quality Education; Gender Equality; Reduced Inequalities; and Partnerships for the Goal – to drive our strategy and activities. Before we embark on any project, we always ask ourselves if it is core to our mission of increasing diversity in what STEM is and who does it, and how the project aligns to the SDGs. DB: You have a background in geospatial science, having served in the Australian Army as a Geomatic Engineering Officer. Why is reaching schoolgirls, and pathways to all forms of science critical to the future of geospatial science?

KJ: Firstly, if we’re talking future, I think we all need to align and agree on the most important

goal for the next decade: If we have any hope of regenerating our endangered planet, as Dr Katharine Wilkinson says “we need every solution and every solver”.

Right now, we don’t have every solver involved and that’s just a waste of potential.

Currently in Australia, only 16% of university and VET STEM graduates are female, because girls are simply not given the opportunity to engage in STEM from a young age. This is despite no innate cognitive differences between boys and girls.

It’s purely down to the many stereotypes and cultural reasons why girls, in particular, opt out of being involved in STEM in general.

Apart from being just plain wrong, it’s also a huge blow to fixing our planet.

Geospatial science is a key component of addressing how to fix the planet. It is an integrated discipline that covers geography, technology, and analytical tools, so we need people with diverse skillsets and strong scientific foundations to bolster the workforce in these areas. I think that COVID19 has demonstrated our huge reliance on spatial information and really brought mapping to the forefront of people’s minds. Now let’s back it up with more geospatial professionals to ensure we are making correct and ethical decisions from data that can otherwise so easily be misrepresented.

When we realise diversity, the inevitable flow-on effects of this are that students will take STEM, and specifically geospatial science in this case, and run with it in a myriad of diverse ways that we haven’t thought of that contribute to a more positive world – as the next generation should. The more all of us, across STEM fields and beyond, who pull together around that central message – that we urgently require every solution and every solver – creating diversity becomes common sense and not creating those pathways will then feel counterintuitive.

DB: Are there any initiatives and activities related to developing an interest and understanding of geospatial science and associated tools within She Maps activities?

How are they being received, if so?

KJ: Some aspect of geospatial science underpins all the activities that I create for She Maps. Our most popular program is actually centred on helping people experience ‘a day in the life of a geospatial scientist’. Students use to use a microdrone to ‘map’ a hypothetical nearby town, represented by a large satellite image floor mat. We teach all the safety aspects of flying drones, how to control the drone manually, and finally embark on an automated mission plan with block coding.

We’ll typically have 30 people at once flying ten drones, so it can get pretty hectic!

what you are interested in, there is a matching science to suit. I like to therefore encourage people to think about science as a way of thinking that can be applied to food, sport, recreation, movies… the list goes on. As humans we like to simplify information by creating categories, and science is one such category. But we need to broaden its definition to be more inclusive, and it might stop kids (and adults!) from opting out.

DB: Your online education activities seem to be going from strength to strength – what are some recent achievements and how has Covid-19 interacted with these?

We also have our Map My School project to get students interested in satellite imagery and mapping more broadly. We challenge students to calculate the amount of shade on their school campus using one of three methods – manual drawing with a grid overlay; digitising with Scribble Maps; or Google Earth Engine. We’ve just finished a global competition to search for the ‘coolest’ school with the most shade through this project, thanks to The Surveyors’ Trust.

Earlier this year we travelled to Indonesia to collaborate with the ‘Diamonds in the Rough’ women’s baseball program. I’m hugely passionate about sport and physical fitness, so it was a lot of fun to link that with geospatial science through the baseball program. We used drones and sport specific GPS units to analyse player movement on the field. Showing the participants how geospatial science can be used to improve their athletic performance and teamwork was fabulous and I look forward to doing more of that with schools here in Australia.

DB: What is science to you – and what are the pitfalls of stereotypes and a narrow understanding?

KJ: Over the years I have visited many schools and taught thousands of students.

I often ask the students if they like science.

Unfortunately their responses are almost always based around if they like chemistry or physics, and sometimes biology. I try to instil the idea that although chemistry, physics, and biology are all sciences, science is not limited to those three. This is important, because limiting the definition of science causes children to opt out of being involved if they don’t identify with those particular aspects.

I believe that science is everything that we live and breathe in the world! I can put a scientific spin on most topics to demonstrate that it doesn’t matter

KJ: We have been fortunate enough to partner with The Surveyors’ Trust since the end of 2018, and this supported us to create an online learning system called Orbit.

It also enabled us to provide our Orbit membership including all online resources free to every Queensland Teacher. This was a huge step forward for us, as we knew that supporting online learning was the only way we could achieve the reach and impact we want not only in Australia, but around the world.

In September 2019 we ran the world’s first online drone education conference, EduDrone. We recognised that we could achieve our own personal goals of environmental sustainability (no product or food waste, no travel or carbon offsetting required) and reducing the financial burden to attend conferences, while also reaching people around the world. We had lots of fun with our 40 diverse speakers gender balanced of course!

DB: Any future plans you can let us in on?

KJ: Ooooh, absolutely! We have a children’s book on the way! My husband has written it and I get to be a character. The story is about a young girl who creates ‘Dronie’ the drone, and then sends her around Australia on something like a work experience trip.

During the trip Dronie meets me and five other women who use drones as part of their research or work. It’s awesome to be able to showcase some of the amazing and diverse drone work around the country, and to create it in a format that young children will enjoy.

We’ll also run EduDrone again this year. I think COVID19 has opened minds to the possibilities of online learning and conferencing, but for many that environment has now become monotonous. We’re going to mix this up a bit and hopefully provide a unique conference experience (https://education. shemaps.com/edudrone).

DB: Spectacular. Best of luck and thanks for your time, Karen. n www.spatialsource.com.au 15

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Navigating the cliff’s edge DANIEL BISHTON

Projections for construction are bleak, but government efforts to triage the damage will see a pipeline of work opening up again. Geospatial technologies may be poised to play a key role in getting back to work.

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s the Australian economy contracts under the onslaught of accruing coronavirus impacts, economists, labourers and site managers alike are eyeing the date of September 27 with mounting alarm.

As the unemployment figures rise, the end date looms for the federal government’s core stimulus measures – the JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments, and many Australians wonder what lies at the bottom of ‘the cliff’.

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Platforms such as Position Partners’ Tokara Link enable machine control and remote management of onsite services.

Image: Position Partners.

Monitoring via high resolution imagery and models has become increasingly vital under Covid-19.

Image: Nearmap.

Aerometrex has seen increased demand for its modelling services, enabling change detection and remote monitoring of works on site.

Image: Aerometrex.

Construction’s cliff After months of lobbying, the federal government announced a stimulus package measure for the construction industry in early June, aimed bolstering residential construction with a $25,000 bonus to new home builders, or owners looking to tack on an extra wing – as long as it’s worth over $150,000 in total.

Whilst considerably shy of the $40,000-$50,000 grants being sought by a coalition of industry bodies, the announcement was welcomed by Master Builders Australia.

“Supporting the home building industry is essential to strengthening the economy and helping Australia recover from the impacts of the pandemic.

Residential building activity gives back more than double to the communities that sustain it with every $1 invested in home building activity providing $3 to the wider economy,” Master Builders Australia CEO Denita Wawn said.

“Based on the government’s estimated 27,000 grants, we think the scheme will be used for $10 billion in building activity, supporting the viability of 368,000 small builders and tradies – the businesses which employ 800,000 people in communities around Australia,” she said.

The announcement couldn’t have come sooner. Urgent, unified calls for a construction stimulus package had become a chorus from a set of voices that don’t always harmonise.

Master Builders Australia, who partnered with the AWU and CFMEU

to push their increasingly strong public platform, were repeatedly ramming home the importance of the building and construction sector in Australia’s broader economy, citing the outsized impact that job losses and business closures were having on new building activity.

Simultaneously charities, the private sector, academics and construction industry peak bodies joined forces to call for a massive expansion of social housing as a means to curb the rampaging unemployment rate while ultimately providing some relief to the chaos that increasing economic impacts are having on Australia’s precarious rental market.

As Geoff Hanmer, adjunct professor of architecture at the University of Adelaide argues in The Conversation, the results of a massively increased social housing program would also provide affordable housing for essential workers in health, education and retail who cannot live close to the communities they serve, and housing for the homeless, many of whom are currently being housed in hotels – and a reframing of such facilities

The announcement couldn’t have come sooner. Urgent, unified calls for a construction stimulus package had become a chorus from a set of voices that don’t always harmonise. as a form of essential infrastructure.

The social housing initiative, a GFC-era stimulus project, built 19,500 housing units and refurbished 80,000 over two years, at a cost of $5.2 billion.

While there might be a missed opportunity in the government’s turning of a blind eye to these requests, there are compelling reasons why stimulus for construction is money well spent.

The industry employs almost one in ten Australians, not including the significant local manufacturing industry for building materials. Even beyond the social housing initiative, the Rudd government’s effective stimulus measures during the global financial crisis has shown that the many of the more successful programs within that package were construction-focused.

“Construction is the country’s second largest industry, it provides more full time jobs than any other industry, it is 98 percent made up of small businesses,” Ms. Wawn said.

Time to get shovel-ready Beyond the residential market, efforts are

being made to grease the wheels in other sectors of the industry too. Urgent action to make major projects ‘shovel-ready’ – ready for work onsite to begin, has been put forward at state and federal level.

Headlining these efforts is Sydney’s $11 billion metro line between the proposed new Western Sydney airport and St. Marys railway station, with construction now due to start this year with a $5.35 billion injection of Commonwealth funds.

Victoria and New South Wales made nearly synchronised announcements on the fast-tracking of $6.5 billion worth of major construction projects in late May – including the $750 million relocated Sydney Fish Market amongst 24 projects announced in the state, and following a previous tranche of 24 accelerated construction projects unveiled in April.

Victoria’s announcement revealed another five big projects, including a $290 million, 21-storey office development at 140 Lonsdale street, slated to become the new headquarters for the Australian Federal Police.

What does this all translate to? Debates aside about timing, size and shape of stimuli, a shot in the arm for construction is on its way – after months of mixed messages and stonewalling, there is finally concerted effort to ramp up the torque on our critical cog in Australia’s economic machinery. This means it’s time for firms to be doing all they can to ensure they can get back onsite – but what does that look like in a Covid-19 affected world?

Site safety redefined It appears that getting back to work won’t be a straightforward process.

Though the success of broader efforts to control the pandemic will determine the precise pattern of restrictions and permissions, any project manager or site manager worth her or his salt needs to factor social distancing measures into project plans and risk mitigation strategies for the foreseeable future – or potentially risk projects plummeting into the red and sites shut down in breach of Covid-19 regulations.

Whilst their almost-overnight introduction of such measures stopped projects in their tracks, there is now opportunity to rapidly refactor work procedures in anticipation of work’s resumption. This scenario seems ripe for increased reliance on geospatial technologies to play a prominent role in getting projects back up and running while keeping workers and the public safe.

The ability to facilitate higher levels of automation, remote inspection and access, and increased monitoring www.spatialsource.com.au 17

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capabilities will be obvious to many reading.

But are the new global circumstances translating into a shift in work practices, and are account managers and decision makers in construction seeing the next phase in these terms?

Advancing uptake

ABOVE: Caroni reports that one client has seen a 400 percent increase in scanning output since employing GeoSLAM units.

Image: Caroni.

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Geospatial industry figures we’ve spoken to for this article indicate that initial signs are good.

PSMA Australia, having recently launched its Geoscape streaming data service, has observed continued and increasing demand for its data products from engineering consultants. Dan Paull, CEO of PSMA Australia, directly attributes this trend to governments accelerating projects and streamlining project approvals, re-prioritising the infrastructure work pipeline and providing a more palatable allocation of risk.

“Where possible there is greater remote input from specialists on these projects using spatial data services and tools. Many forward-thinking companies were already taking advantage of this technology, but since Covid-19 this has accelerated,” he said.

Mr. Paull holds that there is a learning curve associated with uptake of new technologies that ultimately informs work practices.

“The initial response is to try to make the new tool fit the existing way of working, but real benefits come from changing our way of working to take advantage of the new tool,” he said.

Mr. Paull said that organisations needing to adopt cloud technologies and services to deliver their work and professional services are likely to retain new practices, even if work conditions eventually return to precoronavirus circumstances.

“While some trends will disappear once normality returns (or as near to it as we can expect), the practice of providing specialist services using geospatial data services will

persist as organisations realise efficiencies from reduced travel and risk," he said.

Fresh off the heels of their acquisition of Spookfish, South Australian capture and modelling firm Aerometrex reported similar results in demand for their services.

Now offering 2cm resolutions and 24 hour turnarounds between capture flights and delivery, the firm has had several tier one construction firms requesting highly detailed mesh models. Fabrice Marre, Geospatial Innovation Manager with Aerometrex, said that these clients sought to forward project planning without site access during Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.

“In the last two years, the growth of 3D modelling has been exponential; reality mesh has become widespread across the industry,” he said.

“More clients are requesting multi-platform, multi-resolution capture and utilising seamless 3D models beyond just visualisation – these meshes are an accurate metric product with which measurement can be done, information can be extracted, and analysis can be performed.”

David Byrne, who oversees production, IT, R&D and other areas in the technical space at Aerometrex said that since launching their modelling service in 2012, the focus has been on high fidelity.

"We've found helicopter to be a fantastic & flexible platform for capturing imagery, allowing us to fly at 1,000 ft above cities for strategic capture at 2cm resolution photography,” he said.

“It provides a great balance between capturing high resolution images and being able to scale to some seriously large areas including larger CBDs.” Lockdown for all but non-essential workers has forced work-from-home arrangements on to all sectors almost overnight, so it may not surprise that demand for solutions that facilitate planning and construction monitoring tasks remotely has spiked. Pitney Bowes – now Syncsort has noted an increase in demand for cloud – services. Existing users of its Confirm platform have switched on-premises deployments to the cloud, and a higher rate of new customers have gone with that option relative to pre-Covid-19 rates.

Position Partners has noted increased support request for its Tokara Link platform, used for managing field assets and machine control technology to assist automation on the jobsite – indicating increased reliance on this remote management solutions also.

Increased reliance on data for decision making is now even more critical in site management, with MapData services reporting that clients in the construction and infrastructure sector have been using its human movement datasets to better predict crowd behaviour adjacent to sites to manage social distancing laws with respect to staffing, but also to monitor and identify places where

measures are not being followed and take action to maintain compliance.

Dr. Rob Newman, managing director and CEO of Nearmap said that a range of their clients in major construction have been leaning heavily on services that keep personnel off site, using their detailed models and new AI insight products to manage processes remotely.

“Typically, a construction project involves having to survey what’s happening on site, change access points for materials delivery, support progress reports, and validate measurements.

These require people to drive out to the field regularly over time, which can complicate social distancing,” he said.

“With access to up-to-date aerial imagery, construction stakeholders can revisit the site as many times as they like, and from anywhere – be it their home, office or the cafe. This obviously helps to ease the difficulties of onsite social distancing, when you can figure out just from our imagery whether your perimeter fence is really standing at 600 metres.”

Dr. Newman said that Absolute Building Consultancy (ABC) has been using Nearmap models to conduct their detailed virtual site inspections, optimised their time on site and cut the planning cycle by up to 20 percent.

Getting smarter onsite But what about processes that absolutely need to occur on site? Limitations on site access have scrambled project plans, forcing activities and processes that would usually run in parallel into a linear set of dependencies as construction workers, architects and planners must file in and out to observe social distancing and personnel capacity limits.

Leica Geosystems have said that interest in their reality capture solutions has been rising, and they expect it to continue to do so as changes to operating procedures drive a greater emphasis on efficiency. Data capture with their tools is a one-person task, a safe process to execute, and rapid processing of 2D and 3D data means that captures can be scheduled – for timeslots before construction begins or ends, during specified breaks in the day, or anytime on a jobsite that is temporarily closed.

A spokesperson for Leica said that the capture solutions also aid continuity and remote work for other stakeholders anybody working on the project can access the data remotely, but there are a few other advantages that may benefit Covid-19-specific scenarios.

Leica’s Pegasus:Swift and Pegasus:Two Ultimate vehicle-independent mobile sensor platforms, enabling capture of

PSMA Australia has reported increased interest in its streamed data services.

Image: PSMA Australia.

“More clients are requesting multi-platform, multi-resolution capture and utilising seamless 3D models beyond just visualisation – these meshes are an accurate metric product with which measurement can be done, information can be extracted, and analysis can be performed.” calibrated point cloud and imagery data for remote inspections from the safety of a vehicle – limiting interactions between survey personnel and the broader public. Use of such capture tools and associated software suites can aid in quality assurance and quality control procedures, a major aid in preparing for sudden site shutdowns by documenting existing conditions – which may also be useful for any potential dispute resolutions related to work stoppage. Captured, measurable data can be shared with subcontractors and other stakeholders for off-site fabrication and work in progress updates.

Perth-based Caroni, Australian distributor for GeoSLAM simultaneous localisation and mapping capture devices, has also noted a sharper uptake of new scanning technology and attendant benefits to their workflows and efficiency in challenging circumstances. Carlos Gonzalos, managing director of Caroni, said that the construction industry has traditionally been wary in adopting new technologies, but increasing uptake since lockdowns and social distancing regulations worldwide has enabled different stakeholders to continue operating, keeping projects on schedule without risking the health and safety of their employees, and giving a competitive advantage to the companies embracing technological advances by increasing

productivity. Mr. Gonzalez said that in addition to this, technology brings the opportunity to prepare for future crisis.

“As a mean to generate the 3D representation, the use of SLAM (Simultaneous location and mapping) enabled portable mobile laser scanners is gaining traction, contributing to the reduction in program time, lower costs, and increase in productivity on-site,” he said.

“Their ease of use allows any member of the team to pick up a mobile handheld scanner and by walking the site, they can capture and process the data in hours and minutes, instead of days and weeks.”

Mr. Gonzalez said that scanners of this type, such as GeoSLAM’s ZEBREVO or ZEB-HORIZON, map and monitor sites on foot, and capture data on remotely operated vehicles or UAVs, helping to capture data in inaccessible areas. The data is processed in GeoSLAM’s own software or through compatibility with many well known and used BIM software packages – such as creating 3D visualisations of a building, to being able to calculate measurements or create a floorplan.

Let’s hope these telltale signs of positivity at such a difficult time can present an opportunity for change and innovation to build a brighter future for Australia’s construction industry. n Daniel Bishton is the editor of Position magazine. www.spatialsource.com.au 19

partner feature Land Surveys CTO Bruce Baker with the firm’s RIEGL VMQ-1HA LiDAR System.

Two RIEGL LiDAR scanners, one single point of truth Land Surveys and the team at CR Kennedy prove how seamlessly MLS and UAV LiDAR can work together when you have the right package

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t’s a typically scalding day just outside Perth, but this Land Surveys crew barely break a sweat as they crank up the air con in the firm’s signature Hilux. The new REIGL VMQ-1HA mobile mapping system on the roof is doing much of the hard work as they cruise the highway at 60 km/h.

But there’s no escape from the heat for their workmates that are stuck outside in order to maintain line of sight with their UAV outfitted with REIGL’s miniVUX1UAV LiDAR scanner.

These guys are just thankful for the fact that the state-of-the-art scanner and DJI M600 UAV make quick work of the job, and they wrap up the scanning – and escape the sun – after just a few short hours.

While these two crews had vastly different experiences in the field, the data Land Surveys collected with their complementary pair of REIGL scanners will be seamlessly weaved together to form a single point of truth that the client's engineers have come to expect from the firm.

20 position June/July 2020

The client brought in Land Surveys to capture 16 kilometres of semi-rural highway to facilitate road and lighting upgrades and a new roundabout on one stretch of the road. While the initial request was for mobile laser scanning data, it soon became clear that the engineers would need some additional information on the proposed intersection.

DJI M600 mounted with the RIEGL miniVUX-1UAV system mid-flight conducting UAV photogrammetry and airborne LiDAR survey.

Unfortunately, the surrounding land was all privately held, and using terrestrial means would have involved letter drops and otherwise engaging the landowners to organise access – expensive, complicated and timeconsuming work.

But the client knew that the Land Surveys team invested in two powerful RIEGL scanners that prepared the firm for just this sort of situation.

“Because the client were aware that we have both the RIEGL MLS and the RIEGL UAV system, they tend to call on us when they need sort of an infill on top of the mobile laser scanning data,” says Matt Chapman, National MLS Coordinator with Land Surveys.

“So we were asked to basically go out and capture the area with the UAV LiDAR and then use the previously captured mobile laser scanning data to control the UAV LiDAR and to merge those datasets together, to deliver a complete dataset that will look seamless for the client.”

Land Surveys Chief Technical Officer Bruce Baker says it didn’t take long to see the benefit of having both of these scanning technologies working in tandem.

Originally, Baker says, the firm was mainly looking for a new MLS solution.

Given the diversity of projects around Australia the firm needed a scanner that was transportable, easy to install and calibrate, while also utilising sensors that would provide ‘survey’ grade data accuracy when required.

“So, we were working with the guys at CR Kennedy on lining up a new MLS system, and of course we started with the sensors – RIEGL are renowned for their sensors,” he recalls.

“Once we selected the REIGL VMQ1HA MLS system, we saw this UAV and that it has the same package, the same integration and same inertial sensors.”

Baker says the lightbulb moment came when the team at CR Kennedy demonstrated just how seamlessly RIEGL were able to integrate the two systems to create a smooth, unified workflow.

“It just became really obvious that we had best of breed with the sensors and that RIEGL were the best at integrating it and that’s why we went there,” Baker says.

But while the results themselves looked tantalising, the Land Surveys team still took their time in order to build a business case for where the complementary UAV LiDAR could add value. And, it didn’t take long to realise that the combination of MLS and UAV LiDAR were perfectly suited for transport corridor mapping.

Both systems provide a unique point of view at the point of capture, but experience shows that there are always gaps in the MLS data due to obstructions, changes in slope, and where the vehicle on which the MLS is installed cannot access.

“But by using the UAV LiDAR system, we can infill areas that the MLS can’t see by providing the “top down” perspective,” Baker says. “This is particularly useful at intersections, over and under-passes, and at areas of heavy vegetation of dramatic changes in slope, i.e. where the road or rail is elevated.”

It looks like clients around Australia are beginning to realise that the seamless integration that the RIEGL MLS and UAV LiDAR systems are able to deliver is incredibly rare. And that has been good for Land Surveys’ bottom line and reputation.

“Because the client knows that you’re going to be able to merge data more or less seamlessly in the same

DJI M600 mounted with the RIEGL miniVUX-1 UAV system.

High Detail LiDAR Road Survey captured with the RIEGL miniVUX-1 UAV system.

Geo-referenced mobile mapping point cloud with RGB colour values assigned from image captured with integrated Ladybug 5+ camera system.

“It just became really obvious that we had best of breed with the sensors and that RIEGL were the best at integrating it and that’s why we went there.”

Land Surveys CTO Bruce Baker

software package, they have peace of mind that it’s an easy transition between the two units,” says Land Surveys’ Matt Chapman.

“And, with us being unique in that respect certainly in WA and I think unique to Australia, I have definitely heard that clients see the benefit in that,” he says.

Chapman and Baker both say the before and after-sales support the firm has received from CR Kennedy and RIEGL has been instrumental.

“CR Kennedy have such a strong relationship with RIEGL, and that close relationship allows us to have that close relationship with RIEGL as well, which means they are responsive – they really listen to us,” Baker says.

Since taking delivery of the two systems in mid-2018, Land Surveys have spent a lot of time working with RIEGL on refining the software processing tools, features and functionality.

“There is no question that we are technically demanding now, which is typical in Australia in general,” Baker says. “But, having RIEGL and CR Kennedy on our side allows us to really push the system to the limit.”

“I think that it’s certainly the future of certain types of surveying,” adds National MLS Coordinator Matt Chapman.

To learn more about the RIEGL VMQ1HA MLS system and the miniVUX1UAV LiDAR scanner, contact the team at CR Kennedy at +61 3 9823 1533. n Information provided by CR Kennedy. www.spatialsource.com.au 21

q&a

Q&A with Denita Wawn

Denita Wawn should need no introduction, as the first female CEO of Master Builders Australia. The peak body has been the lightning rod of a coalition of industry groups demanding greater government support for the construction sector. She sits down with us for an exclusive interview at this critical time.

DB: Denita, thanks for your time with us today. As the broader Commonwealth stimulus measures of JobKeeper and JobSeeker are due to be switched off in September, there’s talk of the Australian economy ‘falling off a cliff’. How can the construction sector help to cushion this blow?

DW: Construction is the country’s second largest industry, it provides more full time jobs than any other industry, it is 98 percent made up of small businesses – nearly 400,000 small businesses, more than other industry sector, 1.2 million Australians are employed by it and it trains more than 50,000 apprentices each year.

Investment in building activity is one of the quickest and most effective ways of getting money spinning through the economy, not only for the above reasons but because of the industry’s large supply chain – industries in themselves providing services and a wide range of building products.

DB: The construction sector is potentially facing a cliff of its own – what are the projections if no action is taken?

DW: Since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis Master Builders has sharply revised down our forecast for the residential and commercial building sectors for 2020/21. The outlook for both is now very stark. 43,000 less new dwellings will be built and the commercial sector is also set to face a major contraction in activity.

DB: You’ve called for a $13b stimulus package to support construction – what’s contained here?

DW: Master Builders Rebuilding Australia Stimulus Action Plan calls for major investments by governments at the federal, state and territory level in residential building including new home building and renovations, construction of social infrastructure in the health, education and defence portfolios and funding cladding rectification and asbestos removal.

Master Builders commissioned Ernst &Young to economically model the benefits to the economy and the community of our 5 proposed stimulus programs. Ernst & Young found that a $13.2 billion investment would deliver more than double that in returned benefits to the economy through new economic activity. 105,000 new jobs would be created and $17.6 billion in new construction activity would be funded.

22 position June/July 2020

DB: If these recommendations aren’t met, what are the most critical aspects of any Commonwealth intervention?

DW: The Federal Government has just announced its HomeBuilder scheme which is targeted to stimulus activity in the residential building sector through grants for new home building and substantial renovations. Based on the government’s estimate of 27,000 grants we think that will translate into $10 billion in home building activity. It will be a lifeline for around 368,000 small residential building businesses in communities around the country and product around 800,000 jobs.

DB: NSW and Victoria have recently announced that they have ‘fast tracked’ $6.5 billion worth of major projects – how effective will this be in buoying the sector?

DW: Fast tracking infrastructure is essential to achieving economic recovery with a few caveats.

First, when governments talk about infrastructure, they usually mean transport infrastructure. Social infrastructure such as new hospitals, schools and projects like dams must be included alongside roads and bridges.

Second, accelerating construction of infrastructure is what is required. No stimulus occurs from announcements only.

Third, breaking projects down into smaller work packages means construction can be more easily fast tracked without excessive planning delays by infrastructure agencies, small construction contractors can tender to do the work. Tendering policies must include provision for local contractors and subcontractors to have a fair opportunity to bid for work and contract terms must be fair.

An excellent example has been the Department of Defence. They are giving contractual leeway, for example time and cost relief to construction contractors working on Defence projects facing Covid-19 related delays. The potential for construction contractors and sub-contractors to be exposed to potential liquidated damages claims due to project delays resulting from factors imposed by Covid-19 is of grave concern to Master Builders and have proposed a range of solutions to National Cabinet.

DB: Denita, many thanks for your time.

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Capacity development for geodetic survey organisations ROBERT SARIB

RIGHT: This is unfortunately low res, but it would be great to include if we can.

We can discuss.

FAR RIGHT: Suva, Fiji.

24 position June/July 2020

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ith the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, governments worldwide needed to respond quickly to minimise the spread of the virus, curtail the rate of sickness and mortalities, and stem the demand on health services and systems.

In some countries, it was necessary to limit the movement of people and their numbers, introduce physical distancing restrictions, enforce biosecurity zones, and to measure, map and monitor Covid-19 cases. Today, in countries that have ‘flattened the curve’, governments now have the opportunity to balance or realign its emphasis from public health and social wellbeing to re-starting the economy and energising the work force in all sectors.

To support governments and epidemiology experts in the recovery phase of Covid-19, reliable and accessible geospatial information will become essential to not only monitor the ongoing status of Covid-19 cases at various classifications or levels, but facilitate coherent and targeted decision making, planning, administration and investment, as well as measure the rate of recovery through various spatial analytics. Likewise, for most government agencies the integration and interoperability of Covid-19 data with the spine of geospatial information, ‘foundation data’, will be integral.

Interestingly, prior to Covid-19, geodetic survey organisations (GSOs) in Asia and the Pacific region were re-evaluating their identity, role and function to cope with today’s growing and constantly changing ‘location intelligence or ubiquitous positioning’ landscape, the demand for greater integrity of national foundation data, and providers of spatial analytics. As the geospatial reference system (GRS) or geodetic reference frame or datum underpins such activity, GSOs were modernising their GRS, to better manage digitisation, the impacts of disruptive technologies, sustainability of our natural and built environment, earth movement, disasters and emergencies. This situation is indicative of a dynamic working environment and impacts the organisation’s operational effectiveness and efficiency, delivery of service and business objectives.

Consequently, to maintain performance, meet pubic expectations, as well as accommodate the spatial needs for Covid-19, GSOs are compelled to review the capabilities of their workforce, and make the necessary organisational changes to implement a capacity development program (CDP).

To establish CDPs, the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) Asia Pacific Capacity Development Network (AP CDN), together with other like-minded organisations, have previously assisted GSOs with this process, and used capacity building to reduce the technical and digital divide between the developed and emerging geospatial economies.

Since Covid-19, FIG AP CDN and its partners have had to re-think how such assistance will now be delivered without adding another layer of complexity and strain on resourcing.

From FIG AP CDN analysis, successful CDPs using the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) approach, are multi-level and incorporate the interrelating needs and objectives of the individual (people),

institution (organisational), and society (broader environment). These CDPs are also characterised by realistic outcome frameworks that enable the organisation to measure/ monitor the CDP for improvement, and possible shortcomings. However, while change management strategies are part of most CDPs or organisations’ plans for managing people, they have had mixed results. This is due to lack of ability of the change agent and the absence of ownership and/or acceptance by the CDP stakeholders. To implement change the CDP must have the political will and support of leaders, be clearly understood by the organisation’s participants, and involve skilled champions of change.

To gain impetus and support of CDPs, leaders of GSOs should discover and define the why case for CDPs, who and what skills need to be enhanced, and who needs to be empowered to facilitate change. FIG AP CDN also recommend the CDP objectives are aligned with the nationwide strategic agendas or regional initiatives, such as establishing ‘fit for purpose’ geodetic and geospatial infrastructure and systems to – a) Support location intelligence activities; b) R eform land governance, administration, titling and registration; c) Build resilience with respect to disasters; d) M anage the impacts of climate change and sea level rise; e) Measure and monitor the dynamics of the earth for global science or f) Attain or leverage various United Nations initiatives such as the Sustainable Development Goals or the Global Geodetic Reference Frame.

Case studies suggest strategic agendas or organisational objectives are obtained incrementally over time, subsequently CDPs should be similar, and consequently an ongoing organisational commitment and not just for

specific purposes or projects. Ideally a CDP should be built for long term gain and to withstand changes, that is be agile, flexible and adaptable to strengthen capabilities, and ensure ongoing development. FIG AP CDN therefore recognised that to have sustainable CDPs organisations need to – • Own, design, direct, implement and maintain CDPs themselves • Empower their workforce and engender ownership of CDPs • Utilise local resources (people, skills, technologies, institutions) to implement CDPs • Have greater diversity and inclusion in the workforce • Enshrine CDPs into organisational policies, • Link CDPs to industry standards / guidelines • Collaborate and engage with industry, professional surveying and geospatial bodies, the scientific and academic sectors, and general community.

GSOs must also appreciate the four key elements that will influence the success of the organisation’s CDP. Based on the UNDP principles, FIG AP CDN advise – 1. Institutional (Governance) Arrangements – relates to geodetic survey legislation, regulations, policies, standards, code of practices, guidelines, memorandums of understandings, agreements, licences, and can also include also community, social or industry ‘norms or expectations’. From a management perspective it involves frameworks associated with financing, resourcing, accountability, performance management, human resource management and employment. Overall it is about ensuring clarity of structure, roles and responsibilities in the geodetic information data cycle and management; and interaction in the ‘supply and user chain’ of geospatial information.

2. Leadership (Management) – pertains to leaders having the ability to provide clear vision and direction, and with integrity influence, inspire and motivate others to achieve

www.spatialsource.com.au 25

feature FIG AP CDN will continue to provide assistance on development and programs for geodetic and geospatial surveyors through three levels: • Professional development • Institutional development • Global development and will endeavour to • Promote and create an awareness of the geodetic / geospatial profession through an effective technology-based marketing campaign

both organisational and personal capacity development objectives. Leaders should employ different management styles and approaches to a diverse range of audiences, this also includes liaising with decision makers, politicians and also ‘traditional’ or ‘customary’ stakeholders. To ensure sustainability of CDPs, leaders need to actively oversee change management and risk strategies, identify champions of change, and collaborate with community groups, build partnerships / networks with likeminded agencies.

3. Knowledge – is about recognising and understanding existing capability of the individual (and teams) and how it will influence / determine capability development.

It will involve discovering present and future technical, administrative, management, and ‘soft’ capabilities of the people that is their knowledge, experiences, skills, qualifications, and competencies. It is also about examining ‘how’ knowledge is ascertained and facilitated through local agencies, professional associations, international agencies, scientific community, academic institutions and networks involved with geodesy and earth sciences.

4. Accountability – means the organisation’s obligation to account for CDP activities, and provide legitimacy to decision making. In other words, the delivery of an organisation’s CDP obligations (outcomes) through systems which obtain feedback from stakeholders and the analysis, evaluation, monitoring, measurement and reporting of ‘inputs / outputs’ via performance indicators.

These systems also augment and reflect an organisations responsiveness to change; and will provide greater transparency both ‘upwards’ and ‘downwards’, support ethical organisational and individual behaviour, and thus integrity to the process.

The geodetic survey community is at an interesting juncture. To determine a sustainable role in a rapidly transforming geospatial landscape, changes are required in GSOs, especially in the area of capacity building, and the development of suitable mechanisms and frameworks to support related activities. FIG AP CDN will continue to provide assistance to countries involved with capacity development

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and programs for geodetic and geospatial surveyors. How this will occur in a Covid-19 environment is another challenge to be resolved. Virtual meetings and online platforms or technologies to exchange ideas and information are the tools available, however access to reliable internet communications, infrastructure and service providers is a major issue for GSOs. Nevertheless FIG AP CDN recommend GSOs consider: Obtaining national support and ownership to drive the planning and implementation of the CDP CDP to be led by both organisational and national leaders who are empowered and willing to change structures and processes in order to improve GRS performance and overall organisational efficiency and effectiveness.

A common understanding of the CDP purpose, scope and objectives, and agreement on the end outcomes.

An objective assessment process (inclusive and diverse) to reach a consensus view of CDP needs, recommendations, and activities.

Adapting a capacity development ‘participatory’ approach which suits the GRS environment and accommodates circumstances of other organisations (or nations) involved.

Clarity of CDP roles and responsibilities including who is accountable for implementing, evaluating, and deliver of CDP activity.

CDP planning, and budgeting (includes resourcing) should be part of the initial programme development to support modernisation of GRS. Integration of ‘realistic’ and incremental (phased) CDPs with existing organisational (and national) plans and strategies, rather than being seen as separate programs.

Include participating donors, development partners, and stakeholders at the planning stage to ensure coordination of various capacity development initiatives, cost and resource sharing.

Through a structured evaluation mechanism, regularly review and update the CDP to monitor progress and make necessary changes.

On-going and transparent communications and collaboration with “all stakeholders” regarding the CDP and its progress. ■

• Evaluate the geodetic / geospatial capability – status, determine immediate needs, future core capabilities, educational and training requirements, institutional curriculum, mutual recognition of qualifications • Develop mechanisms to access and exchange information and experience with respect to geodetic / geospatial technical developments, data management, operations, applications • Create opportunities for professional development, mentoring, sponsorship • Provision of “advice” through workshops, forums, meetings, seminars • Continue collaboration with UN GGIM Asia Pacific - Reference Frames Working group, UN Sub Committee on Geodesy, UN Office of Outer Space Affairs International Committee on GNSS, and the International Association of Geodesy.

• Form alliances with “like-minded agencies”, professional / scientific organisations, academic / educational institutions, and international agencies.

• Support the development of a Global Geodetic Centre of Excellence to support the ongoing development of geodetic surveyors and earth scientists.

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Thinking differently about difference An action plan for boosting innovation in the spatial sector through diversity and inclusion AMELIA DAVIES, EVA RODRIGUEZ RODRIGUEZ

Eva Rodriguez Rodriguez

Amelia Davies

M

ore than 30 leaders from government, industry and academia came together around International Women’s Day in March 2018 to form the Spatial and Surveying Diversity Network, with the goal to leverage the reach and support of members in order to create a more diverse and inclusive spatial and surveying industry.

The case for change is compelling.

Without intervention, the spatial industry

in Australia is facing a shortage of talent, with a forecast shortfall of approximately 13,00 graduate or licensed surveyors and 300 geospatial specialists with university degrees by 2025.

As the global Covid-19 pandemic grips all sectors of the economy, there is growing evidence that women in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce will be disproportionately affected, due to disparities in the distribution of domestic and caring workloads and reduced career opportunities. Women may also be more vulnerable to job loss due to their overrepresentation in less secure positions of employment in STEM. Women from diverse backgrounds face additional barriers to entry, retention and progression in the STEM workforce and it is anticipated Covid-related funding cuts to equity programs would set back gains in STEM workforce diversity.

The Spatial and Surveying Diversity Network decided it was time to take a hard look at the current state of diversity in the sector and came up with a plan to turn the tide. The result is the Spatial Sector Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan.

The plan is a call to action.

It outlines a compelling business case for more inclusive and diverse workplaces and what we can do individually, within our organisations and collectively across the sector to make an impact. It was launched in 2019 with the intent of encouraging further discussion and action in our sector to support more diverse and inclusive workplaces.

A year on and there are already positive results. The following case studies profile organisations and individuals that are challenging the status quo and bringing new solutions to old problems.

How the Institution of Surveyors Victoria is appealing to the next generation of surveyors

The Institution of Surveying Victoria (ISV) President Kellie Dean knows what the profession is up against to get young people to pursue a career in surveying. But that’s a challenge they are tackling head on as part of ISV’s focus on diversity and inclusion. “As a sector, I believe we need to dramatically increase our promotion of surveying to the community,” Ms. Dean said.

“Lack of transparency about what surveyors do is one of our main challenges in attracting young people.

So I think it’s important that we come together to improve the transparency of our profession, so we have the same visibility as other well-known jobs such as lawyers, doctors or accountants,” she said.

ISV recognises that young surveyors are vital for a thriving surveying industry, both now and into the future. With this in mind, the ISV Board has formed a Young Surveyors Committee to increase engagement with young surveyors. The committee has helped ISV understand what is important to young professionals and has enabled them to tailor their events and engagement opportunities to reflect this.

“Our young members told us they want more opportunities to network and learn outside of 9-to-5 work hours because they have very busy jobs and very full lives,” Ms. Dean said.

“We came up with the idea of a short, sharp evening masterclass focusing on maintaining your professional relevance in a digital age, which was really relevant to young professionals.” ISV is already seeing results, with this future-focused event culminating in a record number of attendees and overwhelmingly positive feedback.

Mapping a new course to spatial leadership In its nearly 35-year history, the Australia and New Zealand Land Information Council (ANZLIC) has never had a female sit in one of its two top seats. But all that changed in 2019, when ANZLIC appointed Melissa Harris from the Victorian Government’s www.spatialsource.com.au 27

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Australia and New Zealand Land Information Council (ANZLIC) Chair Melissa Harris is the first female leader of the organisation.

Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) as Deputy Chair.

ANZLIC is the peak intergovernmental organisation providing leadership on all aspects of spatial information across Australia and New Zealand.

Ms. Harris said she feels honoured to be the first woman to hold a chair position in ANZLIC’s history. “ANZLIC has a long and esteemed history with incredible depth of expertise and experience among its membership, but we recognise how important it is to navigate this new landscape and support a thriving national industry with a skilled, futureready workforce that attracts a broad cross section of the community,” she said.

“Having diversity among the membership of ANZLIC will undoubtedly help us provide effective leadership over the coming years.”

ANZLIC Chair Bruce Thompson agrees that it’s important for leadership groups like ANZLIC to strive for greater diversity in their membership. “There is now a strong body of research showing diversity improves decision-making, problem solving, innovation and overall performance,” he said.

“It’s also the right thing to do ethically and morally.”

The trend towards greater diversity in government spatial spheres has seen the appointment of many talented women into leadership positions in recent years, including two of the nation’s seven surveyor generals. Narelle Underwood was appointed the first female Surveyor General of New South Wales in September 2016, followed

by Dione Bilick, who was appointed Surveyor General of Western Australia in July 2017, the first woman to hold the position since it was established in 1829.

In November 2019, Dr. Kat Salm was appointed as the President of Survey and Spatial New Zealand. In 2019, the Board of the Public Sector Mapping Agency (PSMA) reached gender parity for the first time, led by female chair Lynne Robinson.

Melissa Harris agrees we need more female role models in the geospatial

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“At FrontierSI we strive to be an innovative and inclusive organisation that attracts and retains the best people,” said Dr. Graeme Kernich, FrontierSI’s CEO. and surveying industry. “Women are underrepresented in STEM industries, and ours is no different. Attracting women to our industry is important. Retaining and supporting them when they arrive is possibly even more so,” she says. “As part of that, having female role models that other women can relate to and seek advice and mentorship from is very important so they can thrive in their day-to-day roles and achieve long-term success.”

In reflecting on the future, ANZLIC chair Bruce Thompson is looking forward to diversity being the norm rather than the exception. “Ultimately, I think we all look forward to diversity being a genuine and fundamental part of our community and our workplaces. Like any significant transformation, we look forward to diversity as business as usual.

And I’d like ANZLIC to be able to say it contributed to that outcome,” he said.

More than child’s play: how Dr. Karen Joyce is inspiring the next generation of geospatial scientists Dr. Karen Joyce is on a mission to change the way we think about diversity in science. She’s a senior lecturer at the James Cook University in Cairns and the education director of She Maps, an online and in-school STEM training program that helps empower students with the skills of tomorrow.

“I have two angles when I consider diversity. Firstly, I am interested in increasing the diversity in what people consider to be science. My mission is to help people realise that there is a

greater diversity in science jobs past the stereotypical lab coat and geospatial is a really important component of this.

“Secondly, we need to build diversity around who should be involved in STEM careers. My focus in this space is increasing the number of women and girls in science,” Dr. Joyce said.

Dr. Joyce’s passion for fostering a love of geospatial technology in students is also aimed at tackling gender bias from an early age and the lack of gender balance in STEM programs by empowering girls to get involved in drone activities.

“We have evidence to show that prior to our offering girls-only drone activities, girls have been unwilling to attend. Clearly these opportunities are having a positive impact on their inclusion,” said Dr. Joyce.

To date, She Maps has taught programs around Australia to over 6,000 students and teachers, with around 70 percent female participation.

Challenging the status quo is not always easy. “Occasionally I meet resistance from people who believe that encouraging women and girls is sexist towards men and boys,” she said.

“But more often than not, I have received overwhelming support. I am particularly fortunate to have some amazing partners both in terms of cash funding, but also resources and time to help grow our impact.”

Dr. Joyce also acknowledges the important role of men in improving female participation in STEM. “I particularly enjoy having the diversity discussion with fathers who have been unaware of the many challenges their daughters will face when it comes to inclusion. Men have a really important role to play in bringing about the change we need to see, so I love helping them on that journey,” she said.

How FrontierSI is building an inclusive culture from the bottom up FrontierSI strives to remain at the forefront of innovation and understands that to do so requires the attraction and retention of a diverse team of talented people within its workplace. However, as a partner-based notfor-profit without the resources of a large corporate, FrontierSI has had to be strategic and resourceful to improve diversity and inclusion within its workplace.

A big focus has been to position the organisation as an employer or choice.

FrontierSI was an early adopter of flexible working arrangements. Well before Covid19 made working from home the new norm, FrontierSI offered flexible, part time roles and the ability for staff to work from home and balance work with other commitments.

Take up of flexible working arrangements

Dr. Karen Joyce’s She Maps programs is inspiring a diverse new generation of spatial scientists.

has been strong, with 30 percent of FrontierSI employees working part time.

It’s also helped with attracting and retaining staff, men and women, who have parental or other caring commitments.

FrontierSI has made changes to its recruitment practices, trialling the use of software in recruitment ads and position descriptions to make the language more gender neutral, as well as piloting an anonymous CV assessment process where candidate gender and names are removed.

These recruitment changes have seen an increase in the diversity of applicants in roles where there had historically been gender imbalance. FrontierSI is also starting to see improvements in gender balance in traditionally male dominated technical and senior roles, with more than one third of all STEM positions in the organisation now held by women. This is having profound effects on how the organisation operates.

FrontierSI was formed in 2018, following 16 years of operations as the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Spatial Information. In forming its foundational board, FrontierSI has set the goal of 50/50 gender parity across the whole organisation, which they have achieved, headed up

by Board Chair Dr. Gillian Sparkes, who is also Victoria’s Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability.

“It is a privilege to chair the board of this organisation. As a social enterprise, the FrontierSI team really acknowledge and understand the importance of an inclusive and diverse workplace to ensure everyone can thrive, feel empowered and do their best work for and with our partners and collaborators,” she said.

“Equality and diversity are in our DNA and a critical ingredient for our innovation agenda.”

Whilst FrontierSI is young, having transitioned from one of Australia’s most successful CRC’s in 2018, they’re already realising the gains in workplace culture and productivity that a diverse and inclusive environment creates.

“At FrontierSI we strive to be an innovative and inclusive organisation that attracts and retains the best people,” said Dr. Graeme Kernich, FrontierSI’s CEO. “We believe in our values –

collaboration, future focus, agility, integrity and communication. These were collectively defined by our whole team and reflect our nature and what we bring to the spatial industry, our partners and collaborators.

We will continue to improve ourselves and walk the talk as a champion of diversity and inclusion across the spatial industry.”

Intergenerational knowledge exchange and soft skills development in the SSSI Mentoring Program Diversity of age is an important aspect of the broader diversity and inclusion conversation. The Australian geospatial and surveying industry is demographically positioned to lose a significant portion of its members to retirement over the coming decade, which would cause a large loss of experience and the business benefits this brings. On the other hand, young professionals can bring many benefits in breaking organisations out of the ‘expertise trap’ to leverage futurefacing innovations and collaborations.

The Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI) Mentoring Program, led by the SSSI National Young Professionals, is making headway on both of these fronts. The program began in 2018 and has brought almost 400 mentors and mentees together from all generations in the industry. The vision of the program is to facilitate structured intergenerational knowledge and wisdom exchange to strengthen the industry.

“Investing in capacity building of our people is an important priority for our industry, especially right now,” said Roshni Sharma, chair of the SSSI National Young Professionals.

“This program supports students as they are looking to enter the industry for the first time, young professionals as they are working up to their first leadership positions in their organisations, and experienced professionals to give back to those who are stepping up.”

The strength of the 2020 Mentoring Program is its national reach, leveraging the wisdom and learnings of the diverse technical, cultural and geographic facets of the spatial and surveying industry in

the pairing of mentors and mentees.

“The next generation of spatial professionals need to practice an inclusive culture whilst they develop their careers,” said Dr. Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse FRGS FSSSI, President SSSI. “Diversity is a key element of success to the profession and in turn contributes to our Nation’s growth. The SSSI Board and Leadership are very keen to invest and foster the diversity agenda in the spatial profession and are very happy to note the commitment and achievements of SSSI Young Professionals.”

Where to from here?

The Spatial and Surveying Diversity Network is continuing its work to implement the action plan but needs everyone to get on board. Creating a more diverse sector is everyone’s responsibility.

In the words of Lieutenant General David Morrison AO, previous Chief of the Australian Army – the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. So we need to do what we can collectively across the sector – whether it’s as individuals or through our organisations – to create workplace cultures that foster a sense of belonging and inclusion. The Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan is not the final roadmap on this journey, it is the first iteration on the road to change.

The authors would like to thank all organisations and individuals that have provided case studies, input and reviews to this article. It is only through collective effort that we can advance in such an important matter as diversity and inclusion.

Amelia Davies is a proud mother of one, co-convener of the Spatial and Surveying Diversity Network and Director of Land Information and Spatial Services in the Victorian Government’s Department of Environment Land Water and Planning (DELWP).

Eva Rodriguez Rodriguez is a co-convener of the Spatial and Surveying Diversity Network.

She is the Portfolio and Strategy Manager at FrontierSI, and concurrently holds the position of Program Research Manager at the newly-created Australian Cooperative Research Centre, SmartSatCRC. n www.spatialsource.com.au 29

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DANIEL PAEZ

E

verything is changing rapidly with the Covid19 pandemic. In this article I explore what forces of change are affecting cadastral surveyors today and how they have been impacted by the pandemic, from my perspective as Chair of Commission 7 (Cadastre and Land Management) of the International Federation of Surveyors (or French acronym, FIG). In this respect, I share some of my experiences internationally as a consultant for donors and international institutions. I also intend to provide some ideas for Australia based on my knowledge of the national system.

Porter’s Five Forces for the cadastral surveying market In 1979 Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor, published a strategic methodology for business planning. It identifies five forces likely to affect any business and, based on this analysis tool, can be used to develop strategies for the future. I have used Porter’s five forces methodology to explore current changes in the surveying market, and how these

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COVID19: How is the pandemic changing the market for cadastral surveyors? changes have been exacerbated by the COVID19 pandemic.

Competition is reducing; could a “deregulation ghost” be created?

As in many developed land administration systems, the role of the surveyors is well regulated in Australia. Competition in developed countries is complex. Even more, in places like Sweden and Denmark, the low competition has forced the government to introduce measures to promote new companies, more registered or licensed surveyors and, in some cases, reduced restrictions to encourage newcomers in terms of both age and gender.

In Australia, there has been a shortage of surveyors compared to their demand.

In a report by BIS Oxford Economics, a deficit of 297 surveyors was identified in 2019. They also project that this gap is likely to increase even though surveying is still a 'profession in demand' based on current immigration policies of the Australian federal government.

Shortage of surveyors, at least in Australia, appears to not improve financial

returns of the profession. Even more, some of Australian colleagues think that the financial returns to businesses and individuals had diminished, making surveying less attractive as a career based on the level of training and critical role in the economy.

The Australian tenure system provides independence for each state in regulating their surveyors. We have seen deregulations before in the land administration system, such as the case of valuers in Victoria. If the market competition conditions continue to deteriorate, I would not be surprised if deregulation starts becoming a topic among legislators. Due to the poor prospects of the world economy after the pandemic, a ‘deregulation ghost’ is a possibility. In a ‘deregulation ghost’ the government, using an indirect way and with minimal public consultation, removes entry conditions for a profession. For surveyors this could mean less conditions to be registered or, in the worst case, complete removal of registration and licensing requirements to those conducting cadastral surveying work. I have called the possibility of a deregulation a 'ghost' as they normally occur hidden from

a public debate and under the shadow of cost cutting strategies.

Supply power: the market is in our favour Surveyors across the world are being blessed by the healthy competition in the market that provides software and hardware to do surveys. I do not foresee changes to this healthy competition arrangement for surveyors, or the broader geospatial industry any time soon.

With the increased presence of Chinese companies in the market, it is likely that prices and options will be increased. This is already happening in the GIS market with the fast growth of SuperMap, a competitor of ESRI.

Buying Power of clients: the future might be grey Every day we find a different analyses and predictions for the post-pandemic Australian economy. Nobody knows yet what the future will look like. The only thing these analyses have in common is that the property market, the main source of work for surveyors, is likely to suffer. This is valid not only for Australia but for many other countries in where economic conditions were already weak and a 'property bubble' was a point of discussion on TV morning programs. Unlike most property markets around the globe, the Australian property market did not suffer from the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and continued to climb.

If a decline in the property market causes fewer transactions, including subdivisions, it is likely prices for surveying work may be affected post-pandemic. This could be either by natural competition between firms or, based on the challenges identified before, the appearance of a profession ‘deregulation ghost’, as the states try to encourage cheaper transaction costs in the property market.

New entries and substitution: a technological and generational challenge In all aspects of our society, technology is changing the way we do things. As surveyors deal with the important

relation between people and land, our profession is not immune to the new technological possibilities, as well as the expectations they bring to society. Cloudbased systems, mobile technologies, automation, 3D and blockchain are from my perspective the main candidates for changing land administration systems and are happening across the world.

New technologies have meant that younger generations like the millennials have become known for their ability to do everything on their phones.

This emphasises the desire for rapid communication and a reduced patience for clunky computer systems. Generation Z or I-Generation, the first generation to be born, almost literally with a smart phone in hand, are even more tech focused. I-Gens are emerging as the new active force in the economy and they want tools and processes that have fewer rules and, most importantly, are empowering.

So, how do all these technologies affect the profession of the cadastre surveyor today?

Considering that when one goes to court, a registered or licensed surveyor

The existing Torrens Title System in Australia provides the strongest foundation to spatial indefeasibility through the role of the Licenced/ Registered surveyor. That role should only grow as database technology provides spatial data and measurement tools to everyone. is the only person authorised to provide the evidence regarding registration, land development and pretty much any other process in the tenure system, I do not foresee changes to the legal hierarchy of evidence for surveying parcels. However, could digital coordinates climb in the evidence hierarchy and become the central element of future survey plans?

Legal parcels coordinates have been raised in Australia since at least the 1980s.

In the next section, I explore this idea and

what the implications might be for our profession in the future.

Could digital coordinates be the monuments of the future?

Although it may sound crazy, I have heard it suggested in various international contexts that surveyors today are what flight engineers were in the 1980s. They are needed until a computer or robot can replace their role. Some people consider that for our profession, pretty much anyone with new technologies – such as a drone or a high precision GPS on a mobile phone – will soon be able to survey a parcel and provide the appropriate evidence for registration.

Many of these comments are exacerbated by experiences in incomplete cadastral systems, in which a monopoly of surveyors has stopped the ability of the government to complete the Cadastre.

For example, last year I was in Ghana, where there are less than 200 licensed surveyors for the entire country of 30 million people over 238.000 km2.

Considering the country only has records of less than 10 percent of all estimated parcels, it will take centuries to complete the entire country´s cadastre using their current surveying force. In Ghana probably other professions, and even their citizens, would need to work collecting some source of information to try to complete the cadastre.

However, in developed countries (such as Switzerland, UK and even the USA), cadastral systems are complete. There is recognition that collecting information in the field to describe a parcel is a serious business not to be taken lightly. I think Australians also highly value the integrity of land tenure information.

In New Zealand, where there is a strong cadastral system underpinned by continuous technological innovation, changes have focused on serving the needs of cadastral surveyors instead of finding ways to replace them.

From my limited experience in Australia, it seems that overall, government policy in most states supports the current hierarchy of evidence and the role of surveyors in collecting it.

However, the Northern Territory and South Australia have laws that provide opportunities for digital coordinates to be used at a high level within the evidence hierarchy. Although these laws are dormant at the moment and haven´t been used extensively, this demonstrates an awareness at the highest level that new sources of evidence beyond physical monuments where monuments are impractical or too expensive (for example, www.spatialsource.com.au 31

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in the instance of extensive and remote Indigenous land parcels).

The bushfire season that we suffered over the end of last year in Australia (I live south of Sydney and saw my fair share of smoke) highlighted the need to have a resilient land administration system in place so digital evidence can assist Licenced/Registered Surveyors reinstate land boundaries when physical monuments are destroyed by a natural disaster.

Although maybe not in the shortterm, it is likely that our profession will require us to adjust to new technologies, including use of digital coordinates climbing higher in the evidence hierarchy.

Many of the subdivisions in urban areas of Australian cities conducted less than 10 years ago are probably ready to rely more on digital coordinates.

Where we stand today will define our position in the future At FIG, we are privileged to have surveyors across the world. While developing countries are building their cadastral systems, developed countries are working

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on adjusting to new technologies and meeting the new expectations of citizens, particularly younger generations.

I feel Australian surveyors are in a privileged position. They have been working for almost 30 years in a strong property market, the competition among surveyors is stable or decreasing, and supplies are provided by a healthy market and entry restrictions to newcomers are higher than ever. However, with that comes complacency and as professionals we cannot afford to be complacent. This is even more the case when the profession is relatively small but may be perceived as a gatekeeper and legacy.

The Covid-19 pandemic is likely to affect the property market. Expectations of younger generations around technology are likely exert pressure to reform the land administration system, particularly as they relate to relying on bearing and distances to monuments. The technological transformation in Australia, I think, is likely to be around digital coordinates. States with cadastre digitalisation and modernisation projects, and the federal government with advanced correction systems for

the geodetic network, are backing digital coordinates as key evidence in future transactions and disputes.

So, where do Australian cadastre surveyors stand today in this discussion?

Are they part of the change process? Are they driving the industry´s future direction?

New Zealand is a good example of the participation of surveyors in defining the future. In New Zealand, the government has made surveyors the focus of changes to digital systems. They are so committed to this that LINZ funds a position within Survey and Spatial New Zealand, the professional body representing surveyors, to collect surveyors’ views of the technological changes needed.

Regarding the question about the future of coordinates in the evidence hierarchy, I believe the answer is ‘yes’ to coordinates. Digital coordinates have the capacity to climb in the next 5-10 years and become the prime source of evidence in areas of modern surveys – say over the last two or three decades

– that have geodetic connectivity, such as new urban areas. Physical monuments (and therefore bearing and distances) are here to stay for a long time, but with a decreased value in newly developed areas. Surveyors in many jurisdictions are already providing coordinates in LandXML or other digital formats to assist in the automation of plan examination and cadastral database upgrading.

The existing Torrens Title System in Australia provides the strongest foundation to spatial indefeasibility through the role of the Licenced/Registered surveyor. That role should only grow as database technology provides spatial data and measurement tools to everyone.

So, how should collecting of these coordinates be in the future? What should be the role of surveyors be in 10 to 15 years?

In my mind, there are no doubts that digital coordinates could become a source of prime evidence if they were collected by surveyors. Politicians and

technical people from other industries may be misguided in thinking that digital coordinates could be simply obtained via a mobile phone. This may be the case for positioning an autonomous car in a shopping centre carpark. But for physical definition of a property location coordinates are a complex instrument. People outside our industry forget that digital coordinates are based on a dynamic system. The latitude and longitude collected are not sufficient. A date attached to these numbers is required so their movement over time can be captured.

I have seen success and failure in many countries trying to reform their land administration systems. Success in most cases has come from collaboration between the different economic sectors related to land administration.

As the experts, we are obligated to have a constructive stance on this so misconception about the technology and systems can be minimised.

If we are passive, the ‘deregulation ghost’ could gain momentum among politicians and careless changes may

be implemented. These changes could jeopardise land tenure systems that have worked for years.

I propose inaction is not an option, particularly now where COVID19 is likely to accelerate the desire for governments to reform. As the pandemic response establishes, recovery from its impact will become a central focus for the entire society. At FIG Commission 7 must stand ready, to help ensure solidarity among surveyors, to collaborate with national and state governments, and to develop ideas to shape land system reform to ensures Australia has a prosperous and sustainable development path.

Daniel Paez has a PhD in Geomatics from Melbourne University. He is an International Consultant for the World Bank, the United Nations and many other international organizations. Dr Paez is also the Chair of FIG Commission 7 (Cadastre and Land Management) a Senior Industry Advisor of the Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructure and Land Administration at The University of Melbourne and the World Secretary of the United Nations GGIM Academic Network. ■ www.spatialsource.com.au 33

q&a requirements while simultaneously becoming a stronger organisation.

DB: Taking a longer view, what do you see as three key challenges for the industry over the next five years?

Q&A with Tony Wheeler The Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute has recently welcomed Tony Wheeler as its new CEO. Tony’s career spans 38 years, taking in Earth observation, surveying, GIS and related information technology, including 12 years at Sinclair Knight Merz — now Jacobs. We sat down with him to hear his views on the industry and SSSI’s relationship to it.

DB: Tony, welcome and congratulations on your appointment. There has been a palpably warm reception, even relief to the announcement. What does the occasion represent to you?

TW: Over the course of my career, I have been through periods where I was very active and highly visible within the industry and really enjoyed being an active contributor. Over the last decade I have diversified into other business interests outside of this sector, but have remained connected in a low profile way – either through supporting research activities or consulting activities. I have certainly maintained a strong interest and retained in-depth knowledge of the surveying and spatial sciences sector.

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At this stage of my career, I am in a position to give something back to the industry and professions and hopefully influence some positive change that will benefit, SSSI members, the overall industry and the relevant professions.

DB: What do you see as the most critical functions of the Institute and its relationship to Australia’s community of spatial professionals at this time?

TW: I would summarise the critical functions of the organisation as improving operational efficiency and management to ensure the member experience is always positive; offering an environment of continuous learning; professional development including CPD events; providing certification opportunities across all disciplines to maintain and raise the standards national.

Providing opportunities to network with peers outside of your immediate employer is crucial; attracting new entrants to the professions; establishing strategic partnerships with government, corporations, the research community and academic institutions along with international bodies; and proactively influencing national and state policy for the betterment of the industry. The institute should also continuously work on improving its corporate governance framework and its strategic direction so that it evolves alongside members’

TW: Firstly, for the industry being the size that it is – with less than 12,000 professionals employed within the overall surveying and spatial science professions nationally – it is overrepresented with professional bodies and industry associations. This leads to a fragmented landscape and at times a somewhat tribal mentality, which is not helpful in an already relatively small industry. It also has the effect of diluting the member base of each representative body. This makes it more difficult to be financially viable because with such a choice available, some surveying and spatial professionals choose not to belong to any body. Of course, this is their loss in terms of their skills development and the industry’s loss without their contribution to share knowledge and raise the profusion of skills across the industry.

The same applies to the industry bodies representing businesses across the wider spatial industry. It also means that when government want to hear the views of the industry on any particular topic, they cannot at present go to just one body to get a truly representative view. So they are faced with a choice of who to go to and may instead go to someone that they are comfortable with, but who may not have a genuinely representative view of the collective industry.

Secondly, without some degree of consolidation over the next few years and an expansion of member bases, it will become increasingly difficult for some of the organisations to survive. I am not suggesting this is an easy pathway. These professional and industry bodies often have varying goals and objectives, and it is never a simple matter to bring them together. Even though there are some success stories of this occurring over the past decade, it is never going to be achieved without a genuine willingness by all parties to come together and a preparedness to work through all of the issues that arise and to properly address the structural changes of the future combined entity to leverage the full benefits of coming together. Without consolidation over the next few years, some will not survive and survival for others will occur by reducing the number of paid staff to operate the organisation, and hence services offered to their constituents, leading to a further leakage of members. Another option, of course, is integration with much larger bodies

outside of the spatial sector where their large membership bases make them financially stronger, but at the risk of losing the identity and focus on the surveying and spatial sciences community.

The third major challenge is maintaining relevance to the members.

All-member based organisations across all industry sectors face the challenge of meeting the needs of its members and ensuring that they are providing services, events and professional development opportunities that are relevant today and in future. Professional institutes do not have a unique hold on knowledge. In today’s connected world, knowledge can be gained from an infinite number of sources. The challenge for professional bodies is to ensure that the knowledge, networking opportunities and other experiences are relevant and genuinely assist in skills development, creation of valuable professional relationships outside of a member’s workplace and are equipping their members with knowledge that assists in their career development and job satisfaction.

DB: How do these challenges inform your vision for the Institute’s strategy and core activities?

TW: I want SSSI to be seen as the ‘inclusive’ body representing the surveying and spatial sectors. We will collaborate with anyone, or anybody that benefits our members and enables their access to the most interesting and useful information, CPD programs and skills development opportunities.

Collaboration brings many opportunities.

Initiatives such as the Space and Spatial 2030 RoadMap is one of several opportunities we are engaging in through active participation. This type of collaboration enables to extend our influence with like-minded organisations with similar goals of influencing the policy levers that will allow the professions and industry to reach and exceed their potential.

I want to make sure that SSSI as a learned organisation is moving sufficiently quickly, so that it can equip its members in the best way possible to be able to harness and exploit the rapidly advancing technologies. These technologies include SBAS, drones, IoT, AI and automation applied to image analysis, along with rapid point cloud processing for terrestrial and airborne LIDAR. Our industry already is applying these technologies to practical solutions such as spatial digital twin databases, smart agriculture, emergency management, along with various major infrastructure, mining and environmental projects. My goal is for SSSI members to be able to develop their skills so that they

are able to apply these technologies with more intelligence and sophistication than was possible yesterday and achieve even better outcomes.

DB: What do you see as the immediate priorities for the institute, that you seek to action as quickly as possible?

TW: Certification of specific skills is an area that is currently underrecognised by employers and underutilised by members. Certification of the various strands of surveying and spatial sciences to nationally agreed standards that are reviewed annually will not only raise the standard of skills of the profession it will have the flow on effect of better outcomes for the organisations engaging those staff who will in turn provide better outcomes for their clients. My goal is to work with employers to encourage their recruitment decisions that favour certified professionals.

Another is attracting students to study surveying and spatial sciences when they enter tertiary education. Even though

“Providing opportunities to network with peers outside of your immediate employer is crucial; attracting new entrants to the professions; establishing strategic partnerships with government, corporations, the research community and academic institutions along with international bodies; and proactively influencing national and state policy for the betterment of the industry.“ surveying is thought of as a mature profession, the rate of technological change has an impact on the industry and those that work within in terms of skills development challenges, despite driving expansion and contributing to job satisfaction. Spatial Sciences is classified as an emerging industry and has enjoyed steady growth over the past two decades. The industry is now growing and diversifying, but it is widely acknowledged that we are facing a skills shortage. The professions still hold a low profile in the general community. Surveying

and Spatial Sciences have so much to offer as a career, but attracting school leavers to enter the surveying and spatial science professions still remains challenging despite some recent great initiatives.

DB: What are the aspects of the new role and for shaping the SSSI’s direction and role in its members’ lives and careers that inspire you most?

TW: What inspires me most is the sheer breadth of activities performed by SSSI’s members – those who generously volunteer their time to make the industry more learned, perform to higher standards and pass on their knowledge to those at earlier stages of their careers. This is truly one of the most inspiring aspects of SSSI. SSSI has achieved an international reputation that is highly regarded, and this is in no small part due to the people who volunteer to chair the various committees, commissions and special interest groups, and those most learned who speak at events and webinars to share their knowledge with their peers.The opportunities for SSSI to closely collaborate with highly regarded international bodies such as FIG, ISPRS, OGC, ASEAN FLAG, AURISA, RICS UK, WGIC, ISDE and more allows us to bring best practice knowledge to our members, offering a global network of knowledge that is unique to this industry. Opportunities closer to home allow us to partner with organisations with specific expertise – in either the private, public or research sectors – on topic areas that our members deem they would like us to focus on. SSSI has the opportunity to enter into various types of partnerships and will announce a range of new agreements during the remainder of the 2020 calendar year.

DB: Is there anything else you would like to add?

TW: I am still very new to the role being only four weeks into it, but I am enjoying being re-united with the surveying and spatial sector and am truly looking forward to working closely with SSSI’s board and the members on the challenges ahead, as well as the fantastic opportunities that are already unfolding.

I have not lost my passion for either the technology or the people that make up this innovative industry, and once we get to the other side of this Covid-19 era, it is going to be an exciting time for the sector as technology continues to have a substantial impact on what is possible and improving both productivity and the quality of decision making.

DB: Congratulations Tony, and many thanks again for your time. ■ www.spatialsource.com.au 35

new products Nearmap launches suite of AI products

Australian aerial imagery specialist Nearmap has announced a series of new data products it calls Nearmap AI. These new datasets are the outputs of a series of machine learning models being applied to Nearmap’s high resolution capture databases, representing a new offering in the firm’s portfolio.

The firm’s announcement signals the availability at of these products at commercial scale, a milestone that sets the firm apart among imagery providers, according to CEO and managing director, Dr. Rob Newman.

“Nearmap AI is a product innovation breakthrough which has been in the making for some time now. What’s unique about it is that it combines the best of both worlds — data analytics and high-definition, frequently-updated aerial imagery,” he said.

Nearmap seems to have users in utilities, insurance and local government in mind with this offering, where it sees demand for the new change detection and analytic services to enhance planning, public safety, valuations and property assessment applications.

“We believe Nearmap AI will profoundly change the way we plan, build and maintain our cities and infrastructure today,” said Dr. Newman.

Teledyne launches new industrial digital camera series Teledyne Lumenera has announced its new series of Lt Series Board Level USB3 digital cameras for industrial applications.

The new camera series leverages the latest rolling shutter Starvis CMOS sensors and global shutter Pregius MOS sensors from Sony, according to the firm.

Designed for embedded systems, the new series ranges in resolution from 2-20 megapixels.

“The compact design of the new Lt Series Board Level cameras allows for easy integration into imaging systems with small form factors, making them ideal for portable or handheld devices, and compact OEM system designs,” said Ghislain Beaupré, General Manager at Teledyne Lumenera.

The new series of cameras are high sensitivity, with pixel sizes from 2 μm to 3.45 μm, side mounted USB connections with OEM applications in mind, and is USB3 Vision compliant with Windows and Linux SDKs.

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ATLAS platform offers new AI-based asset inspection service SPH Engineering has announced a new AI-driven analytics platform for industrial asset inspection.

A new entrant in the automated imagery analytics market, ATLAS offers a range of change detection features aimed at automating large-scale asset monitoring.

The platform can ingest orthophoto maps, UAVor satellite-derived data with an interface to guide training the AI engine to recognise a set of objects of interest for measurement and analysis.

“Companies performing large scale drone inspections have to manually filter tens of thousands of images or analyse many hectares of orthophoto maps to identify data for decisionmaking. This applies to such industries as solar farms, wind turbines, utility inspections, road maintenance, pipeline monitoring, agriculture, and many others,” said Alexei Yankelevich, R&D Director of SPH Engineering.

Trimble launches Access 2020 Trimble has announced the launch of its Trimble Access 2020 software for its line of Windows 10 controllers, and now available for the first time on the Android-powered TDC600 tablet.

Material released by the firm suggests that they anticipate this as a lower-cost route to a fully-featured field device, and allows surveyors to maintain familiar tools and survey instruments while moving to a lightweight, Android-based platform.

“The ability to use the intuitive field software on the Trimble TDC600 Android device will put Trimble Access in the hands of more surveyors and engineers,” said Jason Rossback, marketing director for Trimble Geospatial Field Solutions.

“This solution provides a powerful option for field workers such as road inspectors, who need the full set of survey tools combined with the portability of a mobile device.”

Other key features of the 2020 release include the new snapto toolbar, providing an easier way to select locations on objects within a map, such as the end of a polyline or centre of an arc.

Other features include a limit box feature, facilitating exclusion of data to view map areas more clearly, and the ability to measure points with independent subsets of currently tracked GNSS constellations in RTK surveys.

Tersus launches BX40C, compact centimetreaccurate RTK board

IDS GeoRadar launches new GPR for large scale asset mapping IDS Georadar’s newest ground penetrating radar is aimed at efficient capture of underground utility assets across vast areas.

The latest in the Hexagon firm’s Stream series of ground penetrating radar units is designed to be suspended behind a vehicle, making it capable of acquisition at speeds up to 150 km/h — though the recommended capture speed is 60.

IDS says that this design feature also greatly reduces mechanical stress on the unit for lower maintenance costs. A new control unit, dense antenna arrays and dynamic stacking allow high data quality at increased speeds, according to the firm.

“Stream UP is the cutting-edge product for extensive utility mapping. Nothing has existed like this before,” said IDS GeoRadar President Alberto Bicci.

“The innovative suspended modular frame is safer than ever thanks to shell structure and embedded anti-collision system. Furthermore Stream UP is compliant with traffic regulations and there is no need of escort vehicles.”

Hexagon products are distributed through CR Kennedy in Australia.

In a statement on the board’s launch, Tersus said the BX40C is powered by its new ExtremeRTK GNSS technology,allowing it to support multiconstellation and multi-frequency all-inview satellite tracking.

“Tersus has been proud of its BX-series RTK boards, and today we added a new member to the series by launching the new BX40C Board.

The BX40C is with enhanced positioning accuracy and constellation tracking, even in harsh environments, the BX40C Board can still control deviation within 3cm in surveying&mapping applications,” said Xiaohua Wen, founder and CEO of Tersus GNSS Inc. “BX40C supports 576 channels and can achieve centimetre-level position accuracy easily. We are excited to see how BX40C strengthens our product portfolio and technology competence to make a great effort in this industry.”

The BX40C packs 4GB memory on the board, and Tersus says that it boasts high compatibility with other GNSS boards in the market via flexible interfaces, smart hardware design, and commonly used log and command formats.

www.spatialsource.com.au 37

sssi

News and views from the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute

SSSI Board – 2020 President – Dr. Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse President-Elect – Paul Digney NSW Director – Wayne Patterson NT Director – Rob Sarib QLD Director – Lee Hellen SA Director – Michael Grear TAS Director – Paul Digney VIC Director – Richard Syme WA Director – Dr. Lesley Arnold ACT Director – Nicholas Brown Hydrography Commission Director – Neil Hewitt YP representative (Observer) – Roshni Sharma Company Secretary – Jonathan Saxon

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President’s report

It is very pleasing to announce that SSSI has appointed a Chief Executive Officer. I extend a warm welcome to Tony Wheeler as CEO SSSI on behalf of SSSI Members, Board and Staff. Tony has led the spatial industry in various forums in the past and has a track record of delivering successful outcomes for the Industry.

which has been very well received by our members and the greater surveying and spatial profession, including the interview with Ms Alison Rose who has recently been appointed as Chief of Place, Space and Communities Division, Geoscience Australia. In the coming months, SSSI will be collaborating with the Open Geospatial Consortium to deliver a fourpart webinar series.

Due to Covid-19, the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) Working Week 2020 in Amsterdam had had to be postponed. FIG Working Week 2021 was initially planned to take place in Accra, Ghana, but the Ghanaian local organisers have generously postponed their hosting duties until 2024. Therefore, the FIG Working Week 2021 will be held in Amsterdam. The larger FIG Congress 2022 will be held in in Cape Town, South Africa, and FIG Working Week 2023 will be held in Orlando, Florida, USA. SSSI will present the bid for FIG 2025 Working Week in Brisbane at the next General Assembly in May 2021 at Amsterdam.

Material from the recent FIG Working Week 2020, held online, is available now at https://www.fig.net/events/fig_ conferences.asp.

I am also pleased to share the recent signing of MoU between SSSI and Australasian Hydrographic Society. The

“Tony has led the spatial industry in various forums in the past and has a track record of delivering successful outcomes for the Industry.”

I am also pleased to announce that after many months of review and revisions, the Engineering and Mining Commission has relaunched its Engineering Surveying Profession (Australasia Pacific) (ESP-AP) Certification. Certification is an integral part of SSSI’s Strategic Roadmap. It demonstrates that we are a qualified profession and can undertake work to industry standards. Over the next 12 months we will be reviewing all SSSI’s certifications and make sure they meet industry and market needs SSSI has also announced that nominations for the 2020 Regional Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards are now open, visit the SSSI website. Please take the time to nominate your peers who have made a difference.

Over the past months, SSSI has developed an extensive Webinar series

agreement will see both organisations collaborate on providing Continuous Professional Development accreditation, along with seminars and workshops to benefit professional hydrographers in the region.

While Australia and New Zealand are being acknowledged for the outstanding efforts, we have made in flattening the Covid-19 curve, we encourage all our members and the wider profession to still remain vigilant and maintain social distance and continue safe work practices as we gradually return to our physical work sites. We also think of our overseas colleagues and friends who are still in the midst of this pandemic – stay strong and stay safe. Together we will get through this.

Dr Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse President SSSI

SSSI sustaining partner

Welcoming Tony Wheeler, CEO of SSSI

Commission Chairs Engineering & Mining Surveying Chair Andrew Edwards chair.emsc@sssi.org.au Hydrography Commission Chair Neil Hewitt chair.hc@sssi.org.au

T

he Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI) is Australia’s peak body representing the interests of surveying and spatial science professionals, combining the disciplines of land surveying, engineering & mining surveying, cartography, hydrography, remote sensing and spatial information science. SSSI are delighted to welcome Tony Wheeler as CEO of SSSI. “Tony has led the spatial industry in various forums in the past and has a track record of delivering successful outcomes for the Industry.” Says SSSI President, Dr Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse.

Tony has a distinguished career spanning over 38 years in the spatial industry and has a strong history of leadership. He has worked at a senior level across the sectors of infrastructure, Defence, water and environment throughout his career across management, earth observation, surveying, mapping, geographic information systems, databases and related information technology.

His experience includes senior roles with large engineering consulting firm, Sinclair Knight Merz (now Jacobs) that included 12 years as a senior partner, transitioning and leading their Aust/ NZ geospatial business unit from its Geoscience Australia origins, and later major international projects, including mergers and acquisitions. While at SKM, Tony held several senior management roles, participated on the SKM Board’s strategic planning committee and the Group IT Steering Committee over a number of years.

Tony has also held senior roles with smaller surveying firms, State and Commonwealth Government agencies, and information technology companies. He has operated his own consulting business, Akuna Consulting, since 2009 that provides advice and project delivery to the broader surveying and geospatial industry. In 2010 he co-founded and led as managing director the water saving irrigation technology company Envirogrower, where he successfully led and delivered large desert restoration and wildlife rehabilitation projects for the Environment Agency, Abu Dhabi, in the Western Region of UAE. Tony has also participated on a wide range of Industry Boards, Govt Committees, and was instrumental in the formation

Land Surveying Commission Chair Lindsay Perry chair.lsc@sssi.org.au Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry Commission Chair Petra Helmholz chair.rspc@sssi.org.au Spatial Information & Cartography Commission Chair Angus Scown chair.sicc@sssi.org.au

of the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information, and more recently the SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre as part of the bid team and later in its formation including the drafting of the Board and Governance framework documents for the incoming Board.

Key affiliations which Tony holds are: • Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors • Chair of Board of 43 Pty Ltd (20092014) and Board Member (2003-2014), the private sector consortium of over 70 small to large companies participating in the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Spatial Information • Member (2003-2009) – NSW Board of Surveying and Spatial Information • Founding Director (2001-2006) and inaugural Chairman of the Board of the Australian Spatial Information Business Association (SIBA) • Director of the Board (2002 - 2006) – Open Geospatial Consortium Australasia • Member (2000 – 2008), School Advisory Board, Faculty of Engineering, School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems University of NSW • Member (2006-2009) Board of Surveying and Spatial Information (BOSSI) NSW • Member (2000 – 2008), Advisory Committee, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Geomatics, University of Melbourne • 1 of 6 appointed private sector executives to the 2001 Federal government’s Action Agenda for the Spatial Information Industry SSSI are pleased to welcome Tony and look forward to his leadership to take SSSI further to reach new heights.

Regional Committee Chairs ACT Regional Chair Noel Ward chair.act@sssi.org.au NSW Regional Chair Mary-Ellen Feeney chair.nsw@sssi.org.au NT Regional Chair Rob Sarib chair.nt@sssi.org.au QLD Regional Chair Paul Reed chair.qld@sssi.org.au SA Regional Chair Graham Walker chair.sa@sssi.org.au TAS Regional Chair Paul Digney chair.tas@sssi.org.au VIC Regional Chair Andrej Mocicka chair.vic@sssi.org.au WA Regional Chair Darren Mottolini chair.wa@sssi.org.au SSSI National Office 27-29 Napier Cl, Deakin, ACT 2600 (PO Box 307) Phone: +61 2 6282 2282 Email: support@sssi.org.au

www.spatialsource.com.au 39

sssi Industry awards: Why do they matter?

CELEBRATING SUCCESSES, SPREADING INSPIRATION AND RAISING THE BAR FOR ACHIEVEMENT AND COLLABORATION Why should you care about industry awards like the APSEAs (Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards)?

Nominations take time and effort to prepare, and we are all so busy these days – especially since taking on multitasking roles with working from home while home-schooling with Covid-19, managing the disruptions that have come to our businesses and our lives. Why take the time to nominate yourself or someone you know? Read on for three very good reasons why you should take the time to.

1. Industry awards enhance the quality of work of the industry at large The excitement that you feel when you are working on a project that you know will make a difference, that’s using a new technology or trying a

you may inspire others in your professional community in the process.

3. Industry awards set you apart from your competitors Shortlisting or winning an industry award tangibly sets you apart from your competitors, whether you are an individual or business.

You’ve got to be in it to win Prof. Wendy Lawson receiving the it – what do you have to lose APSEA Professional of the Year at from nominating yourself Locate 17 APSEA or someone you are inspired new way of doing things – why keep by? A great chance to showcase your this to yourself? Industry awards help technical excellence, your ability to spread awareness about the cutting collaborate and innovate, your ability to edge work that is being done by people create real change for the future of the and organisations, helping other people industry. and organisations lift their standards of Within our industry, the peak work and innovating. industry awards are the Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards. Nominations 2. Industry awards for 2020 awards close on 31st August develop the way you think – so what are you waiting for? about what you do Apply today!

Shortlisting or winning an industry award benchmark you, whether you are an individual or a business.

The process of putting together the application is a catalyst for looking at your brand and your accomplishments from different perspectives. You consider how you stand out from the crowd, you consider innovation, diversity, growth, customer service, investment in people and strategic thinking – and in the process, you may realise ways you could work better, and

SSSI Hydrographic Surveyors Certification

H

ydrographic survey is critical to the safety of navigation of vessel around our coastlines and in our ports. With over 95% of Australia’s trade carried by sea it is critical to ensure surveys are conducted to the appropriate standards. To ensure this, Australian and local governments require hydrographic surveys to be undertaken by Certified Hydrographic Surveyors.

Hydrographic Surveyors Certification is assessed by the Australasian Hydrographic Surveyors Certification Panel (AHSCP).

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Two levels are available: Level 1 - Demonstrates an advanced, in-depth knowledge of hydrography at the project management level.

Level 2 - Field surveyors demonstrating technical competence in surveying activities.

Certification at both levels is an assessment of education and experience in practical surveying and hydrography including time spent at sea.

The AHSCP certification scheme is an internationally recognised

scheme through the International Board on Standards of Competence (IBSC). Certification through the IBSC demonstrates that the process of assessing Hydrographic Surveyors is aligned with the International Hydrographic Organisation (IHO) Syllabus.

For further information on how to become AHSCP certified visit: https://sssi.org.au/get-certified/ hydrographic-surveyor

SSSI sustaining partner

SSSI Engineering Surveying Certification (ESP-AP)

T

he Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI) is pleased to announce that the Engineering Surveying Profession (Australasia Pacific) (ESP-AP) Certification Procedures Manual and Application form has been updated, making it now simpler for engineering surveying professionals to become certified.

“Over the past few months, the Engineering Mining and Surveying Commission (EMSC) has spent considerable time reviewing the ESP-AP Procedures Manual and Application Form to ensure it is relevant to current and emerging industry requirements and provides a simpler process to follow”, says Mr Andrew Edwards, Chair, EMSC Certification essentially recognises that a person has demonstrated that he or she has the necessary knowledge and experience to competently work in their area of expertise and has long been a key priority of SSSI’s strategic roadmap – to develop a certification program valued by the profession, business and community.

Engineering surveyors are now able to obtain ESP-AP certification either through the Qualification Based Provision or through the Long-Term Practice Provision’ says Mr Edwards.

Qualifications based provisions require

AQF/NZQF Level 7 surveying related qualification and a minimum of 4 years of documented work experience. Or (at minimum) AQF/NZQF Level 6 certification (but must gain an additional 5 educational points) and a minimum of 4 years of documented work experience. In addition, the applicant needs to secure a minimum of 150 points (of which between 25 to 40 points are made up of Educational achievements, at least 110 points from professional experience, and a maximum of 10 points gained through contribution to the profession).

Long Term Practice Provision, require (at minimum) AQF/ NZQF Level 5 surveying related qualification (obtained during or before 2015) together with a minimum of 10 years’ documented experience while also obtaining a minimum of 300 documented points (of which only 10 points can be gained from Contribution to the Profession) With the enhanced ESP-AP finalised the EMSC is now embarking on a campaign to promote Certification to both employees and employers who contract and employ engineering surveyors.

To promote industry uptake and encourage as many Engineering Surveyors to become ESP-AP certified over the next 6 months, SSSI has significantly reduced the application fee, with SSSI members able to apply for ESP-AP certification for $100 and $500 for non-members until the end of October 2020.

For further information on how to become ESP-AP certified visit: https://sssi.org.au/get-certified/esp-ap

www.spatialsource.com.au 41

sssi Review of VET Qualifications in Surveying and Spatial Information Services The Federal Government has appointed Artibus Innovation to review the vocational education and training (VET) qualifications and associated units of competency in Surveying and Spatial Information Services. VET qualifications play an important role in developing the skills and knowledge required to enter the industry and provide pathways to higher education programs.

A surveying and spatial information services expert panel, known as a Technical Advisory Group (TAG), is steering the project. Two working groups, one for surveying and one for spatial information services, have also been formed to provide more detailed subject matter expertise.

The TAG has made several recommendations to simplify the

suite of qualifications. During the review process, it became clear that many of the 60 units of competency have some crossover and it is believed there may now be an opportunity to consolidate the content and provide a more robust framework of the delivery.

Initial recommendations were to remove Certificates II and III in Surveying & Spatial Information Services and integrate units into a Certificate Level IV qualification and to remove the Advanced Diploma of Surveying. If adopted, these recommendations would have had a huge impact on the surveying profession. The Advanced Diploma provides the training and specialisation required for Mine

Surveyor Authorisation in W.A and in Victoria the Advanced Diploma has been an important alternative pathway for students to articulate into a higher surveying degree course and continue on to licensure.

As a result of industry feedback, it has now been agreed that the Certificates II and III and the Advanced Diploma be retained. Certificate IV will have two streams based on electives.

Whilst the Diploma has been a well-recognised qualification at Technician level, it is proposed to include specialised streams, when perhaps students should be consolidating their general surveying skills and specialisation through electives that take place at the Advanced Diploma level.

SSSI Land Surveying Certification

S

urveying has always been a non-regulated profession, except in areas of cadastral practice where licensure/ registration applies; therefore, licensure/registration has become a de facto standard over the years, but with the introduction of tertiary qualifications as a minimum requirement, non-cadastral surveying standards remain as those applied by tertiary institutions at a particular point in time.

All surveyors who are recognised as “qualified” or “professionally competent” should be encouraged to have the opportunity for their existing professional qualifications to maintain currency and their expertise to be recognised by

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other jurisdictions and the community. With Governments becoming reluctant to be involved in increased industry regulation, a national land surveying certification program may provide a better way for professional recognition.

Draft Land Surveying Certification guidelines have been drawn up and are being assessed to compliment with other SSSI Certification Programs, Professions Australia guidelines, other state requirements where certification is being required and other jurisdictions such as New Zealand where mutual recognition applies. It is intended that a Certification program should become available by the end of this year.

The Australasian magazine of surveying, mapping & geo-information

April/May

106 2020 – No.

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