Position 96 August-September 2018

August/September 2018 – No. 96

The Australasian magazine of surveying, mapping & geo-information

PREDICTIVE MAPPING key to community safety for Inner West City Council

Official publication of

inside Unshackling potential The renewed promise of open geospatial tech

Taking to the skies Attaining your Remote Pilot's License

One Blackfriars Designing a London icon

contents

August/September 2018 No.96

18

28 features

22 28 Three become one What do Planet Labs, Australia’s Open Data Institute and the Queensland government have in common?

An exquisite tile mosaic of the state.

14 Q&A with Ralf Duering Airbus’ synthetic aperture radar guru on the most precise sensor in space.

34 Unshackling potential Cam Shorter examines drivers of the renewed buzz in open geospatial, and outlines what open approaches can really offer us.

18 Completing the jigsaw How sophisticated data collection infrastructure in remote Australia is helping to calibrate and validate heavyweight satellite-derived data products.

22 Taking to the skies What’s really involved in attaining your Remote Pilot’s License for commercial RPAS flight — and why it should be foundational.

26 One Blackfriars Overcoming site-specific and physical challenges in the design and construction of an iconic London development.

Regulars 4 7 8 35 37

Upfront, calendar Editorial News New products SSSI www.spatialsource.com.au 3

upfront

Upcoming Events 14-15 August: HxGN LOCAL HDS User Conference, Sydney, NSW https://hxgnlocal.com/2018/hds-userconference-melbourne 17 August: Australia and New Zealand MAGNET User Conference, Sydney, NSW www.positionpartners.com. au/events/survey-geospatial/australia-andnew-zealand-magnet-user-conference/ 23 August: Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute Queensland Conference 2018, Brisbane, QLD www.cvent.com/events/sssi-queenslandconference-2018/event-summary-39161ca 44e904977b9b146443d504933.aspx 29-29 August: Intelligent Transport Summit 2018, Sydney, NSW www.its-australia.com.au/events/ summit-2018-sydney-australia/ August 30: Forum: Precinct Scale Living Laboratories And The Value Of Spatial Data, Sydney, NSW www.eventbrite.com.au/e/forum-precinctscale-living-laboratories-and-the-value-ofspatial-data-registration-48720745060

Acoustic illumination

T

o outsiders, submarine science is a shadowy world – a deep field of arcane methodologies and shadowy sounding devices, used to plumb depths haunted by some of the most extreme denizens of evolution.

One of those who maps the deep with sound is now looking to shed light on the wonders of this netherworld.

Hobart-based Vanessa Lucieer is a senior scientist and lecturer at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) at the University of Tasmania.

When not at sea, designing experiments or teaching, she’s working on artistic representations and interpretations of her work for an audience of the uninitiated and peers alike.

“For terrestrial mapping, you've got sight. Your intuition from looking at an object – the landform – is influencing all the things that you deduce from it.

Whereas at sea, you’re doing that blind.

You've only got the data as it streams in,” she told Position.

“You know when you're a little kid and you do those rub-overs with a piece of paper and a coin underneath? That's just what it's like on the vessel, as the landscape is being revealed to you one line at a time,” she said.

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“It's this unknown thing that you're trying to comprehend and understand, and you're using sound to do that because you don't have any other means.

You might take your camera down but what you see with the camera visually might not corroborate with what the sound reveals.”

The above image is from her ongoing exhibition ‘Visual Soundings’, a curated series of arresting portraits of the ocean floor, sourced from sea-going survey missions around the world.

Titled ‘Sediment on the move’, it depicts steep rock outcrops and dazzling sand wave formations shaped by the extreme tides and currents off the north coast of Ireland. The depicted area’s coordinates are 55°16’10″N / 06°37’00″W, with the acquisition carried out with a Kongsberg EM3002D multi-beam echo sounder for the Ireland Marine Institute INFOMAR project (Integrated Mapping for the Sustainable Development of Ireland’s Marine Resource). The image has a grid resolution of two metres, and was processed with CARIS HIPS and SIPS software packages.

Learn more about the project’s conceptual basis and stunningly selected imagery at https://visualsoundings.org. ■

17-18 September: Roads and Traffic Expo, Melbourne, VIC www.terrapinn.com/roadsandtrafficexpo 2-4 October 2018: 6th International FIG 3D Cadastre Workshop, Delft, Netherlands www.gdmc.nl/3DCadastre/ workshop2018/ 8-9 October 2018: Pix4D User Workshop Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC www.eventbee.com/te/113269023/ puwmelbourneemail#/tickets 12-14 September: Australian Institute of Mine Surveyors National Conference, Townsville, QLD www.aimconference.com.au 11-12 October 2018: Pix4D User Workshop Sydney, Sydney, NSW www.eventbee.com/te/183168924/ puwsidneyemail#/tickets

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One of Position Partners most popular RPAS Surveying configurations is the DJI Inspire 2 with X4S camera and Klau PPK system. This camera has all the right features for photogrammetry and is modified and calibrated by Klau Geomatics. Precise event timing for the PPK module and X4s lens calibration creates sensational photogrammetric data and ensures that you are providing the highest levels of absolute accuracy available for your clients. * Note that the Klau PPK module can be customised for almost any RPAS system. Contact us about your product today!

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1300 867 266 info@positionpartners.com.au www.positionpartners.com.au Australia • New Zealand • SE Asia

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 Graphic Designer Alyssa Coundouris Prepress Tony Willson Circulation/Subscriptions Chris Blacklock Production 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 1 800 651 422 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 Editorial inquiries should be sent to: dbishton@intermedia.com.au Advertising inquiries should be sent to: jon@intermedia.com.au Ph: +61 2 8586 6128 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.

from the editor Opening the taps

I

n The Republic, Plato’s character Socrates argues that the greatest social good is the ‘cohesion and unity’ that arises from the ‘common feelings of pleasure and pain which you get when all members of a society are glad or sorry for the same successes and failures.’

Whilst Plato never uses the phrase ‘common good’ in the course of his writings, his contemporary Aristotle refers to ‘the common interest’ throughout his sprawling and seminal treatise Politics, and these titans combined are widely held to have first hewn this foundational concept of political science, philosophy and economics.

Whilst I’m not here to lecture, we could do well to reconsider our common goods in the context of the application and development of spatial technology and practice in 2018. Calls are coming from all quarters: everybody benefits if we de-silo our knowledge, data and tools from their discrete repositories to the extent possible.

Software houses are scrambling to promote interoperability and facilitate common data environments, those at the cutting edge of machine learning’s blistering acceleration are pleading for adoption of open standards, and the tech giants contesting for dominance in technologies for autonomous transport are quietly reaching deals to share data and intellectual property.

Stepping into the mainstream, it’s significant that Microsoft, once the monolithic icon for legacy proprietary software shackles, acquired GitHub, the bastion of open source software in June this year — after announcing plans to officially support giantkilling Linux operating system Ubuntu in an upcoming version of Windows 10.

So — new collaborations, initiatives and projects with a common interest in openness form the central theme of Position 96. Cam Shorter of the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference and OSGeo board gives us a rousing refresher on the intrinsic gains of open approaches to geospatial practice on page 32. Open Data Institute (ODI) Australia CEO Jamie Leach pens an insider’s account of a collaboration between Planet Labs, the Queensland government and ODI (page 28), and we take a detailed look at how Australia’s terrestrial ecosystem observatory, TERN, is helping to calibrate and validate biogeophysical satellite data products for NASA and the ESA (page 18).

While we’re talking space, we have an in-depth chat with Airbus’ Ralf Duering on the dark horse of satellite sensing technologies (page 14), and a little closer to the Earth’s surface — your faithful editor goes undercover to give you a first-person account of commercial RPAS certification by undertaking a Remote Pilot’s Licence course (page 22).

Please, join us in the Jacuzzi of openness for Position 96 — the water’s warm.

Daniel Bishton EDITOR

October/November 2018 – Issue #97

NEXT ISSUE

• Hydrography – exploring what lies beneath The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publisher.

Supported by

• Remote sensing 2.0 – the space race for geospatial data • Precision where it’s needed – high accuracy survey methods • Intelligent planning and infrastructure – realising 30 minute cities, BIM and IoT Published 11/10/2018 Advertising booking deadline: 17/09/2018 Advertising material deadline: 20/09/2018

www.spatialsource.com.au 7

news

GeoSLAM and 3D Laser Mapping announce merger 3D mobile mapping firm GeoSLAM and LiDAR scanning and monitoring tech firm 3D Laser Mapping have announced a global merger that seems likely to produce a force to be reckoned with in the 3D scanning space.

GeoSLAM's success is based around its CSIRO-developed SLAM (simultaneous localisation and mapping) technology, which excels in indoor and underground applications to deliver accurate 3D mapping and

modeling capabilities without relying on GPS. 3D Laser Scanning is a heavy-hitter in the LiDAR world, with its mature ROBIN systems for terrestrial, manned and unmanned aircraft-borne scanning platforms.

The newly merged companies will trade as GeoSLAM Ltd, with shareholders agreeing to the merger in order to 'take advantage of new world market opportunities, increased R&D capability and ensure greater market reach.'

RPAS and video analytics locate threatened species The NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) has surveyed remote bushland in the state’s Hunter region in a trial of RPASbased monitoring of invasive and endangered plant species.

The trial was conducted under the NSW EOH’s ‘Saving our species’ program and in partnership with Fujitsu Australia’s ‘Digital Owl’ project, which uses the firm’s computing, video analytics and drone technology to capture and analyse imagery.

The project utilises machine learning techniques to help classify and identify surveyed vegetation from multispectral imagery captured by RPAS, in an

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area only accessible by foot or manned helicopter.

Two threatened plant species thought to be facing extinction, Acacia dangarensis and Senecio linearifolius var. dangarensis, were found growing wild at Mount Dangar during the trial.

NSW Environment Minister, Gabrielle Upton, praised the potential cost savings indicated by the trial.

“In NSW alone there are approximately 1,000 plant and animal species under threat of extinction. Saving these species is crucial to the ongoing health of the various ecosystems in NSW,” she said.

A still from a video illustrating surveyed areas at Mount Dangar.

Image courtesy of Fuijtsu Australia.

partner feature

New SAR Satellite Boosts Airbus’s Radar Offer

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he launch of the PAZ x-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite in early 2018 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was the culmination of almost a decade of effort by Airbus, Hisdesat and the Spanish government.

“PAZ is the first Spanish radar satellite and has now joined the TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X satellites. Operating on the same orbit, the three satellites form a very high-resolution SAR constellation providing reduced revisit time and increased acquisition capacity,” said Nicolas Chamussy, Head of Space Systems within Airbus. “PAZ is another good example of the advanced technologies that Airbus has to offer to improve our everyday lives.

Environment monitoring, management of natural resources, urban and agricultural planning and crisis evaluation are just a few examples of the numerous applications this satellite will be used for.”

The TerraSAR-X/ PAZ constellation are equipped with an advanced radar instrument designed for high flexibility, and the capability to operate in numerous modes allowing for the choice of several different image configurations. They are able to generate images with up to 25 centimetre resolution, day and night, regardless of the weather conditions.

Imagery and data from SAR satellites is a complex and under-utilised earth observation resource. First applied to defence applications in the 1960s, it has slowly matured into a highly useful earth observation tool as new SAR applications and refined solutions are developed and the technology becomes better understood and computing power increases.

SAR should be seen as both imagery, and data, that can be processed with complex mathematical algorithms. The image from a single acquisition is derived from the amplitude of the microwave energy reflected back by the targets. The raw telemetry data is made up of amplitude, phase and polarity which can be processed as individual scenes or in data stacks to derive changes and surface movements over time down to millimetres per year.

PAZ has joined TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X in the same orbit.

Credit: Airbus Defence & Space

PAZ readied for payload integration with the Falcon 9 launcher.

Credit: Airbus Defence & Space

The TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X satellites are currently flying in the close formation and PAZ has been inserted into the same orbit to enable multiple daily SAR captures of any point on earth greatly increasing the capacity of react to emergency and natural disaster situations.

For monitoring applications that require same geometry captures the capture frequency has been doubled.

The close formation configuration of the TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X satellites was used to acquire data for the TanDEM-X mission. This exploited the highly accurate range information acquired by SAR sensors to develop the WorldDEMTM – the first global and homogeneous, 12 metre digital elevation model.

Access to the WorldDEMTM product, and its spin-off, WorldDEM4Ortho, is now available as online streamed products. This offers the flexibility of a pay-per-use access to highly accurate and reliable digital data to run elevation

analysis processes, such a pipeline route analysis or, orthorectification of high resolution imagery.

Because of its all weather, day/night capability, SAR imagery has long been used for the detection of objects in a marine environment. PAZ also carries a maritime Automatic Identification System (AIS), combining for the first time ship AIS signals and SAR imagery.

SAR imagery allows the easy detection of ships, when combined with AIS it makes the identification of vessels and abnormal behaviour of shipping a highly automatable process. Airbus offers an Ocean Finder solution which makes this information available to shipping, insurance and border protection agencies.

Another innovative product based on Airbus SAR imagery is the derivation of highly accurate ground control points (GCPs). Hundreds of easily identified landmarks across a city, such as light poles and street signs, can be located to accuracies of a few centimetres. While this information is vital to the production of map accurate imagery from UAV, aerial and satellite systems, its importance has not been lost on the high tech companies developing the navigation systems for autonomous vehicles. These GCPs provide check points to recalibrate the in-car systems in environments where GPS and other navigation sources are degraded or not available and an independent data source for validation purposes is needed.

PAZ will significantly promote the development of more innovative products and solutions and allow the more timely response to natural disasters and border security scenarios. ■ Information provided by Airbus Defence & Space. www.spatialsource.com.au 9

news FOSS4G keynote speakers announced The Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) ‘State of the Map’ summit taking place in Melbourne this November has announced a dynamic line-up of keynote speakers.

The event will feature a full day of workshops, two days of presentations, a community day and program of social events in Melbourne from November 20-23.

Confirmed keynote presenters for the event include: • Paul Ramsay: Paul cofounded the PostGIS spatial database project in 2001,

and is currently an active developer and member of the project steering committee.

• Pia Waugh: Pia is an open government and data expert who currently leads the Service Innovation Lab in New Zealand.

• Alyssa Wright: Alyssa currently serves on the board of OpenStreetMap US and as project manager for HOT’s OpenStreetMap data analytics platform.

• Nyall Dawson: Nyall has been a core developer with the QGIS project since 2013 and is currently the proprietor

UK Hydro Office to take lead on G7 ocean initiative

Inside the UKHO offices at Taunton, Somerset, England. Image provided by UKHO.

and lead developer at North Road Consulting.

• Jane Elith: Jane is an academic in the School of BioSciences at the

University of Melbourne.

The event is now open for registration, and accepting proposals for workshops, papers and presentations.

Following the commitments to ocean science at the G7 in June, the UK’s Hydrographic Office (UKHO) has announced that it intends to spearhead action on pledges with its marine geospatial specialists and scientists.

Signed into existence at the G7 summit, the Charlevoix Blueprint for Healthy Oceans, Seas and Resilient Coastal Communities sets out seven commitments to aimed at fostering sustainable oceanic activities, aimed at tackling issues such as ocean plastics, coastal resilience and the ‘blue economy’.

The UKHO is the primary charting authority for 71 states

globally, and provides nautical charts, publications and services to over 90 percent of ships trading internationally.

John Humphrey, Chief Executive of the UKHO, said that as a world-leading marine geospatial data agency, the UKHO eagerly anticipates working to support partners achieve the goals of the Blueprint.

“It is extremely gratifying to see this global coalition of leaders commit to ocean goals that the UKHO knows from experience have a direct benefit on individuals and economies in coastal communities and nations around the world.

Airbus to build rover for Mars Sample Return mission The European Space Agency (ESA) has issued contracts for technology proposals to build a Mars rover to collect soil samples, and a return orbiter craft to bring them safely home.

Airbus has won the initial contracts to design two prototype vehicles, Sample Fetch Rover and Earth Return Orbiter, which will be designed and developed at its facilities in Stevenage, England.

The Sample Fetch Rover will retrieve 36 sample tubes of Martian soil and rock left behind by the 2020 Mars rover,

a mission due to launch in July 2020. While the 2020 rover design is based on Curiosity, it will collect and deposit samples for the Fetch Rover to retrieve and bring back to Earth, rather than conduct onboard analysis as Curiosity does.

Sample Fetch Rover will launch in 2026, tasked with transporting the samples loading them into a basketballsized container inside the ESA’s Mars Ascent Vehicle, which will then launch from the Martian surface to loft the samples into orbit.

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ESA’s ExoMars orbiter, which will act as a relay satellite for the Sample Return mission. Image credit: ESA.

news CR Kennedy’s new Adelaide digs at 77 Fullarton Road in Kent Town.

CR Kennedy Adelaide moves for growth Geospatial and survey equipment supplier CR Kennedy have moved into a new Adelaide office in order to make room for the company’s local expansion efforts.

State manager John D.

Gerhardy says the move involved several weeks of office renovations, bringing together all aspects of the CR Kennedy businesses in one location.

The much larger premises at 77 Fullarton Road in Kent

Town include expanded showrooms and a service centre, and coincides with the expansion of both the Adelaide survey and machine control teams.

“Our building is now three

times the size of the Sturt Street premises and boasts state of the art training and service facilities,” Gerhardy explains. “We now have the potential to grow and service our client base even better.”

Trimble Catalyst now supports GLONASS Trimble has updated its software-based GNSS receiver for Android devices to support the GLONASS constellation.

Trimble Geospatial’s daring positioning-as-aservice offering has received a major upgrade to receive signals from the GLONASS GNSS satellite constellation, in a move that Trimble says highlights the advantages of a software-based GNSS solution.

The Catalyst product makes consumer devices capable of centimetre-accurate data collection with the addition

of a digital antenna and subscription to the service.

“Adding GLONASS to Trimble Catalyst provides productivity improvements and more robust positioning for Catalyst users,” said Gareth Gibson, Catalyst business development manager at Trimble.

“In addition, since the service is provided via an Android app, performance updates are available through the Google Play store. As a user, receiving updates is easy and automatic.”

Trimble's Catalyst software-based positioning service now harnesses the GLONASS positioning constellation. Image courtesy of Trimble.

www.spatialsource.com.au 11

news KT unveils 5G aerial searchand-rescue platform Korean telecommunications provider KT has released an ambitious disaster management platform, featuring an airshipbased communications platform to direct UAVs and robots searching for disaster survivors.

South Korea’s largest telecommunications provider demonstrated the platform in action in a disaster simulation scenario in conjunction with the with Ajou University Hospital’s trauma center in Gyeonggi province.

Simulating a remote searchand-rescue operation, the Skyship

platform located a survivor, and was reached by a rescue squad wearing AR eyewear, who were able to share and communication with a surgeon in the trauma centre, who could check the patient’s vital signs remotely via the LTE network.

The announcement comes ahead of KT’s rollout of a 5G wireless network across South Korea, scheduled for March 2019.

The platform is based around the Skyship, an aircraft that KT says combines elements of an airship and a drone.

An aerial view of the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in Canada, 2013. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Geoscience Australia awarded for bathymetric survey in MH370 search

Geoscience Australia’s Dr. Adam Lewis and Megan McCabe accepted the award in San Diego. Image coWurtesy of Geoscience Australia.

Australia’s public sector geoscience organisation has received Esri’s Special Achievement in GIS award for 2018, for scientific discoveries made while surveying the deep seafloor while searching for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

The search for the lost airliner necessitated collecting large volumes of data in a remote part of the Indian Ocean — over 710,000 square kilometres of shipboard bathymetry data and over 120,000 of side-scan sonar acquired by underwater vehicles.

The bathymetry data were used to create submarine topographic maps of the search area, which guided the towed and autonomous underwater vehicles collecting the sonar data in the second phase of the search, which were analysed with Esri GIS tools.

Geoscience Australia’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Adam Lewis, proudly accepted the award in San Diego.

“The scope of the search was unprecedented, and produced the most detailed underwater map ever created; it showcases Geoscience Australia’s expertise, and will benefit science for decades to come,” he said.

“The findings will benefit global ocean exploration, the fishing industry, and government cooperation for future marine search and rescue.”

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 August/September 2018

partner feature

3D building surveying: the power of the full picture inside and out

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enovations of ‘listed’ buildings are notoriously difficult. The transformation of a building listed under cultural preservation involves a series of stakeholders, from local authorities and architects to sub-contractors. Different stakeholders require different levels of documentation, measurements, and dialogue.

A photorealistic and millimetre accurate 3D model of the exterior and interior of a building allows communication across all levels and enables a broad variety of preservation, construction, and design applications.

Transforming the use + preserving the design The church of St. Elizabeth, built in the mid1960s in Freiburg, Germany is one of the most emblematic projects from the German architect and master church builder Rainer Disse. Disse was known for his expressive brutalist style. St Elizabeth church is a bold design of exposed concrete.

The church complex — a main building and a freestanding bell tower — is officially listed under cultural preservation. The main building was converted into an apartment

complex in the early 2010s. The bell tower turned out to be a more challenging structure until recently when the architecture artist and builder—Ingrid Maria Buron de Preser—received permission to convert it.

She envisioned the concrete structure as a contemporary urban object as a home for creativity. “My vision is an innovative combination of private and public. My concept: a relaxing Quartier – Art House – Conceptstore with a big city feeling.”

The five-story tower will host a creative studio for art and culture workshops, two apartments plus the bell chamber, which will be transformed into a penthouse.

The photogrammetric 3D building survey To produce the pre-renovation documentation, Buron de Preser contacted Dr. Ken Varner, Operating Manager at vaireco GmbH to perform a 3D photogrammetric survey, tying up outdoor and indoor data.

The main goal of the survey was to provide high-resolution visuals — with a GSD in the millimeter range — of the concrete facades and the internal walls, and sub-centimetre measurements for architectural and renovation planning.

The image acquisition and field calibration took six hours. The data acquisition was mostly performed by the vaireco team using a handheld Sony alpha 5000. The upper half of the tower’s exterior ABOVE: St Elizabeth Church. Image courtesy of Sebastian Mattes from Schwarzwalddrohne.

LEFT: Point cloud on Pix4Dmapper interface. Courtesy of vaireco GmbH.

surfaces was captured by Sebastian Mattes of Schwarzwalddrohne using a DJI Mavic.

The full project, from image capture to results, took four days.

From images to photorealistic, measurable data To create the 3D model, Dr. Varner used Pix4Dmapper photogrammetry software to process the images. To start, he divided the images into blocks and calibrated individual projects. He then merged these subprojects into a single project and then optimised that master project. Next, he processed the project and generated the point cloud, finishing with generating the mesh and publishing the project on the cloud.

“Pix4Dmapper combines high-quality visuals with high levels of measurement accuracy, but its defining advantage is its flexibility to manually get inside the model and approach challenging photogrammetry projects with ease.” Dr. Ken Varner, Operating Manager at vaireco GmbH. The result, a single and complete reference file, shareable with just a click, facilitated the work and communication across multiple teams involved in the project.

“Wow! You can see every detail and you know exactly where it is,” was the reaction from Buron de Preser when Varner presented her the 3D model.

In the end, Dr. Varner achieved a mean GSD of 1.5 mm and a relative measurement accuracy of ± 3 mm. The architect, the subcontractors, the city planners and the local cultural preservation office used this visual, measurable, and interactive 3D model to visually assess damage, and pull out measurements. ■ Information provided by Pix4D.

www.spatialsource.com.au 13

q&a

Q&A with Ralf Duering P

osition: So Ralf, why radar? Could you summarise the technology and its development to date?

RD: Radar works like a police speed check – a signal is sent out at a target, let’s say a motorcyclist, and as the signal returns a number of times, the target’s speed can be measured. SAR works the same way.

TerraSAR-X was the first commercial radar service in space, and when we started out, the industry was not immediately aware of this technology and what it could offer.

They were used to working with optical images. Over the years though, recognition grew – an understanding that this was the most precise measuring tool in space, which is how the NGA [The US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency], the American military procurement agency, classifies this sensor.

Position: Can you describe some of the ideal use cases for SAR, or recent applications? Under which circumstances does it offer advantages over other forms of imaging?

RD: One key technology is INSAR [Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar], which we use for highly precise change detection. Since the radar is

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completely in control of the signal – its phase is known – we can detect extremely fine variance on its return. Additional fractions of a wavelength added to the signal represent change in the targeted object. The created image is called an interferogram, made up of two images of the same target, and the measured phase difference between the returned waves representing change – surface change in the order of millimetres, for example, which we can monitor over time.

Construction stability in civil engineering projects, sea ice movements, landslide monitoring and tracking land subsidence are key applications for this technique.

Currently, the Chinese government has 67,000 bridges across the country that they need to monitor for structural issues in this way. Yes – 67,000.

Time series analysis with SAR also has surveillance applications, as you might imagine – maritime monitoring, of illegal fishing in Indonesia for example, construction of facilities, vehicular movements. We can do very, very nice automatic ship detection because of the dielectric properties of the vessels against the ocean, which we can do with coherence change – something you can’t do with

amplitude changes from optical images.

Even with 40-metre resolution, you can easily identify 12 to 18-metre ships, even wooden ships, because of the way the wave bounces on the water and comes back.

We provide a lot of these services in this area to Southeast Asia, monitoring illegal deforestation in PNG, Malaysia, Indonesia, and construction sites in China.

We recently created the WorldDEM [Digital Elevation Model], a global 3D elevation model, including the North and South Poles, with 2-metre relative accuracy.

Finally, what we can offer in terms of ground control points (GCPs). This service has historically only been applied in inaccessible or denied areas, but we’ve now reached a domain within which we can now extract GCPs automatically with 10 to 20 centimetre accuracy from space, and up to one metre x, y, z. This could change the game for calibrating street maps, and holds massive potential for autonomous driving mapping applications. This one is a new business case even for us, we only found out in the last few weeks that we could do this – step by step, this technology has really evolved. We had thought that this service would only be in demand

started using radar like optics, initially.

We knew the technology was capable of producing such precise measurements, but it took time for us to really figure all of this stuff out. Processing power is no issue anymore, it’s developing and optimising the algorithms that takes the time – there’s a huge difference between understanding what’s technically possible and having a published paper that tests it, and physically making it reliably applicable for commercial use. But four to five years in, and we’re there – and still discovering new benefits.

A space-borne sensing technology that’s been flying under the radar for some time is now coming of age, and its maturation has spawned a formidable set of products and services. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging features a host of different characteristics to optical imaging from space – it is impervious to weather and lighting conditions, but requires considerably more processing muscle and algorithmic smarts to extract meaningful outputs. Position sat down with Ralf Duering, Asia-Pacific Business Development Director for Airbus’ TerraSAR-X platform, to discuss some of the ins and outs of this intriguing technology. for the autonomous vehicle space, but we’re seeing many clients scrambling to take stock of this development – Google, Beidou and others. We anticipate demand to develop beyond the autonomous vehicle street maps case quite quickly.

Position: My understanding is that the Spanish PAZ satellite that was launched in February is part of your constellation, but features an AIS [Automatic Identification System] module along with an SAR sensor.

Was there a specific business case for including this unit?

RD: PAZ is an exact clone of our TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X satellites, with the only difference being the AIS on board. Ship detection is one of our primary applications. Often when ships are engaging in dumping oil or other illegal activities, they’ll switch off their transponder, or send out a false signal – perhaps indicating they’re 150 kilometres from their actual position. So what we do is find these ships, check if they’re sending a signal, and whether it’s a proper or false one – and then we can go hunting.

Indonesia is one of our biggest clients in the region we work with SKK MIGAS

[The Special Taskforce for Upstream Oil and Gas Business Activities] to monitor all these straits in their waters. It’s very obvious and quite shocking to witness where they dump their oil when cleaning their tanks – it’s a huge stripe that goes out 200 nautical miles, and it just stays there. So with the AIS receiver on board, we don’t need to collect the signal, we can instantaneously compare it with the image and see what’s happening.

Position: Surely it’s not all roses though, what are some of the drawbacks?

RD: Well, unlike optical, radar satellites take six months to calibrate, verify correct system configuration and the validity of data outputs. Around six months after launch, the services are operational commercially, so we’re expecting the additional revisits offered by PAZ, and its specific service offerings to be live in about December. This is versus about a month and a half for optical, which is basically already there and working once in orbit. Observation of large areas can be better achieved with optics in many cases, depending on your requirements.

We went through a huge learning curve on the processing, to be frank. We

Position: Are there any specific benefits of this technology that can assist with survey-related applications, for those out in the field?

RD: I think some surveyors have been afraid in the past that we would take their jobs. Because we can easily generate such high point density and offer such extreme accuracy in regards to surface movement – and everything constantly moves. But there’s actually quite a lot we can offer here, in terms of optimising levelling and GNSS measurements and instruments. Because very often, when they go on construction sites or mining sites, they need to put a grid in, artificially – as to where they think they should monitor. But they also monitor positions, locations where there’s no need to – it’s stable ground. We saw it at a mining site with subsidence issues just this morning – total stations surveying equipment set up in many positions in which there was no need, whereas just a hundred metres or so left and right, whole walls were moving, and nothing was set up there. Of course they couldn’t know this, but with access to some of our products, we can help give this hint on where to look, and then they can monitor every second in the areas that need it.

Position: What is that service you refer to, how can surveyors access it?

RD: We typically see mining companies purchasing these products, usually under their corporate responsibility codes or as a preventative safety measure. So they buy the data, and it’s an internal decision as to whether they make it available to their surveying team, but we want them to use it, we encourage this, because there are a range of other environmental benefits that flow from this as well. We’d rather not see it just sitting on the office of the geotechnical people on site and the surveyors don’t get to use it.

Position: Thanks for your time today.

RD: You’re welcome. ■ www.spatialsource.com.au 15

partner feature

Inner West City Council leverages predictive mapping to improve community safety Discover how cutting-edge interactive mapping tools are helping the Inner West City Council to mitigate their flood damage and provide support to those most at risk during an emergency flood.

W

ith emergency flooding becoming a rapidly growing problem for the NSW region and posing a continuous threat to community safety, the local council faced a difficult challenge to not only understand the problem but advance their strategies with innovative technology to create a future-focused outcome to their real-life problem. Looking to mitigate the risks of torrential floods for the local community and support emergency management, GIS technology has assisted the study and development of the council’s implementation plan.

Project overview Floods cost NSW an estimated $200 million a year – a steep expense that can be mitigated. In an effort to minimise the impact of floods, local councils have conducted studies to better understand the nature of flooding and the associated flood risks in their catchment areas, develop flood management and mitigation strategies and support emergency management planning efforts.

Understanding flood risks allows local councils to make informed decisions on the location of new developments and to direct funding towards stormwater infrastructures to alleviate the impact of flood water on properties and roads.

Leichhardt Municipal Council (now part of Inner West Council) commissioned Cardno to conduct a Flood Study and a Flood Risk Management Study and develop a Flood Risk Management Plan. An interactive web map was developed as part of the Leichhardt

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Flood Risk Management Study to allow the community to investigate and better understand the nature of flooding in their area. The community are able to investigate the flood extent, flood depth, flood hazard and flood velocity for the one per cent Average Exceedance Probability (one per cent AEP – otherwise referred to as the one in 100 year Average Recurrence Interval) and Probable Maximum Flood (PMF) events throughout the area.

“The former Leichhardt LGA has experienced a number of major flood events in the past which have cost a considerable amount in damages – money that could be better spent elsewhere.”

Amy Steiger, GIS Manager, Cardno

Leichhardt in focus The former Leichhardt Local Government Area includes the suburbs of Annandale, Balmain, Balmain East, Birchgrove, Leichhardt, Lilyfield and Rozelle. The Leichhardt Council was amalgamated with Ashfield Municipal Council and Marrickville Municipal Council in 2016 to form the Inner West Council. The former Leichhardt LGA is a predominantly urban residential, medium density housing area with some industrial, commercial and

special purpose land use areas. The 10.7 square kilometre catchment has seen major flood events – in January 1991, a total daily rainfall of 54mm was recorded, February 1993 recorded total daily rainfall of 99.5mm and in April 1998, rainfall recorded over two days resulted in 109mm of rainfall on April 9 and 185mm on April 10. The Leichhardt LGA is surrounded by the Sydney Harbour to the north, Parramatta Road to the south, Johnstons Creek to the east and Hawthorne Canal to the west, with Whites Creek running through Annandale. Its drainage systems are either tributaries of these main creeks or drain directly into the Sydney Harbour.

The challenge The former Leichhardt LGA can become inundated by mainstream flooding – overflow of creeks and overland flooding – where the stormwater drainage system cannot handle the volume of rain resulting in excess water flowing over land. In some locations, developments have been built near or over natural flow paths, depressions and low points leading to overland flow across properties.

Additionally, the density of development in the area, such as town houses and terrace housing, has resulted in complete obstruction of the overland flow, leaving the only overland flow-path available directly through actual dwellings. Prior to the Leichhardt Flood Study, council and the community were uninformed of the full potential extent of damage and threat to personal safety that could be caused in significant flood events.

This limited the ability for council and emergency services to set up effective response procedures to minimise damage and potential loss of life, including the formal identification of flood evacuation routes. One of the significant community engagement priorities for the NSW State Emergency Services (NSW SES) is to increase awareness of the risks associated with walking, riding or driving through floodwaters, and thus prevent fatalities.

The solution To enhance the resilience of the Leichhardt community and allow its members to make informed decisions with regard to flood response, Council “Armed with insight into the flood plains and paths, commissioned The Leichhardt Floodplain Risk Management Study and Plan Council’s urban planners and engineers can reduce or (FRMS&P), which considered actions to minimise flood damage to properties by supporting better inform the community of the risks flood compatible development in flood prone areas associated with flooding and provide the community with information on and directing investments towards structural flood how to protect themselves and their modification measures.” property from the impact of flooding.

One of the outcomes of the Flood Risk Amy Steiger, GIS Manager, Cardno Management Plan was the development of a customised, interactive web map using ArcGIS evacuation routes. The data was SES the ability to enhance its emergency Online historical displayed on an interactive web management by helping those most at data and calibrating map using ArcGIS Online and is risk during a flood. It also allows for the flood predictions made available to the public via identification of at-risk communities, Solution Mix: based on annual council’s web page. The map can evacuation routes, and the locating of - ArcGIS platform recurrence intervals be interrogated to zoom in to a emergency refuge centres. Finally, the - ArcGIS Desktop –100-year, 50-year, particular property or zoom out mapping gives visibility as to where - ArcGIS Enterprise 20-year, 10-year to show the flood characteristics investments in stormwater infrastructure and 5-year – and the of an area, suburb or the entire and flood hazard management are most Probable Maximum LGA in one picture. needed and allows urban planners to make Flood (PMF) including better informed decisions on proposed depth, velocity and flow The innovations developments. Understanding the flood rates. The map provides members of This project is a cutting-edge example map enables engineers to devise structural the community with access to clear and of how interactive maps are increasing flood modification measures such as accurate flood information, allowing community engagement. The ability to stormwater upgrades and construction of them to better engage with the floodplain pictorially understand predicted flood levels additional underground pipelines, detention risk management process, prepare and paths of varying recurrence intervals basins and levees, all of which are aimed at for catastrophic events and plan their gives council, the community and the NSW changing the behaviour of the flood.

The outcomes The interactive flood map shows predicted flooding patterns for different predicted storms, giving the community, policy makers and emergency services insight into what to expect during a flood event, allowing them to prepare for and react appropriately in the event of a flood. The key outcomes from the platform include: • Increased community awareness and resilience in the event of a flood.

• Identification of safe evacuation routes depending on the flood incident.

• Insight into effective flood management investments For information on how to apply ArcGIS in your business visit https:// esriaustralia.com.au/predictivemapping. ■ Information provided by Esri Australia. www.spatialsource.com.au 17

feature

Completing the jigsaw The Australian science infrastructure playing a crucial role in some of the most advanced environmental initiatives in the world MARK GRANT

A

s the saying goes, ‘the quality of a decision is only as good as the information used to make it’. So, when it comes to collecting environmental observation data for management, modelling and ecological forecasting – one should never underestimate the importance of good quality data.

TERN, Australia’s terrestrial ecosystem observatory, provides the Australian and international earth observation communities with the high quality, onthe-ground data required to properly calibrate and validate their observations and predictions.

Data from TERN’s ecosystem field observatory, including plot data on soil and vegetation; gas, energy, and water exchange data; remote sensing data; and modelled data products about soil, climate, and landscape attributes, are being used on the international stage by Europe’s, America’s and India’s space agencies to improve the accuracy of global biogeophysical satellite products.

Here are four of the ways in which TERN’s ecosystem observation data are being used to ensure the accuracy of some of the most important environmental prediction tools:

1. More accurate climate variables from space Fernando Camacho is CEO at the Earth Observation Laboratory (EOLAB).

“Basically, validation aims to answer one simple question,” he said, “How good

18 position August/September 2018

(accurate, precise, stable) is an earth observation dataset?”

Camacho is working with the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) to identify a global set of on-ground monitoring sites that can be used by space agencies, including the ESA and NASA, to validate their biogeophysical, satellite derived products.

“TERN’s ecosystem processes monitoring SuperSites meet all our criteria for suitable sites. They’re part of a long-term supported network, and the measurements are regular and highly appropriate for satellite validation,” he said.

Based on these factors, CEOS’s Land Product Validation (LPV) subgroup has selected TERN SuperSites in their first selection of 55 global supersites for the calibration and validation of satellite derived bio-geophysical products, such as LAI and FAPAR. LAI (Leaf Area Index) and FAPAR (Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation) are biophysical variables that characterise vegetation cover and photosynthetic activity. Satellite based estimates of the variables are used in models to predict changes in primary productivity, plant growth and the absorption of carbon dioxide by vegetation.

On-the-ground data on LAI, soil moisture and phenology collected at TERN Ecosystem Processes SuperSites will be used by CEOS agencies in addition to micrometeorological observations of energy, carbon and water exchanges

between the atmosphere and key Australian ecosystems collected by OzFlux towers at each site.

Terrestrial and airborne laser scanning (LiDAR) and hyperspectral data collected

by TERN’s Landscape Assessment platform will also be used in the validation process.

“The availability of integrated, openaccess data complete with documented calibration and validation protocols presented the ideal data package for our global validation work,” said Camacho.

Sites belonging to TERN’s global partner observatories including America’s National Ecological Observation Network (NEON) and Europe’s Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) were also chosen by the CEOS LPV subgroup.

2. A better understanding of water stress and water use by plants A new collaboration has blasted off between NASA and TERN that’s set to dramatically improve global climate monitoring. NASA’s ECOSTRESS (Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station) mission to the International Space Station launched from Cape Canaveral at the end of June, providing critical climate data to scientists, helping them have a better understanding of how crops, the biosphere and the global carbon cycle respond to water availability and drought.

LEFT: The post-fire moonscape at TERN's OzFlux station in the Northern Territory's Sturt Plains.

Photo courtesy of Lindsay Hutley.

BELOW LEFT: Data from TERN's nation-wide network of flux monitoring sites, including from TERN's Dry River OzFlux station near Katherine in the Northern Territory (above), are being used

by NASA to calibrate and validate their global Earth observation products. Photo courtesy of Jason Beringer, TERN. BELOW RIGHT: High-tech equipment on the OzFlux tower at TERN's Alice Mulga SuperSite in the Northern Territory (above) collects data on the exchanges of energy and water between the land and the atmosphere, which are used

by NASA to validate their satellite collected measurements. Photo courtesy of James Cleverly, TERN.

“There are very few sites in the southern hemisphere where airborne and ground-based scans have been collected together with traditional inventory data across a range of biomes, so the TERN sites fill an important information gap for NASA.”

Dr. Joshua Fisher, Science Lead for the ECOSTRESS mission from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), is thrilled to have access to data collected and made openly available by TERN. “This is an exciting new data sharing collaboration between NASA and TERN, which will lead to a better understanding of water stress and water use by plants from different biomes, and the implications for agricultural and natural ecosystems,” Dr. Fisher said.

"ECOSTRESS will do this by measuring plant temperatures in various locations at different times of day, in a number of locations, using a multispectral thermal infrared radiometer on the International Space Station."

The temperature images of Earth’s surface from ECOSTRESS will be the most detailed ever acquired from space and will make it possible to measure the temperature of individual farm paddocks.

Meanwhile, in Australia, TERN will be collecting key southern hemisphere data at sites in a wide range of major Australian biomes, such as Tasmania’s eucalypt forests and Western Australia’s

woodlands, which will then be used

by NASA to verify the validity of data collected from the mission.

Specifically, NASA will use data on the exchanges (fluxes) of carbon, energy and water between the land and the atmosphere collected by TERN’s nationwide network of instrumented OzFlux towers. TERN is also supplying weather data on soil moisture data collected from the sites.

NASA’s collaboration with TERN on the ECOSTRESS mission follows the success of TERN’s role in NASA’s soil moisture active passive (SMAP) mission to map global carbon. www.spatialsource.com.au 19

feature LEFT: NASA's ECOSTRESS mission will use the environmental data collected

by TERN's nation-wide network of ecosystem observing sites, including TERN's OzFlux station in the Northern Territory's Sturt Plains (above) (photo courtesy of Lindsay Hutley).

BELOW: TERN is Australia’s land ecosystem observatory. We observe, record and measure critical terrestrial ecosystem parameters and conditions for Australia over time from continental scale to field sites at hundreds of representative locations. This information is standardised, integrated and transformed into model-ready data, enabling researchers to discern and interpret changes in land ecosystems.

3. High resolution 3D models of the world’s forests When it launched later this year, NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) will be the first space-borne laser instrument to measure the structure of Earth's tropical and temperate forests in high resolution and three dimensions.

Data from GEDI will be used to measure and monitor change to the world’s vegetation and its impact on carbon storages and biodiversity.

This giant leap for ecosystem science wouldn’t be possible without some equally high-tech, but more down-toEarth data collection. To validate the space-borne LiDAR data collected by GEDI, similar ground and airborne-based LiDAR data is required.

Dr. John Armston of the GEDI Science Definition Team at the University of Maryland has been working with the University of Queensland Joint Remote

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Sensing Research Program (JRSRP) to collect airborne (ALS) and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) data around Australia including selected TERN SuperSites for calibration and validation of GEDI algorithms and data products.

“So far we’ve collected and made available TLS and biomass plot data from eight TERN SuperSites,” said Dr. Armston. “Together with the ALS data, the plot level data we’re collecting across a wide range of major Australian biomes, such as Queensland’s dry eucalpyt forests or Tasmania’s temperate wet forests, play an important role in making sure that GEDI’s southern hemisphere data are valid and accurate.”

“There are very few sites in the southern hemisphere where airborne and groundbased scans have been collected together with traditional inventory data across a range of biomes, so the TERN sites fill an important information gap for NASA.”

4. Detailed information on the Earth’s most complex processes Unlike GEDI, which uses light to monitor the Earth, the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) space-borne instrument will use radar sensors working in microwave wavelengths to observe and take measurements of some of the planet's most complex processes, such as changes of vegetation biomass at the seasonal to annual cycles, ecosystem disturbances, ice-sheet collapses, and earthquakes.

Despite their differences in approach; underlying technology and required processing, GEDI and NISAR have one important thing in common, they both require on-the-ground data for validating the accuracy of their outputs.

Dr. Sassan Saatchi of NASA, who is organising the NISAR mission ecosystem science products on forest biomass jointly with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), is working with Australian-based researchers, including John, to collect the required data at TERN sites around the nation.

“We’re planning on colleting airborne laser scanning [ALS] data at a number of TERN SuperSites and at TERN’s smaller one-hectare ecosystem surveillance monitoring sites,” said Dr. Saatchi. “We need data across a variety of biomes, so the large number and excellent distribution of TERN sites makes this possible.”

“Even though NISAR doesn’t launch until 2021 at the earliest, the ALS data we collect at the TERN sites are vital for pre-launch preparation activities within the next year.”

TERN observes, records and measure critical terrestrial ecosystem parameters and conditions for Australia over time, from continental scale to field sites at hundreds of representative locations.

Mark Grant is TERN’s communications manager. For more information on the TERN Land Ecosystem Observatory and the open-access data it collects please visit tern.org.au or email tern@uq.edu.au ■

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feature

Taking skies to the

This article is the second in Position’s series on certification for commercial RPAS operation in Australia, in which we cover the process of attaining your Remote Pilot’s Licence (RePL).

DANIEL BISHTON

I

t’s a beautifully clear winter’s day in south-western Sydney. We’re in a Robinson R44 helicopter, scything along at around 200 kilometres an hour, rolling to starboard as we approach Sydney Olympic Park at around 1000 feet (305 metres) above ground level.

Visibility is perfect, and the cool temperatures are giving the R44’s aircooled boxer engine and rotors plenty of lush dense air – and lift – to work with.

Uniform blocks of bungalows glide quickly by beneath us, occasionally broken by green reserves and sprawling light industrial precincts, details razorsharp through flawless plexiglass.

“Can you see that?” the pilot asks me, pointing at a glinting silver speck slipping past the chopper’s fishbowl canopy, into and out of my peripheral vision in about half a second.

It was a twin-engined Cessna, descending for a touch-and-go at Bankstown Airport at around half our altitude, a few hundred metres away from the Robinson.

A glinting silver speck.

At the moment I caught a glimpse of it, the Cessna was flying at approximately the legal ceiling for drones in many zones of Sydney metropolitan airspace, while we were flying at around double the minimum altitude for manned aviation in those same zones.

The helicopter flight is part of the Remote Pilot’s Licence (RePL) syllabus run by Flightcontroller, based out of

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Bankstown Helicopters in Sydney’s southwest. It’s not a feature that’s required by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), but an optional component included in the Flightcontroller course.

If that twin-engined aircraft had been a Phantom, a Mavic, or any of the myriad of commercially available RPAS capable of operating at many times that altitude – it would have been nigh on impossible to detect.

Flightcontroller founder and managing director, Alex Grivas said that the helicopter flight is intended to give would-be drone pilots a very real sense of exactly what the pilot of a manned aircraft experiences while operating in urban airspace.

“The heli flight is included partly to give RPA pilots a sense of what can be seen from the air, with a particular eye on how hard it is to see drones – reinforcing this need for vigilance from the drone pilots. It was also partly to give a sense of the radio environment in and around a busy traffic area,” he said.

“Manned pilots are supposed to fly no lower than 500 feet, but in practice they have a tolerance of +/- 100 feet for altimeter error and a further +/- 100 feet for flying error, meaning that a normal flight, along the harbour for example, could conceivably be at 300 feet AGL – which obviously puts it into direct conflict with drone operations,” he said.

“Law enforcement, air ambulances and the military are known to routinely fly lower than 500 feet AGL, which again means that drone operators can't assume that if they are flying below their 120 metre / 400 foot ceiling that they won't be in conflict with manned operations, particularly in busy metropolitan areas, but also in rural areas where low flying occurs regularly.”

The thrill of a helicopter flight aside, the experience is sobering, and underscores the central take-away from working through the RePL units – in the eyes of the law, and the ecosystem of professional aviation, a UAV is an aircraft – and you’re in their skies, so you better know what you’re doing.

Why certify?

You may be wondering why you’d need to go through this process at all. I mean, anyone can buy a drone off the shelf and start flying, right? Not so fast.

CASA essentially de-regulated RPAS weighing less than two kilograms in total (aircraft and payload) in September 2016, allowing these systems to be operated, even commercially, by those without an RePL, in a class known as ‘excluded operations’. While you can buy a fair

chunk of airborne surveying or mapping technology that would conform to this restriction, many capabilities are only available on larger aircraft and more sophisticated systems, such as PPK systems and LiDAR units, and there are a number of procedural and practical advantages to operating with an RePL. Sphere Drones, an Australian reseller and service partner for industry-focused RPAS platforms has recently published a white paper titled ‘Drone Mapping: the four tiers’, which covers the basic principles of photogrammetry, and the impacts of technology and aircraft choices on this application. Their white paper classifies a range of aircraft and sensor packages according to ratings in terms of efficiency, accuracy, economy of operation and sophistication.

Thomas Tadrowksi, product manager for geospatial and remote sensing with Sphere, said that the remote pilot’s license should be foundational for any commercial operator.

“Most project managers for civil engineering and mining projects will insist on evidence that the drone operator has a RePL certificate. This is because it ensures that the on-site insurances are properly accredited and covered,” he said.

“It also guarantees that the correct risk assessment procedures have been formally covered, making it very difficult for a drone pilot without an RePL to obtain third party/property and also public liability insurance.”

Tadrowski noted that requesting area approvals from CASA – required for operations in almost all public areas – is ‘significantly easier and more rewarding’, a view echoed by Alex Grivas, founder and chief pilot of Flightcontroller.

Grivas noted that third parties that may be involved in the approval process – national parks, the office of environment and heritage, local councils and private landowners – require insurance to operate within their jurisdictions, and will request copies of RePLs, ReOCs, insurances, and ARNs of personnel involved in the operation.

Only licensed RPAS pilots are entitled to request exemptions to the standard operating conditions that CASA has established for all drone flights – some of which may make or break the ability to carry out a particular job. Tadrowksi offered the example of flying above the blanket 120 metre/400 foot ceiling, which may be necessary to photograph a deep mine, or scan an elevated construction site.

Finally, the RePL forms the first step in the process for operating commercially at scale. At least one licensed pilot is required for an organisation to apply

ABOVE: Theory modules of the Flightcontroller course covered the underlying technology of present-day RPAS in fine detail. Here, Alex Grivas demonstrates key differences between brushless and brushed electric motors.

LEFT: The practical components of the course involve around eight hours of flying routines, tuition and practice with different RPAS systems in ‘attitude’ mode — without GPS assistance.

for a ReOC, which is really the golden ticket in terms of operating commercially.

Tadrowksi likens operating in the excluded class to learning to drive on your own property, at your own risk; an RePL to being appropriately trained, tested and licensed to drive on public roads while conforming to the rules of the road, and a ReOC as getting your taxi license – you can own and operate for commercial gain relatively unrestricted.

Brass tacks Freshly-minted remote pilots emerge from the Flightcontroller RePL certification course with an aviation reference number (ARN), an aeronautical radio operator’s certificate (AROC), and a recommendation to CASA for the award of a Remote Pilot’s Licence. The fiveday course also incorporates an English language proficiency assessment to certify level four or higher, and a range of detailed theory and practice modules covering the CASA syllabus.

The theory modules of the Flightcontroller course were considerably more detailed and technical than I’d anticipated. Knowing that their course content drew heavily from their background in manned aviation, I’d expected in-depth coverage of flight principles and aerodynamics, but the granular exposition of radio transmission and frequency bands, brushless electric motor and LiPo battery technology, which included detailed calculation techniques for charge and discharge rates, flight

times and contemporary legal restrictions on air carriage – these elements were unexpected but welcome.

Having prior recreational experience in professional-grade radio controlled electric vehicles meant that many of these concepts weren’t entirely new to me. Comprehensive coverage of only the concepts relevant to current RPAS technologies and factors affecting conducting RPAS operations in a professional setting meant that it was entirely vocationally-focused material that remained engaging. For example, did you know that the capacity in watt-hours of many commercial-grade RPAS’ battery systems prohibit their carriage even in the hold of airliners? Neither did I. The aerodynamics and flight principles were similarly tailored – finely grained coverage of key concepts that apply directly to multirotor RPAS operation, with straightforward articulation of their application in practice. A welcome refresher on aerofoil dynamics and their supporting formulae transitioned smoothly into how these phenomena affect the performance in day-to-day operation of a multicopter, including a particularly thorough exploration of the most pervasive and insidious aerodynamic hazards, that if not observed and avoided or mititgated, could see your fancy new airborne LiDAR rig dropping like a stone.

Long rotor of the law Another module of the course’s coverage that was more involved than I would have assumed was the convoluted relationship between regulatory bodies, www.spatialsource.com.au 23

feature LEFT: Stadium Australia at Sydney Olympic Park, seen from 1000 feet above ground level (AGL).

BELOW: Understanding VNC charts and other aeronautical resources is essential when planning RPAS operations, as they will inform the restrictions and approval process required for a proposed area.

the rapidly evolving legal framework governing RPAS operation in Australia, and as a result – the various actions required of an RPAS operator under different sets of circumstances.

Flightcontroller's as one of the very first CASA-certified providers of RPAS flight training in Australia helped inform a potted, but detailed history of the key bodies and their interaction delivered by Grivas, from the introduction of a legal framework for drones up to the present day.

CASA, Airservices Australia and the Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) all have overlapping and interdependent responsibilities and jurisdictions in accounting for RPAS operations in Australian airspace. This applies to necessary procedures and approvals in advance of a proposed flight, and in the event of an incident or accident in the course of an operation. The process of applying for area approvals ahead of a flight is also remarkably involved, with a few traps for young players along the way, some that might keep you grounded, while potentially costing you a pretty penny in CASA processing fees – the advice on order of operations and pre-flight planning prior to applying for an area approval was a topic of notable value.

On terms of law itself, there is a raft of material to get across, and a process in itself to locate it. Understanding and remaining current with the ever-updated schedule of prohibited areas is a critical first step in planning a flight, as is an understanding of CASA’s AC-101 circular, a dossier of all legislation pertaining to unmanned aircraft licensing and flight, presented in a manner interpretable to those without a law degree.

Maps of the skies Once cognisant of your status as a licensed operator of an aircraft, it holds that you need to know how to access and interpret the resources that pilots, crews and ground staff rely on to operate

24 position August/September 2018

safely. Highly detailed meteorological services though the National Aeronautical Information Processing System (NAIPS), and how to access and interpret VNC and VTC charts (Visual Navigation and Visual Terminal Charts) are crucial tools for planning flight operations and acquiring area approvals, and the exercises that required using these resources formed a practically-focused element of the theory modules of the course.

Gaining an understanding and confidence with radio communications used in aviation was a daunting but ultimately rewarding aspect of this unit also. Initially seeming far-fetched and superfluous to me when touched upon in the course overview, after two days’ listening in to radio communications while undertaking the course at an active aerodrome, and coming to grips with the reality of sharing the skies, I was convinced of its criticality. As Grivas repeated, and I learned from my flight in the Robinson – “Radio is your eyes” – as a pilot, you need the tower to do the seeing for you.

Cleared for take-off The final components of the course were the practical modules, two days of handson instruction, practice and examination on operating a multicopter RPAS. This part of the syllabus was carried out at Marrickville PCYC in Sydney's inner west, and the flying routines took place in a relatively confined space, without the benefit of the GPS and stabilisation aids built in to many RPAS solutions – meaning that flight practice was a very practical, at times hair-raising illustration of the flight and control theory we’d covered in preceding days.

Pre- and post-flight procedures, plotting an operation’s risks on a matrix and developing mitigation strategies, accounting for human and environmental factors, and dealing with emergencies in the course of an operation were all covered

in detail. The contingency measures for emergencies in particular highlighted the importance of proficiency with radio and interpretation of the VTC and VNC charts – ‘flyaways’, collisions or other incidents need to be reported immediately so that manned aircraft and air traffic control are aware of potential hazards.

Hours and hours of flight time breeds competency and confidence even with large, expensive UAVs – and counterintuitively, the larger the aircraft, the easier they are to fly. And whilst I didn’t need to prove myself capable of extreme aeronautical prowess, a range of manoeuvres and flight basics are taught and examined, with an emphasis on calm, replicable control and confident correction of any in-flight errors.

All in all, the course was a heavyweight program of education that left me a much better pilot, with a vast new appreciation and respect for the hazards associated with drone operations, particularly with regard to potential conflict with conventional aviation, harm to bystanders and the consequences for an operator in these scenarios. The multifaceted preparations required for responsibly carrying out operations in any environment is insight useful to the most basic of recreational flights, and should be foundational to commercial operations. Personally, I certainly wouldn’t want to be involved in any operation with any less knowledge or experience than that which I gained in completing the course.

The next article in the series will cover the process of obtaining on an RPA operator’s certificate (ReOC) for your organisation. ■

The Year in

2018 Conference Join infrastructure leaders and executives in London to hear from industry thought leaders, engage in forums and discussions, and learn about technologies and best practices that will shape the future of infrastructure delivery and operations.

Presented by Bentley Institute, the Year in Infrastructure Conference is a global gathering of leading executives in the world of infrastructure design, construction, and operations focused on best practices and technologies for going digital. The Year in Infrastructure Awards, formerly known as the Be Inspired Awards, is an exciting and well-regarded global competition that recognizes the “going digital” advancements in infrastructure.

See presentations from award nominees and join us at the celebratory gala, recognizing the world’s most outstanding infrastructure projects in 2018.

October 15 – 18, 2018 I Hilton London Metropole REGISTER AND LEARN MORE AT YII.BENTLEY.COM

feature

Optimising the design of London’s newest iconic skyscraper DAVID HUIE

3D design coordination

C

St. George sought a strong, on-site marketing and sales presence, so WSP designed a temporary three-story, steel-framed facility fitted with replica apartments to serve as the marketing suite. To support it at ground level, the team partially modeled the ground floor slab and supported the slab on plunge columns so that the three levels of the basement could be constructed around and underneath the marketing suite while in use. This piling configuration enabled temporary and permanent works to be combined and facilitated a top-down construction sequence. The interoperability of the BIM suite helped WSP to share the 3D design models with the main contractor for generating logistics plans and sequencing work packages. As the works reached the ground floor, the marketing suite was removed and the tower construction commenced.

To complicate matters, the tower’s rooftop structure housed the main building maintenance unit (BMU), which contained a shaft extending down into the multi-level penthouse floors. WSP worked with its in-house façade access consultants, sharing 3D models to determine how to prevent the BMU from intruding on the penthouse space. Using the WSP model, contractors could fully understand the space and reduce the size of the BMU to a more compact unit.

In addition to coordinating with the contractors, WSP opted for a collaborative design process to analyse numerous options and determine innovative

onsidered one of London’s most iconic building projects, One Blackfriars is a mixed-use development that features a 50-story residential tower as its centerpiece, an adjoining three-story podium housing a gym and retail facilities, and a boutique hotel with 161 rooms — all built over a three-story basement with a swimming pool, spa, and parking facilities.

Developed by St. George and designed

by Simpson Haugh Architects, the project is situated on the south side of Blackfriars Bridge, overlooking the River Thames, offering views of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Westminster’s Big Ben and the houses of Parliament. WSP was appointed to provide structural modeling and engineering services. The project site varied in depth and had remaining elements of a previously demolished building, which could not be removed without collapsing the surrounding infrastructure.

After performing a 3D laser site survey, the team understood the site challenges and designed the new three-story basement down to 13 metres, fitting around the site’s constraints. WSP also faced challenges designing temporary on-site client facilities, including developing structural solutions for the complex geometry of the 170-metre landmark building. WSP used MicroStation, RAM Concept, and RAM Structural as an integrated BIM solution to streamline workflows and carry out their work on the project.

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solutions to ensure structural integrity of the asymmetrically shaped tower. The design team used the architect’s 3D model in MicroStation and developed a framing skeleton for the model. Floor plate layouts were then extracted and imported into RAM Concept, where multiple design iterations were analysed and automated drawing productions generated for client and design team coordination.

Post-tensioned design in practice The geometry of the tower consists of a narrow base extending upward to a bulge, where the private viewing lounge offers panoramic views of London, and then slopes back in and continues rising upward. A multi-level penthouse accommodates the top five floors of the 50-story building. The tower includes 274 luxury apartments, all varying in layout with floor plates of different shapes and sizes and no repetition throughout the building. Not only did WSP need a structural solution for the varied floor plans, but it also needed to design support columns that offered unobstructed views without intruding on the apartment spaces.

Based on the architectural model, WSP determined that the optimal structural solution was a combination of fitting reinforced concrete blade columns between the party walls and circular feature columns. With the various sized apartments, the team needed to determine the location for the columns that best suited the individual layouts while still

ensuring structural integrity. The team optimised the column configuration and automatically generated arrangement drawings that were shared with the contractor for construction.

Finally, with RAM Concept, WSP designed the apartment floor slabs as thin as possible. The team modeled and designed 225-millimetre thick, posttensioned concrete floor slabs, which proved the most cost-effective solution based on minimum structural zone. It reduced the self-weight of the floors, which allowed for maximum slab spans and floor-to-ceiling heights to increase apartment value. The post-tensioned slab design saved 10 percent in overall concrete volume for the floors alone, equivalent to five additional floor plates.

Interoperability ensures stability WSP conducted finite element modeling to analyse the entire building, testing stability against wind and numerous forces. The team applied the software’s meshing algorithm to accurately predict the floor slab concrete behavior and integrated it with other software, designing the stability system and producing an overall building model.

At the pinnacle of One Blackfriars Tower is the multi-level penthouse.

Tasked with finding a structural framing solution for the most expensive part of the building, the design team used RAM software to develop structural support for the glass rooftop. At the conclusion of this process, WSP introduced a transfer slab to support the entire dead weight of the roof cap and restrained it with horizontal and vertical restraints.

The team conducted a detailed deflection cap analysis that included testing the structural robustness of the main BMU on various supporting transfer slabs.

Optimising structural solutions Consistent with the elegant design of the tower, the architects were keen to have feature columns at the base of the building. The columns were narrow at the base and extended upward 10 meters in height, which forced the team to adopt high-strength concrete to ensure optimal axial stiffness and strength. However, the client also wanted a two-level mezzanine above the lobby without any of the columns interfering with the open lobby space. Using RAM Structural System, WSP designed a steel framework and hung the entire framing system from the first residential floor slab, while the design team enhanced the thickness of the first level slab to support the frame loads.

Project summary: Organisation: WSP Solution: Buildings and Campuses Location: London, England, United Kingdom Project Objectives: • Provide structural solutions for site constraints and complex geometry of One Blackfriars Tower.

• Design cost-effective, efficient framing to fit 274 apartments within the 50-story skyscraper.

• Optimize collaboration with architects, client, and contractors to deliver elegant super-structure with spectacular views of London.

Products Used: MicroStation, RAM Concept, RAM Structural System

Fast Facts • One Blackfriars is London’s mixed-use development, accommodating 274 apartments and a multi-level penthouse.

• WSP used RAM Concept to design the floor slabs for this geometrically complex building.

• Using MicroStation, the design team shared 3D models and produced automated production drawings, facilitating collaboration.

ROI • RAM Concept optimised optioneering to achieve a costeffective structural solution within a short time period, saving the equivalent of five additional floor plates.

• Bentley’s 3D technology coordinated modeling and streamlined workflows to save 50 percent in design time.

• Bentley applications’ interoperability combined temporary and permanent works, increasing efficiency and reducing construction time.

WSP faced additional challenges in ensuring structural support for the posttensioned floor slabs for the different apartment layouts. After conducting numerous design iterations, the team adopted a combined solution of walking columns, raking columns, and split reverse-Y columns. As the raking columns also generated horizontal forces, WSP used the floor plates to tie the column horizontal forces to the building.

Further up the tower structure are two smaller BMUs that required a variation in column design to avoid clashes as the columns rose from the floors below, the team deciding ultimately deciding to use reverse-Y transfer columns to allow space for the BMUs whilst still supporting the floors.

Finally, as with any high-rise building, lateral stability is a crucial issue. With residential buildings like One Blackfriars Tower, the building cores tend to be smaller compared to commercial buildings. To ensure lateral stability, WSP designed a staggered outrigger system that extended out and connected to the perimeter columns. This solution also provided the construction team complete access to each floor.

Pushing the limits of structural design WSP explored and adopted many iterations and design changes from the initial design proposal stage through construction, while ensuring compliance with European design codes. Within a short period of time, they were able to achieve an efficient, cost-effective structural solution incorporating longer, thinner slabs and fewer columns.

Ultimately, WSP were able to design and deliver an iconic landmark for London.

One Blackfriars will inspire the next generation of designers to think outside the box and promote London as the capital for world-class architecture and engineering.

David Huie is Senior Product Marketing Manager at Bentley Systems. ■ www.spatialsource.com.au 27

THREE BECOME ONE JAMIE LEACH

A tripartite collaboration yields a spectacular spatial output.

J

une 2018 marked a number of firsts for Queensland. The official launch of the 2017 Queensland tile mosaic at the Open Data Institute of Australia is the first time outside of California that imagery of this type and scale has been released by any level of government as open data. It was also the first time the Queensland government released a highresolution spatial dataset of this nature under a CC-BY-SA licence, marking a shift from conventional publication.

The global push to publish and release open data has seen the Queensland government display a willingness to open up more datasets to the masses, but this push is also creating an opportunity for innovative imagery providers such as Planet to capitalise on the movement.

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So how exactly does an Australian state government such as Queensland come to form a partnership with a Silicon Valley scale-up of this nature? If we take a closer look at the partners involved and the comparison between Queensland and California; both for geographical spread and the occurrence of natural disasters — it’s not as much of a stretch as one might think.

Planet’s rise within the global spatial imagery market began with a chance meeting in San Francisco in 2010, which resulted in three NASA scientists crafting a vision to disrupt the geospatial world by doing what they knew best. Together, cofounders Will Marshall, Robbie Schingler, and Chris Boshuizen set their sights on democratising access to data from space.

The idea was to make satellites smaller and less expensive, with the goal of launching more of them and monitoring Earth in unprecedented ways.

Since that fateful meeting, Planet has launched over 300 satellites and now operates the largest constellation of imaging satellites in history. Today, over 175 Dove nanosatellites monitor 330 million square kilometres of land and oceans daily.

What sets Planet apart is their ability to design, build and launch satellites faster than any company or government in history. The speed is made possible by what they call an ‘agile aerospace’ approach; which enables them to iterate and innovate more quickly than a legacy R&D and manufacturing-based workflow. Planet can now provide global capacity for high resolution monitoring, undercutting the traditional tasking model. Together, their Dove and SkySat satellites enable a ‘tip-and-cue’ capability that offers new avenues for intelligence gathering to governments and

feature In the same timespan it took the founders of Planet to develop their current capacity, the Queensland government was developing a plan to procure world-class imagery from a range of sources, while beginning to explore the potential of open data within the Department of Natural Resources, Mining and Energy (DNRME).

In the late 2000s, the department began to acquire high-resolution satellite imagery, starting with 2.5-metre resolution SPOT data in 2009, 1.5-metre resolution SPOT data in 2012 and again in 2013-15.

However, the rights acquired with this

for business, industry and the broader community to explore, develop and test innovative new products and services,” he said.

“Wherever feasible, under our open data policy we try to acquire the broadest possible data rights, to ensure the maximum number of users can utilise our spatial data but also ensure the broadest purposes for which it can be used — even those we haven’t thought of yet.”

Currently, satellite imagery, particularly in high resolution, can be expensive to acquire and usually carries restrictive licensing conditions. So, it is very unusual

“The Open Data Institute is passionate about the transformative potential of open data. We believe in the power of cross-sectoral collaboration, and we believe in challenging boundaries to create such as this ground-breaking initiative between the Queensland government and Planet,” Maree Adshead (Founding CEO and Current Board Member)

businesses, through both confidential and open data use-cases.

By applying machine learning to this imagery, Planet can track relevant objects (such as ships, planes, and roads) and index global change on a daily basis. This was of particular interest to the Queensland government’s requirements for managing natural disaster events and to facilitate the recovery from incidents such as large-scale flood events, bushfires and cyclones.

Shankar Sivaprakasam, Planet’s vicepresident for Asia and Japan summarises Planet’s vision as follows. “The big picture plan is to use satellite data to create a ‘queryable Earth’. We will index all the images of the Earth we capture daily so that you and I can query the Earth for changes, patterns, and objects of interest.

Just as we query Google for internet and web content, we will be able to query the Earth through Planet,” he said.

satellite imagery only permitted its use by the Queensland government, which includes public viewing in the Queensland Globe — an online interactive tool that can be accessed with a web browser.

The land and spatial information division within DNRME is responsible for acquiring, managing and providing access to the department’s spatial data.

Imagery is a high-demand data type, driven in part by the decentralised nature of Queensland’s population and its 1.734 million square kilometres.

In 2015, the Queensland government released a tender for an annual, wholeof-state, high-resolution satellite imagery product, reflecting the growing demand for spatial data and particularly more frequent high-quality coverage. Two companies, Earth-i and Planet were successful respondents to the tender.

Earth-i was contracted to deliver wholeof-state annual 80-centimetre satellite imagery, and Planet to provide access to daily, 3-metre resolution satellite imagery over the entire state of Queensland.

Both platforms had been licensed for ‘whole of government’ use, which extends to all Queensland state agencies, local governments and government owned corporations. Steve Jacoby, executive director of land and spatial information at the DNRME, said that an open approach benefits all stakeholders.

“Open licensing can play a significant role in creating the right environment

to be able to release current, 2.4-metre resolution imagery under a creative commons (CC) licence. The launch of the Queensland Mosaic is the first time outside of California that imagery of this type and scale has been released.

“We were also able to work with the Planet team to negotiate an open Creative Commons licence to the Queensland mosaic. We were taking a snapshot mosaic from the Planet imagery once a quarter and our negotiations allowed one of these mosaics to be available to be released openly. This means it can be used by anyone in the world for any purpose consistent with the CC-BY-SA terms.”

The team at the Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy expected to see sub-metre offers for annual state-wide satellite imagery, but they didn’t foresee a lower resolution (3-metre) offer available on a near-daily basis. The combination of the two provides for a very powerful suite of capabilities, with disaster planning, management and recovery, agriculture, natural resource management, and land development monitoring as key use cases.

The geo-referenced Queensland mosaic was compiled from the best daily images taken by Planet’s constellation between July and September 2017, the best time for image acquisition in Queensland. Whilst Planet had the task of stitching the mosaic together from tens of thousands of scenes, DNRME had to contend with the challenge of how best to deliver the data to its users, www.spatialsource.com.au 29

feature LEFT: The Rockhampton floods, captured during the 2017 Cyclone Debbie event.

BELOW: Shankar Sivaprakasam (Planet Labs), Jamie Leach (ODI Australia) and Steve Jacoby (DNRME) at the launch of the mosaic.

which include non-technical public users.

“For all our spatial data, we aim to provide simple ways for users to find, view, connect and download content. But given this mosaic is over a terabyte in size, we had some interesting challenges to overcome,” Jacoby said. “An efficient, simple self-service download application took longer to get right, and we ended up tiling the mosaic into 5 x 5-kilometre tiles — over 102,000 of them — to ensure performance was maintained.”

The mosaic can now be accessed in Q-Imagery, tiles viewed and downloaded immediately as .jpegs or geo-referenced .tiff format.

In developing and releasing this product, the Queensland government worked closely with Australia’s Open Data Institute (ODI). This work has helped drive a broadening of the open data policy across departments, and is a component of continuing efforts to increase data quality and value within the department.

Founded in 2015, ODI Australia is one of 28 nodes, across 20 countries. The ODI movement was co-founded in 2012 by one of the inventors of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and artificial intelligence expert Sir Nigel Shadbolt to advocate for the innovative use of open data to affect a positive change across the globe.

The Australian network has evolved to be considered the peak independent national body, advocating for increased uptake of open data principles across government, industry, the research community and broader public.

ODI Australia aims to connect, equip and inspire people to innovate with data. They are passionate about the transformative potential of open data, and they believe in the power of openness, cross-sectoral collaboration and in challenging boundaries in order

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to create value. Right from the start, it was their mission to create a place where people could be imaginative, innovative, collaborative and committed.

It was no surprise, given the cross collaboration between Planets’ and the Queensland government that the official launch of the mosaic would be a public event. ODI Australia relished the opportunity to celebrate this momentous use of open data and was excited to see what the open data community can build with the mosaic.

Attendees of the launch included members of the government across several departments, stakeholders within the Queensland wider geospatial ecosystem, staff from leading research facilities and industry representatives including the start-up ecosystem that were eager to see how the mosaic might be utilised.

Steven Jacoby from the Queensland DNRME has called for feedback regarding the mosaic. The department would like to understand how it is being utilised, how services can be improved (including licensing regimes) and the user community’s views which will assist in informing future open data policies and practices. Feedback can be given via the Queensland Globe updated website at https://qldglobe. information.qld.gov.au.

Jamie Leach is CEO of the Open Data Institute Australia, as well as being a seasoned professional services executive with a background in commercial and investment banking, defence and telecommunications sectors. She has more recently been involved in spearheading technology scale-ups across Brisbane. She is currently undertaking a PhD on financial barriers to female entrepreneurship in Australia. ■

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feature

Why the renewed buzz in open geospatial?

O

ver the last few years I’ve noticed that many job advertisements now request open geospatial skills — in software like QGIS, PostGIS/PostgreSQL and GeoServer. Multiple companies offer training in these technologies, and these companies are being hired to further refine open geospatial technologies. It’s becoming an established norm to see government agencies publish geospatial data via open standards, under open licenses.

So, what are the drivers for government, business and academia toward open geospatial? I believe there is a growing realisation amongst enlightened decision-makers that openness facilitates collaboration, which fast tracks innovation, and mitigates many of the challenges introduced by the digital economy. Issues such as rapid obsolescence, monopolies, wealth disparity and lowering of public trust.

If we are to realise these benefits, we need to be able to understand and then explain the subtle and yet key success characteristics of openness.

Here is the dilemma faced when considering open business: Looked at through the lens of traditional management, openness and collaboration is time consuming, imprecise, unreliable,

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hard to manage, rarely addresses short term objectives, and hard to quantify in a business case.

Yet in a digital economy, collaborative communities regularly out-innovate and out-compete closed or centrally controlled initiatives. So how do we justify following a sustainable, open and equitable strategy?

The answer involves understanding the digital economy, complexity, trust, innovation and obsolescence.

our layers often only make sense when presented on someone else’s base map.

Luckily, we’ve had big players such as defence and government investing in these problems, and the geospatial domain has developed advanced solutions to these challenges. We have mature standards; collaborative communities; comprehensive and healthy open source software; and a wide range of open datasets.

Digital economy

Due to the increased complexity of our systems, in many cases it is no longer feasible for one person to understand all of a system’s intricacies. So decisionmakers need to assume, deduce and trust information provided by others. Sourcing trustworthy advice has become a key criteria for success in the digital economy.

So, how do we assess trustworthiness?

We trust people who are credible and who have track records of providing reliable advice in the past. We trust people who are open and transparent. We trust that processes, such as the scientific method, create more reliable outcomes.

We trust ourselves, our family, our friends, because they look out for us, and we look out for them. We are suspicious of people who stand to gain from advice they give us.

The digital economy has fundamentally changed the rules of business. Ignore this at your own peril. Zero duplication costs and the connectivity of the internet has led to wicked complexity, interdependence, rapid innovation, and on the flip side, rapid obsolescence.

These challenges are heightened in the geospatial domain. Our data types are especially complex as we try to describe a round Earth on flat maps, with slowly moving continents, and we need to achieve all this at multiple scales.

Our datasets are huge, and we’ve been forced to solve big data challenges well before most other domains. We have been forced to collaborate, as our maps need to integrate with our neighbours, and

Trust

But we also know that all processes can be gamed. And the more complex a system, the easier it is to bamboozle people and game the system. Part of the reason open communities have become so successful is that openness leads to trustworthiness. Let’s break this down, starting with open source software.

Freedom and altruism

Open products, such as open data and open source software, by definition are provided free to use, copy, modify, and improve. The altruism associated with giving, and receiving little in return, increases the trustworthiness of the giver.

Transparency

Open communities typically communicate transparently and openly.

Conversations are public. Everyone has the opportunity to join and contribute.

Decisions are made openly. Issues and limitations are published and shared.

Being transparent and open to public critique reduces the potential for hidden agendas and creates trustworthiness.

Do-ocracy and meritocracy

Within a ‘do-ocracy’, a person who is altruistically motivated to ‘scratch an itch’ decides how they spend their time. Within complex systems, these people are usually the best qualified to make good decisions, which in turn makes them trustworthy.

“Using modular architectures, connected by open standards, reduces system complexity and enables interoperability. This reduces technical risk, facilitates sustained innovation, and mitigates the risk of vendor lock-in.”

Likewise, in a meritocracy, the best ideas win, no matter where in the management hierarchy the idea comes from. Increasingly, the best ideas are coming from the people on the tools, and organisations which embrace meritocracy are more likely to be both trustworthy as well as being more successful.

Open standards A strategy to manage complexity is to divide large systems into modular subsystems.

Using modular architectures, connected by open standards, reduces system

complexity and enables interoperability.

This reduces technical risk, facilitates sustained innovation, and mitigates the risk of vendor lock-in. It means you can improve one module, without impacting the rest of your system. This helps with maintenance, innovation, and keeping up with latest technologies.

Obsolescence and monopolies Because data and software are so time consuming to create and so easy to copy, they are excessively prone to monopolies.

This holds true for both proprietary and open business models.

A product that becomes a little better than its competitors attracts users, developers and sponsors, which in turn allows that product to grow and improve quickly, allowing it to attract more users.

This highly sensitive, positive feedback leads to successful projects becoming ‘category killers’, with all the others becoming obsolete.

However, open and proprietary business models differ in how realised value is shared.

Open licenses are structured such that multiple companies can use and support the same product, so the market selfcorrects any tendencies toward price-fixing.

Effectively, open licenses democratise information and share realised value.

By comparison, the ruthless competition between proprietary companies results in ‘winner takes all’ scenarios, leading to growing wealth inequality.

Picking a winner Most open projects fail. Actually, the success rate of innovative technology projects across the board is low, but let’s start by looking at research into open source software.

Professor Charlie Schweik studied thousands of open source software projects and found that most projects are abandoned, one in seven remain www.spatialsource.com.au 33

feature with just one or two developers, and only projects of exceptional quality attract sustained growth and large communities.

The successful projects typically possessed a clearly defined vision, obvious utility, and had leaders who lead by doing. Projects which manage to attract large teams tended to provide fine scaled task granularity, making it easier for people to contribute, and often attracted financial backing.

Another strong indicator of success is demonstrated conformance with the established processes of open communities, such as the open source geospatial foundation (OSGeo)’s incubation process. These cover quality, openness, community collaboration, maturity, and sustainability.

Bringing this all together So if we bring this all together, what have we learned?

The digital economy leads to high complexity, rapid innovation and rapid obsolescence. Increased complexity requires us to trust more. So increase the value you place on trustworthiness, openness and transparency.

Collaboration and openness fast-tracks innovation. Value, recognise, select and apply collaborative practices.

Don’t be naive: most open projects fail (but most proprietary projects fail too). Learn how to pick winners.

Openness and collaboration leads to the democratisation of wealth and power. Learn how to be part of the community — it makes good business sense.

Our geospatial domain has excellent open data, software and standards to draw upon. Learn all about them at the upcoming FOSS4G State of the Map Oceania conference in Melbourne, 20-23 November 2018.

By day, Cameron is a software, information, geospatial and open technologies consultant, and has recently joined the team at Technology One. By night he helps build open source communities, mainly in the geospatial domain. Over the last couple of decades he has contributed to numerous open source projects, some of which he started. He’s contributed to the OSGeo foundation board, and has co-authored many strategies and processes. http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com ■

Open geospatial highlights There is a comprehensive stack of mature, standards-compliant, widely used, well supported and rapidly innovating open source geospatial applications, data and standards — all available for free. Here are some of the highlights.

OSGeoLive - training material and Linux distribution OSGeoLive is a self-contained bootable Linux distribution, that is pre-installed and pre-configured with 50 of the best geospatial open source applications along with sample datasets, project overviews and quickstarts. It is ideal for quickly learning the open source stack of software. http://live.osgeo.org

PostGIS - spatial database PostGIS spatially enables the PostgreSQL object-relational database.

It is stable, fast, standards compliant, comes with hundreds of spatial functions, and is the most widely used open source spatial database. https://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/postgis_overview.html

GeoServer - web service GeoServer publishes maps from databases, shapefiles and more via numerous standards-based web services. MapServer is also worth checking out. https://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/geoserver_overview.html

QGIS - desktop GIS QGIS is a user-friendly GIS client which allows you to visualise; manage; edit and analyse data, and compose printable maps. It supports numerous vector, raster and database formats and boasts many toolboxes, including access to many of the advanced GRASS analysis modules. https://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/qgis_overview.html

OpenLayers - browser-based GIS OpenLayers is a JavaScript browser-based library, designed to work across a wide range of browsers and mobile platforms. Leaflet is also worth checking out. https://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/openlayers_overview.html

Open GIS data There is a wealth of open data to choose from as well. Both Australian and New Zealand governments are publishing many datasets under an open license, which can be sourced at https://data.gov.au and https://data.govt.nz.

Australian geospatial datasets can be easily viewed at on the National Map at www.nationalmap.gov.au. OpenStreetMap also has good coverage. It is community built, similar to Wikipedia: https://www.openstreetmap.org/

Open GIS standards For over a decade the Open Geospatial Consortium has coordinated the development of robust standards for sharing geospatial data between both open source and proprietary applications and between organisations. http://www.opengeospatial.org/

FOSS4G-Oceania Conference The Free Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) and State of the Map (SotM) Oceania Conference will take place in Melbourne 20-23 November 2018.

The event co-locates FOSS4G, the conference for open source geospatial software, and State of the Map, which brings together the OpenStreetMap community.

2018 will be the first time in nine years that these communities have been brought together in a single Australian conference, and the event will feature a full day of workshops, two days of presentations, a community day and a program of social events. https://foss4g-oceania.org

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new products

HoloLens OS update improves onsite model viewing for Holoview BIM The latest HoloLens OS update (RS4) brings some major revisions to benefit BIM Holoview users. According to the manufacturers, performance and projection stability have both improved, with the key improvement being increased memory capacity for BIM Holoview.

In practice, this has expanded the size of the Autodesk Revit and Navisworks files that BIM Holoview can process, meaning that more building services and larger areas can now be viewed.

Zephyr S: blurring the line between drone and satellite The Zephyr S is a new class of aircraft that Airbus calls an HAPS — high altitude pseudo satellite.

It's a solar-electric powered, stratospheric UAV, with a wingspan of 25 metres and a gross weight of 75 kilograms — one of which has recently surpassed the world aircraft endurance record of 14 days, 22 minutes and 8 seconds without refueling.

Running on solar power, above commercial air traffic and atmospheric weather systems, Airbus envisions Zephyr S to provide 'satellite like' services:

'Ideally suited for "local persistence" (ISR/Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance), Zephyr S has the ability to stay focused on a specific area of interest (which can be hundreds of miles wide) while providing it with satellitelike communications and Earth observation services (with greater imagery granularity) over long periods of time without interruption.'

Wyndham airfield in Western Australia will be the first launch and recovery site for the Zephyr S.

Virtual Surveyor 6 boasts all-new UI, streamlined workflow Virtual Surveyor has announced the sixth version of its drone-based surveying software suite, touting significant workflow and interface enhancements.

Designed for processing UAV-derived imagery, the Virtual Surveyor software suite is primarily aimed at stitching together orthophotos and digital terrain models to create interactive 3D models of a surveyed area.

Touting themselves as bridging the gap between a photogrammetry suite and a CAD package, Virtual Surveyor is designed to integrate with CAD suites, and provides a range of functions including polygon volume calculation and an array of export options.

Leica RTC360 automatically registers point clouds Riding the edge computing wave, Leica's new 360-degree capture device features the ability to begin automatically processing scans as they are captured, reducing processing time later in the workflow.

The RTC360 performs a full dome scan in under 2 minutes, capturing 2 million points of high dynamic range (HDR) imagery, and the device contains a visual inertial system (VIS) that automatically

tracks the scanner's movements between setup positions.

Once captured, the scans can be combined and pre-registered on a mobile device with Leica's Cyclone REGISTER 360 app, where they can be inspected and tagged.

Hexagon president and CEO Ola Rollén said that beyond the processing workflow efficiencies, this feature can facilitate decision-making while on site. www.spatialsource.com.au 35

new products

Baraja reveals Spectrum Scan LiDAR module

MapD brings GPU-powered analytics to Google Cloud launcher MapD is a GPU-enabled cloud processing suite, harnessing the parallelisedprocessing muscle of graphics processing cores to allow rendering of billions of points and millions of shapes in real time over a standard internet connection.

Its latest release, MapD 4.0, is now available on Google Cloud Launcher, the deployment service for the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

What this means for users of the cloud-based analytics platform is access to a fast open source SQL engine and visual analytics platform from within Google Cloud’s extensive cloud computing services suite, without the need for manual configuration.

MapD 4.0 is available in three licensed versions, Open Source Core, Community Edition, and Enterprise Edition.

Sydney-headquartered startup Baraja's new 'Spectrum-Scan' LiDAR scanner combines a wavelengthtuneable laser with prism-like optics in a system aimed squarely at autonomous driving applications.

The key difference separating this unit’s design from existing offerings is the abolition of moving parts from the device.

Baraja says that their application of 'prism-like optics' improves scalability, reliability and performance issues associated with designs that rely on physically rotating lasers or moving mirrors to scan the environment.

MapXplorer’s un|earth:: app taps 30 years of LandSat data

Klau integrated PPK module takes off with Position Partners Klau's PPK units contain calibrated cameras, and offer up to 3-centimetre XYZ accuracy in the field without the need for GPS or ground control points, according to Position Partners.

“The high quality of the L1/L2 GNSS receiver (BeiDou enabled), coupled with tight integration to Position Partner’s AllDayRTK CORS network, means the end user has all the tools necessary to carry out reliable aerial surveys efficiently and without the need for ground control

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across the coverage area,” said Martin Nix, Position Partners CEO. The partnership will place Position Partners as the exclusive distributor for Australian technology company Klau Geomatics' high-end aerial geopositioning systems, allowing customers to leverage their national support network and CORS service.

Position Parters says that the Klau PPK unit can be integrated onto almost any drone.

MapXplorer's new web-based un|earth:: app makes 30 years of Australian Landsat data available to the public in a browser-based interface — requiring no synthesis to explore the data.

The company says that the ultimate aim of the app is to introduce remote sensing analysis concepts to a wide range of potential users, and proves the viability of delivering low cost, advanced spatial analytics capability to the mass market.

The app's initial release features limited functionality, supporting just simple image manipulation capabilities, presenting users with a series of filters presenting analytical views of the data, with more features to come in future releases.

sssi

News and views from the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute

SSSI Board – 2018 President – Gaby van Wyk President-Elect – Zaffar Mohamed Ghouse NSW Director – Gaby van Wyk (Interim Chair) NT Director – Rob Sarib QLD Director – Lee Hellen SA Director – Franco Rea TAS Director – Paul Digney VIC Director – Richard Syme WA Director – Kerry Smyth ACT Director – Zaffar Mohamed Ghouse Hydrography Commission Director – Richard Cullen YP representative (Observer) – Roshini Sharma Company Secretary – Jonathan Saxon

President’s address

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e recently published a new strategy for SSSI — you can read more about it on our website and Peter Olah has also addressed this in his message. Some of you may recall that under John Trinder, SSSI's leadership published a pretty good, five year strategy in 2015. So what was wrong with that and why now? The 2015 strategy was good and it served the institute well. However, since that strategy many things have changed. We now have a new constitution and new governance structures. Some of our strategic partners have disappeared and we have formed new partnerships that opens up new possibilities. New and improved technologies in our space are opening up new possibilities for our members.

Changes in international relationships offer new challenges that also open up great opportunities.

We simply had to respond.

By now you all know about the Agenda2026 that maps out a strategy for the Australian Geospatial industry.

SSSI plays an important role in this strategy, but we cannot rely on it alone as a strategy for our organisation. Many of the pillars of the strategy are important to us and our members, but they essentially are focused on aspects of the industry that are not central to us. We needed a strategy for SSSI, one that incorporates elements of 2026, but also one that focuses on our own future.

So with all that I want to call on our members. To reach the goals set out in our new strategy, we need more people to get involved.

• We need the young professionals.

Already we are seeing great leadership on many fronts. Roshni and team are doing outstanding work. We need young professionals to follow their lead. There is a lot that needs to be done and young people have the energy and drive to get us there. After all, we are building your future.

• We need the older generation. We need the wisdom and experience of older members. The YP's want and have asked for mentors to come forward and help them on their way. Most of our committees have vacancies and we need to fill those. Is it perhaps time to give back a little?

• We need more women to step up.

We need more leaders like Narelle Underwood and Mary-Ellen Feeney to make a mark and SSSI wants to

Gaby van Wyk

“New and improved technologies in our space are opening up new possibilities for our members.” help you to make that happen. Over a year ago the board took a decision to set targets across the organisation in terms of diversity. We have made some way forward, but we have a long way to go. The males in our industry are in agreement and they welcome more women. We appreciate that it often takes extra effort for women to step forward, because the existing cultural attitudes at home, in the office and in society make this challenging, but SSSI is committed to help you on your way.

A while ago I found myself stuck in discussion about the role of professional organisations such as SSSI. Unfortunately, the discussion centred around "What's in it for me?". Essentially that question is usually asked by individual people, leaders in the industry, who are actually saying: I have already made it to the top, so I don't need others anymore, because no one can make it to the top without others. We are not islands that exist on our own. Together we are strong and we can accomplish more.

"What's in it for me?" is an attitude that isolates. Let's ask - "What's in it for us?".

Please get involved.

Gaby van Wyk www.spatialsource.com.au 37

sssi

SSSI CEO’s column

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n Adelaide earlier this year, the leadership of SSSI came together for two days to outline a vision and a way forward for SSSI towards 2021. They defined a new strategic roadmap for SSSI which encompasses the biggest change program in SSSI history.

It’s an ambitious plan. By 2021, it will position SSSI as one of the best professional membership organisations in Australia. The strategic roadmap is online at: https://sssi.org.au/ getattachment/Knowledge-Hub/CEOs-Message-1/CEOs-Report-June-2018/ SSSI-Strategic-Roadmap-FINALadopted-220518.pdf.

Ambitious, forward-looking, but just another document until it leads to results. This is why the SSSI leadership has since put significant effort towards finalising our Strategic Projects Plan 2018-19. This is the document which takes the big picture and defines how we start to make it real.

It’s where we start building SSSI’s future, but also where our challenges become evident.

A growing membership The only reason for SSSI’s existence is to make our members’ lives, careers and professional relationships, better and more productive.

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Delivering better value for our current and future members – being an active partner, working with them in every stage of their professional life, is at the heart of SSSI’s future. This is our number one focus and where most of our effort will go in the coming year.

During 2018-19 we will undertake several projects to commence the complete rebuild of our member services. We will: • Research our current and prospective memberships, including those not traditionally viewed as part of the sector • Rollout improved member offerings with an initial focus on Young Professionals and Women in Spatial • Improve our current membership structure and how it interacts with the certification program • Commence targeted trials for a robust and attractive certification program across all streams • Deliver targeted programs to maximise young professional membership including better pathways for student membership • Publish a national events calendar.

There is a significant body of work here and some genuine challenges to overcome. And it is just the start of a very big three years of improvement and growth which will positively impact every SSSI member.

“Any successful and influential national body, which represents key professions across the Australian economy, must effectively leverage that influence to garner support and recognition for its members. ” By the end of the 2018-19 financial year, these changes will deliver up-to-date data about current, potential and lapsed members; a strong ongoing program to retain and re-attract members; innovative and valued new members offerings for many members with a clear path for improved member offerings across the entire SSSA membership.

We will also deliver more flexible and up-to-date membership and certification structures with an immediate focus on stronger recruitment and retention of student and young members. Vitally, we will be delivering better “whole of career” pathways across the SSSI membership.

Leading through advocacy and communication Any successful and influential national body, which represents key professions across the Australian economy, must

SSSI sustaining partners

effectively leverage that influence to garner support and recognition for its members.

This comes through well structured, productive and consistent communication and advocacy. SSSI recognises that we must do better in this, which is why it is a major focus for the coming year.

Over the coming year we will: • Design and launch a new Body of Knowledge initiative • Deliver a whole-of-organisation communications plan • Deliver a national public policy platform as the basis for all advocacy efforts • Deliver a national advocacy program with a focus on informing and improving the policy directions of Federal and State Governments.

Our targets here are sky-high. We will become one of the very best member organisations for communications and advocacy outcomes.

By the end of this financial year we will have a modern, respected and well utilised Body of Knowledge, with continuous additions and improvements; the highest standards of internal and external communications, focused on serving our members’ needs and informing community and government about their professional value; and a single, upto-date publication outlining what our members need, what we stand for, and how surveying and spatial sciences can best serve Australia’s needs Importantly, we will be recognised by key decision makers as the “go to” organisation for leadership and ideas about how surveying and spatial sciences can best serve Australia’s needs.

Productive partnerships SSSI doesn’t work in a vacuum. We are part of a huge ecosystem of people and organisations right across the Australian community with a stake in spatial information. Importantly, as the national professional association, we are best placed to bring this ecosystem together for key initiatives in favour of our members, professions, industries and Australia.

To start this process, we will during 2018-19: • Rebuild our Sustaining Partnership program to deliver longer term strength and value to all parties • Actively seek out partnering opportunities which deliver member value.

By the end of June 2019, this will deliver a more flexible and attractive program for a wider range of partners across our entire ecosystem; a less transactional, more relationship-based approach for building long term value;

and better targeted agreements with welldefined projects delivering value to both parties and their members.

A viable and stable SSSI All of this is impossible if SSSI – the business of the Institute, if you will - is not strong and stable enough to make it happen. Good governance and financial strength may not be top of our members’ wish lists, but without them we cannot deliver the things which are.

In the 2018-19 financial year we will: • Review the current governance processes to ensure timely and strategically-focused information for improved decision-making • Start revising our governance and staff structures on a regular basis to ensure relevance and fitness for purpose • Rationalise our internal policy base • Implement a zero-based budget nationally • Deliver a best-in-class suite of technical platforms suitable for a technically savvy membership.

By the end of the financial year, we will have professional, timely and relevant decision making and information at every level of SSSI’s governance and management processes, and a modern staff structure tailored to SSSI’s current needs and capacity.

We will deliver best practice in all aspects of financial governance, ensuring clarity of our financial position for all SSSI leaders and members. Our systems will be modern, secure, up-to-date and userfriendly, promising a reduced administrative workload for volunteer leaders and staff, and better access for members.

This is a tight and ambitious plan of work, with many change projects happening concurrently – in fact, happening now.

This is for the long haul – this is the first of three years of change and growth.

And we must deliver all this change whilst never losing our focus on delivering for our members every day.

To be successful, it will involve all SSSI leaders, committees, commissions and staff, and many SSSI members.

Over the next few months, SSSI President Gaby van Wyk and I will attend meetings of every Region, Commission and Committee to talk about our strategic program of change. We will also conduct webinars on this subject open to all SSSI members. Please come along, ask questions and get involved – together we will make SSSI one of Australia’s best membership organisations.

Commission Chairs Engineering & Mining Surveying Andrew Edwards chair.emsc@sssi.org.au Hydrography Commission Chair Richard Cullen chair.hc@sssi.org.au 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 Kerry Smyth chair.sicc@sssi.org.au Regional Committee Chairs ACT Regional Chair Zaffar Mohamed Ghouse chair.act@sssi.org.au NSW Regional Chair Gaby van Wyk (Interim Chair) chair.nsw@sssi.org.au NT Regional Chair Rob Sarib chair.nt@sssi.org.au QLD Regional Chair Roy Somerville chair.qld@sssi.org.au SA Regional Chair Franco Rea chair.sa@sssi.org.au TAS Regional Chair Paul Digney chair.tas@sssi.org.au VIC Regional Chair Thierry Demathieu chair.vic@sssi.org.au WA Regional Chair Lesley Arnold 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

Peter Olah www.spatialsource.com.au 39

sssi Celebrate your professional networks - register early

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t’s time to renew your membership and review of your professional development. There’s a busy time ahead with all the regional conferences and awards taking centre stage over the next few months. As a participating professional, you have probably nominated an award entry, bashed out a technical paper, registered for a few workshops, dusted off the business case for CPD attendance at a conference and slicked up for the gala dinner. Now seriously give a thought to the small volunteer army across Australia that makes this all possible!

Thank them by registering early.

The SI&C Commission National Committee for 2017-19 working on your behalf.

Kerry Smyth (WA) Chair Shaik Mohamed Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse (ACT) Vice Chair Hanno Klahn (NSW) Georgina Cassar (SA) Andrew Bashfield (Vic) Angus Scown (Qld) Robert Driessen (Tas) Nikolas Kostraby (NSW) Vacancies available are: 1 x (SA), 1 x (WA), 1 x (Tas), 1 x (Vic), 1 x (Qld), 1 x (ACT), 2 x (NT).

The Spatial Information & Cartography Commission is keen to be effective for our members and runs portfolios to focus team effort, including communication, certification, education

and outreach. This allows SICC to directly influence the new advisory and standing committees that SSSI has formed. If you are interested in shaping future direction, we have heaps of opportunity, make a start now. We are particularly excited about driving the newly announced SSSI strategic road map 2018-2021.

News & communications Communication is the biggest challenge ahead, with an optimistic and revitalised membership, the potential reach of our professional networks has grown enormously. We are expanding our social media presence and want to encourage new affiliations and re-connect with lost associates. Join the Friends of SSSI mail list and watch-out for the Women In Spatial and Young Professional Interest Groups.

Our traditional channels of communication are Position Magazine, GeoMessage, SSSI website news feeds and emails. Showcase your work by sending us editorial content.

Certification focus SICC has initiated a sub-committee to activate more strategic thinking and action regarding the future of GISP-AP certification and an updated Body of Knowledge. The Terms of Reference is now available and we are partnering with the Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry Commission to conduct the review.

Education focus Advocacy in education is a broad topic covering the needs of current practitioners and career pathways for future recruits. The national commission believes it should provide commentary on

the courses available at a one-stop-shop, we would like suggestions on how this could be achieved.

Master class focus SICC has a keen focus on reformulating our masterclass framework to create unique offerings in a range of formats.

We are open to ideas on content targeting identified skills and knowledge gaps.

SICC held the master class workshop ‘Asset Management: Planning, Strategy and Implementation’ at Locate18 Adelaide (Monday 9th April 2018) and Sydney 13th to coincide with the visit of URISA Exchange candidate Tripp Corbin from the US.

Advocacy focus SICC can serve as a hub for driving advocacy opportunities and is open to requests for commentary and feedback for national policy that impact our professionals and the wider community in respect to spatial information, products and services.

Events Upcoming regional conferences: SSSI Queensland – Spatial Innovation For Future Generations 23-24 August 2018 SSSI WA – Location Intelligence Conference and Exhibition 19th October 2018 SSSI NSW & ACT – Wollongong 15-16 November 2018 FOSS4G & SotM – Melbourne 20-23 November 2018

News round-up Congratulations to Nicholas Flett (MSSSI) as the recipient of the SSSIWA Travel Grant. Nicholas will use the travel grant to attend the URISA GIS Leadership Academy in Salt Lake City, July 23-27.

The Academy is the only leadership program of its type and features speakers and facilitators from diverse GIS and IT departments across multiple companies and government.

Bookmark SICC webpages The Spatial Information and Cartography Commission welcomes any feedback, queries or suggestions, whether to do with applying for certification, upcoming events or the promotion and encouragement of the spatial industry.

Website: sssi.org.au/about-us/committees/ spatial-information-cartography-commission All communications to chair.sicc@sssi.org.au Kerry Smyth

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SSSI sustaining partners

Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Commission

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SSI is proud to announce that the memberships with the Asian Association on Remote Sensing (AARS) and the International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) have been renewed.

Indeed, Australia is the only developed, western nation that is a member of the AARS Photogrammetry (www.a-a-r-s. org), being represented by SSSI and the Commission on Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry. AARS was established in 1981, and included professional bodies related to photogrammetry and remote sensing from all countries considered part of Asia by the United Nations, including for example Lebanon, Turkey and Israel, and Russia because of its eastern Asian presence. After being an associate member since 1987, Australia became a full member in 1987. As a full member, Australia can have a representative at the two general meetings held in conjunction with the annual Asian Remote Sensing Conference and allows us an opportunity to voice our views and to suggest changes, to vote on location of future conferences.

Furthermore, the membership provides the Australian remote sensing community

with great opportunities. Australia is seen as a trusted source of education and consultants in the field of remote sensing and spatial data analysis. Through SSSI our members can access on a collegiate basis some of the most important and people in the field of remote sensing throughout Asia. Given the growth of remote sensing, spatial- and space-related activities in Asian countries such as China and India, this status gives Australia an important head start in discussing collaborative, education and consulting activities with countries of the region.

Similar to the AARS, the ISPRS (www.isprs.org) is a society of members of national societies/associations of individual countries. While individual membership has recently been introduced in ISPRS, participation in ISPRS is primarily through the national societies/associations of individual countries. ISPRS represents professionals worldwide, who are associated with research, applications and commercial development of equipment and software systems in its fields of interest with a tradition dating back to 1910. Australia has been an Ordinary Member of ISPRS for more than 60 years and has a proud history in participating in ISPRS activities. John Trinder from NSW was president from 2000-2004 and one of nine worldwide honorary members of ISPRS, and Australia hosted the ISPRS congress in Melbourne in 2012 with Cliff Ogleby from Victoria as a member of the ISPRS council and as congress director

from 2008-2012 — these just being two examples. Beside other advantages as an ordinary member, Australia (SSSI) has the right to vote in the general assembly, to host technical commissions and Symposia, and to bid for ISPRS congress. SSSI members are eligible to apply for advertised ISPRS/TIF Travel grants, and SSSI student members are eligible for reduced registration rates at regularly organised ISPRS international workshops, symposia and congresses. ISPRS publishes two scientific journals, The ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing ,and the International Journal of GeoInformation, as well as the regular eBulletin and conference proceedings (the annual and the archives, both freely available on their webpage). Extensive communications are available from leaders of the five technical commissions and the many working groups.

Remote sensing professionals across Australia welcome the new Australian Space Agency Australia’s remote sensing professionals welcome the establishment of an Australian Space Agency on 1 July, 2018.

The Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI) see this as the beginning of a new renaissance in space-borne Earth observation sensors. SSSI members look forward to the certainty and long-term growth of the domestic space industry and we hope that the Australian Space Agency will build further on this capability and capacity in support of our international engagement in Earth observation.

Events The following event ran in Australia with a special focus on remote sensing and photogrammetry in the second quarter of 2018: Rebecca Ilehag from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany presented at the Curtin Spatial Sciences Colloquium about UAV-based multimodal remote sensing to assess the energy demand in urban areas which took place on 08 May 2018 in Perth, WA. If you require any further information about events, please get in touch with chair.rspc@sssi.org.au. www.spatialsource.com.au 41

sssi DriX carving the waves during sea trials.

iXblue deploys new unmanned survey vessel in South Pacific

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n November of this year, iXblue will employ an unmanned survey vessel for a large area hydrographic survey in the South Pacific. The survey forms part of the Pacific Regional Navigation Initiative (PRNI) project which is being project managed by Land Information New Zealand and funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This project will deliver much needed modernised nautical charts for the waters in and around Tonga and will ideally result in much safer navigation for all mariners for many decades to come.

In early 2017, iXblue decided to design and build an unmanned survey vessel that was optimised for offshore hydrographic surveys requiring high resolution multibeam echosounder coverage of the seabed. The concept of using unmanned machines, aircraft and vessels for routine operations has been around for many decades. However, the hydrographic survey industry has been a late adopter of the technology. To our knowledge, unmanned survey vessels (as opposed to Autonomous Underwater Vehicles [AUV]) were used for the first time 3-4 years ago by a Canada-based firm undertaking contract surveys for the US Government. We believe that our use of this technology for an offshore survey will be the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.

The iXblue unmanned vessel has been called ‘DriX’. The DriX design has several key benefits. It has exceptional seakeeping abilities for its size and is able to operate in wind and sea states that a 30 metre or larger vessel could operate in. It is acoustically very quiet at survey speed which optimises data quality. It will comfortably survey at speeds of 10 – 12 knots and will easily maintain these speeds for several days at a time between refueling. Finally, it has a relatively simple

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mechanical layout in order to be reliable and readily maintained in the field.

The DriX design is unique, and unlike any other survey vessel design on the market today. The key requirements demanded a very efficient hull form in order to deliver a high average speed with a small, economical propulsion system.

The hull is nearly 8 metres long but only 80 centimetre wide. This allows for speeds of up to 14 knots from a small four cylinder marine diesel engine and several days of non-stop endurance at survey speeds of 10 knots. The combination of the unique nose section and the Multibeam gondola mounted 2 metres below the waterline, result in a vessel that cuts through and under the waves as opposed to ‘bouncing’ and ‘rolling’ over them as per traditional hull forms. The data quality obtained from the DriX multibeam is as good as we have seen from any vessel installation that we have undertaken in the past and fills us with much confidence that we will soon be in a position to deliver our clients high data quality at higher rates of effort and reduced cost.

The long term plan to operate multiple DriX from a support vessel on a 24/7 basis brings with it a whole host of new challenges. These include the requirement

DriX's gondola payload configured for MBES surveying.

to safely operate and navigate multiple vessels simultaneously and also the requirement to effectively manage data sets that will be much larger than we have had to manage previously. We are working closely with our long term suppliers to resolve these challenges. Kongsberg, QPS, Caris and Valeport are all working closely with the iXblue DriX team to implement a higher degree of automation into the command and control of the vessel navigation and survey systems than exists today. With the current shortage of hydrographic surveyors in our region, it is now more important than ever, that we develop and implement processes and workflows that allow the hydrographer to invest his or her time into activities that value add to the end product. We no longer have the luxury of allowing highly paid and highly skilled hydrographers undertake routine and monotonous activities at sea or ashore.

We have no idea whether the DriX will meet or exceed our expectations.

As is the case with the introduction of any new technology into one‘s business, it is an exciting time for us and the hydrographic survey industry in general. We look forward to the challenge of identifying the problems and shortcomings with the technology and overcoming them with incremental and gradual improvements. We also look forward to seeing how other organisations adopt and implement this technology. When contracted on a large scale, the employment of this technology has the potential to deliver high quality hydrographic surveys many times cheaper than has previously been possible. We are very excited to see where the industry will go in the next ten years and look forward to the ride. ■

DriX viewed from above and below the waves.

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