Position issue 91 October-Nov 2017

October/November 2017 – No. 91

The Australasian magazine of surveying, mapping & geo-information

DIGITAL MINES

On the pathway to mining without miners

Official publication of

inside Mapping the voids When artisanal and modern mining clash

3D aerial mapping Transforming the future

The Big Spend Australia's transport woes

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contents

October/November 2017 No.91 3D aerial technology

page

36

Upgrading a heritage rail line

26

page

Mining automation is here; not everyone is thrilled

16

page

features 14 Q&A with Sylvia Michael Founder of Geoimage and winner of the Qld Spatial Science Professional of the Year 2016, Sylvia Michael chats about remote sensing imagery.

16 COVER STORY: Digital Mines On the pathway to mining without miners.

28 The Big Spend Are big budget transport projects actually improving travel outcomes for citizens?

32 Why location data is the driving force behind smart cities Sustainable development is just a pipe dream without sustainable urban development.

34 Setting the standard in agriculture Geospatial data is now central to farming – open standards will make it go to work for everyone.

20 Mapping the voids in Burkina Faso When artisanal mining and modern mining clash.

22 Australia’s largest water provider drives collaboration tool to prevent roadworks disorder Sydney Water is using a cloud-based scheduling tool to reduce traffic congestion and disruption.

24 The evolution of professional land surveying Surveyors are embracing new technology, but challenges still remain.

26 Heritage in Digital Reality. It’s better than being there.

36 3D mapping to transform the future of work in Australia The use of 3D aerial technology is limited only by your imagination.

regulars 4 7 8 38 40

Upfront, calendar Editorial News New products SSSI

Modernising a heritage-listed rail line is no small feat, and begins with good survey data. www.spatialsource.com.au 3

upfront

Upcoming Events 19-20 & 24-25 October 2017: Pix4D User Workshops; Sydney and Melbourne. https://goo.gl/eNu3e6 23-26 October 2017: GIS-Pro 2017; Jacksonville, FL, USA. http://bit. ly/2fzom2k 23-27 October 2017: GEO Week 2017; Washington DC, USA. http://bit. ly/2f9rIZm 24-26 October 2017: Commercial UAV Expo Americas; Las Vegas, USA. https://www.expouav.com/

DamSite

C

an everything that involves hard data and decision-making be automated? Probably not everything, but things that are otherwise time consuming and subjective certainly should be considered for automation.

Dam site evaluation is certainly one of those tasks. The process of taking a dam from potential to reality can take 10 years or more, and involves a significant desktop study before anyone’s boots even hit the ground. These desktop studies are generally undertaken manually and involve a pre-feasibility evaluation of all available elevation (DTM and DEM), satellite imagery and aerial photos. The manual process is both time consuming and rarely applied using set standards.

Semi-automated techniques, such as composite indexing – overlaying relevant GIS data, such as topography and hydrologic regime, to produce a summed, ranked layer, can speed up the process.

The result is a map of high-graded areas that have suitable social need, appropriate hydrologic regime, and sufficient topographic relief for a dam and reservoir.

However, in the past these studies tended to be adhoc and completed using a variety of inconsistent methods, making them impossible to compare.

Cuan Petheram and colleagues from the CSIRO recognised that the aforementioned techniques are useful for capturing broad-scale considerations that determine dam suitability for a region, but realised that they still can’t model the factors that will directly contribute to the performance of an individual large dam.

Yield and reliability are central to the feasibility equation, but to do that, the precise location of a potential dam needs to be designated first.

4 position October/November 2017

DamSite rapidly analyses potential dam locations to find the most economical solution.

To address the knowledge gap, Dr Petheram and colleagues have created DamSite. DamSite is a program that automates both the identification of all suitable dam locations within a region, and then quickly calculates reservoir dimensions for individual dam sites.

The program uses a series of algorithms that identify and rank potential dam wall locations across a landscape. Rankings are based on calculations of reservoir dimensions to predict yield, and reliability within a landscape. The result is a rigorous and consistently applied model to evaluate individual dam sites for suitability and deliverability. Using the wall locations, a digital elevation model, and hydrologic regime, the yield and reliability can be calculated.

The model was run across 3 million km2 of northern Australia in support of the recent Northern Australia White Paper (Northern rivers and dams: A preliminary assessment of surface water storage potential for northern Australia). More than 2 billion potential dam sites were recognised and assessed.

Petheram notes they have recently made some big improvements since the white paper, including using Landsat imagery to create a raster of river thickness, from which they can then calculate spillway width. Using this information helps them estimate the flood rise for a significant flood event, which is an important consideration in costing a dam. These improvements will also soon be submitted for publication. Those interested in using the DamSite model should contact Cuan Petheram (Cuan.Petheram@csiro.au). ■

24-27 October 2017: 3D Australia Conference 2017; Melbourne, VIC. http://3dgeoinfo2017.com/ 25-27 October 2017: Unmanned Maritime Systems; Washington DC, USA. http://bit.ly/2ycLL0v 26-27 October 2017: 3D GeoInfo Conference; Melbourne, VIC. http://3dgeoinfo2017.com/ 26-27 October 2017: Australian Institute of Building Surveyors; Perth, WA. http://bit.ly/2hfThnY 30 October – 2 November 2017: International Mining and Resources Conference; Melbourne, VIC. https:// imarcmelbourne.com/ 31 October-2 November 2017: Esri Ocean GIS Forum; Redlands, CA, USA. http://www.esri.com/events/ocean 1-2 November 2017: Esri European Petroleum GIS conference; London, UK. http://www.esri.com/events/epug 10 November 2017: Australian Institute of Buildering Surveyors; Hobart, TAS. http://bit.ly/2f8zqCV 15-16 November 2017: Commercial UAV Show; London, UK. http://bit. ly/1GFyY2J 15-18 November 2017: International GIS Congress; Adana, Turkey. http://bit. ly/2w5PU5n 23-25 November 2017: GEODesign + BIM; Amsterdam, Netherlands. http://bit. ly/2w66pi5 27-30 November 2017: FIG Commission 3; Lisbon, Portugal. http:// bit.ly/2jIoBfL 27-30 November 2017: International Navigation Conference; Brighton, UK. http://bit.ly/1yhav5C 2-7 December 2017: 12th Meeting of the International Committee on GNSS; Kyoto, Japan. http://icg12.jp/

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The Australasian magazine of surveying, mapping & geo-information

Publisher Simon Cooper Editor Elizabeth Abbey eabbey@intermedia.com.au National Advertising Manager Jon Tkach jon@intermedia.com.au Graphic Designers Sanja Spuzanic and 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: eabbey@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.

The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publisher.

Supported by

from the editor I

t is my great pleasure to be writing this letter from the editor’s desk. I am a spatial scientist to the core and have an intense appreciation for the value of spatial data and the power its information can convey.

I believe it’s the spatial scientist’s habit of observing the world’s curiosities, accompanied by an intense need to seek answers and explanations that keep the industry moving forward unceasingly. Not just the spatial science industry, but every industry that has come to trust and rely upon it as well.

This issue is all about the march of progress - progress that manifests itself as a punctuated step-change, but also in the form of “two steps forward, one step back.”

Dustin Price takes us through the most transformational changes he’s observed in the modern surveying industry, while Jon Fairall reminds us that in our quest for improvements and advancements, we would be wise to reflect back on our past failures so as not to be doomed to repeat them.

Far from only revealing failures, looking backwards also helps to quantify our victories. Those who have had the great pleasure of a long and illustrious career have the ability to see the magnitude of change by looking backwards. In this issue’s Q&A, Sylvia Michaels gives her account of the advances seen in satellite imagery since the earliest of days as a service only accessible to the most deeply-lined pockets of the mining industry, to one that is open to anyone with an internet connection. She also assures me that remote sensing has a great future ahead of it – if we can manage to exploit it to its fullest potential, which is only limited by our own creativity and curiosity.

Looking forward in the mining industry we also see monumental changes taking place. As the resources sector appears to be entering a period of recovery, the enormous advancements mining has undergone during the lean period have been thrust into the spotlight. Many of the very technologies we discuss in the cover story, Digital Mines, were driven in response to the downturn.

Mining is getting faster, cheaper, safer, and cleaner through the adoption of new technology, and much of this technology has its foundations in geospatial surveying and positioning advancements. But in the race to revolutionise the industry, the unskilled workforce is getting left behind, which feeds the fire of an already intense conflagration of moral objections.

Unfortunately for the current and future victims of spatial advancements, spatial scientists are unlikely to find complacency any time soon – it would be wholly out of character. For them, the earth is full of puzzles, and no puzzle is unworthy of solving.

Elizabeth Abbey Editor eabbey@intermedia.com.au

December/January 2018 – Issue #92

NEXT

ISSUE Features: Computer vision and machine learning, positioning indoors and out, and spatial goes mainstream: gaming, crowdsourcing, and webmaps.

Position is the only independent magazine for spatial sciences, surveying, GIS, government and other mapping professionals to be circulated nationally across both Australia and New Zealand. It covers the acquisition, manipulation and presentation of geo-data in a wide range of industries including agriculture, disaster management, government, smart cities, environmental management and resources.

Published: 7 December 2017 Advertising booking deadline: 10 November Advertising material deadline: 15 November

www.spatialsource.com.au 7

news CRCSI values spatial data at more than $1B by 2022 The Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRCSI) has released a comprehensive report on the monetary value of spatial services to industries across the state of New South

Wales (NSW). The report draws on case studies and desktop research to estimate productivity impacts of spatial information.

Overall, the CRCSI estimates the value of spatial

Sydney’s Light Rail is one of the many case studies the CRCSI examines in their report on the value of spatial information to the industries of NSW.

data to the whole of the state per year be more than $900 million AUD. They expect this number to rise to nearly $1.4 billion AUD per year by 2022 with the additional uptake of technology and enhanced government support. With the additional implementation of government-lead measures, including a digital cadastre and federation of 3D models of the built environment, the value is projected reach $3 billion AUD per year within 20 years.

The value is primarily calculated through

productivity impacts, for example reduction in errors and double-handling, reduction in travel time, reduction in insurance premiums, and reduction in transportation distances.

The industry with the biggest potential gains to make in the adoption of spatial technology was building construction and infrastructure. Specifically, if NSW were to adopt a more methodical approach to BIM implementation and in defining standards for the industry.

Is Australia in for a Spratly-style showdown in Antarctica? three permanent, yearround research stations on Antarctica and one on Macquarie Island.

The Mawson station was established in 1954 and is the longest continuously operating station in Antarctica.

China’s questionable behaviour within Antarctica, according to ASPI, includes undeclared military activities and mineral exploration.

The ASPI report referred to several Chinese documents

China’s activity within the Australian Antarctica Territory has the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) seething. The ASPI has issued a report on the activities and what they believe to be the future direction China intends to take in the Antarctic. These activities, they say, are at odds with Australia’s strategic interests, and possible in breach of international law.

Australia currently maintains and operates

quantifying Antarctica’s mineral and fossil fuel resources, clearly indicating China holds a significant body of research on the topic. While military presence is forbidden by the Antarctica treaty, and mineral exploitation by the Madrid protocol, exploration and scientific research is not, regardless of the objective.

The concern is that the exploitation ban could be overturned in 2048 and China would be ready to pounce.

Irreverent, perhaps, but not illegal.

Australia’s territorial claim to Antarctica is the largest in the world and includes almost 6 million square kilometres.

Historical nautical charts show true extent of reef loss in Florida Researchers at UQ and Colby College have been using historical nautical charts, originally intended for

Nautical chart from the Florida Keys, 1775.

seafaring navigation, to study reef loss in the Florida Keys.

A new US and Australian study – including research from The University of Queensland and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies -compared early British charts to modern coral habitat maps to understand changes to reef environments.

The team obtained nautical charts dating to 1773 from UK Hydrographic Office archives for the study. The charts contain a wealth of

8 position October/November 2017

information in addition to depth, shape, and colour of the shallow water corals, and distinguishes them from other hard surfaces such as rocks.

From these charts, the scientists were able to reconstruct a picture of the reefs of the Florida Keys prior to the large-scale detrimental effects of European settlement and industrialisation. “We found that some reefs had completely disappeared,” Professor John Pandolfi, co-author from the University of Queensland said.

“We found that reef used to

exist in areas that today are not even classified as reef habitat anymore.”

Professor McClenachan said the findings had important conservation implications and pointed to a shifted spatial baseline. The authors said when largescale changes like this were overlooked, scientists could lose sight of past abundance, lowering expectations for conservation and recovery. The study is published in Science Advances (doi: 10.1126/ sciadv.1603155).

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news Great Barrier Reef monitoring is for the drones QUT’s remote sensing and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) experts are partnering with the Australian Institute for Marine Science (AIMS) to test whether small drones, machine learning and specialised hyperspectral cameras can monitor the Great Barrier Reef more quickly, efficiently and in more detail than manned aircraft and satellite surveys.

QUT’s project leader Associate Professor Felipe Gonzalez said the team surveyed three reefs in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park from 60 metres in the air while AIMS divers recorded precise

levels of coral bleaching from under the water.

“By taking readings from the air and verifying them against the AIMS data from below the surface, we are teaching the system how to see and classify bleaching levels,” said Professor Gonzalez an aeronautical engineer from QUT’s Institute for Future Environments and Australian Centre for Robotic Vision.

The images captured give a spatial resolution of about 9 cm which is sufficient to detect individual coral bleaching.

Key to the new aerial system is miniaturised hyperspectral cameras,

cameras capture 270 bands in the visible and near-infrared portions of the spectrum, providing far more detail than the human eye can see and at an ultra-high resolution.

which until recently were so large and expensive only satellites and manned aircraft could carry them. Unlike traditional cameras, these drone-mounted hyperspectral Mini hyperspectral drone-mounted cameras survey the reef.

John Deere invests $300 M in AI and machine learning John Deere said it will invest $305 million to fully acquire Blue River Technology, a leader in applying machine learning to agriculture. Jorge Heraud, co-founder and CEO of Blue River Technology said, “We are using computer vision, robotics, and machine learning to help smart machines detect, identify, and make management decisions about every single plant in the field.”

Blue River has designed and integrated computer

vision and machine learning technology that will enable growers to reduce the use of herbicides by spraying only where weeds are present, optimising the use of inputs in farming – a key objective of precision agriculture.

John May, President, Agricultural Solutions, and Chief Information Officer at Deere, said the investment in Blue River Technology is similar to Deere’s acquisition of NavCom Technology in 1999 that established Deere

as a leader in the use of GPS technology for agriculture

and accelerated machine connectivity and optimisation.

Blue River’s drone-based phenotyping efforts are part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s program to develop cutting-edge remote sensing platforms, complex data analytics tools, and high-throughput plant breeding technology to improve sorghum as a biofuel. Image source: Blue River Technology.

Virtual fencing could save farmers thousands Agersens eShepherd virtual fencing was developed to provide farmers of grazing animals an alternative to temporary fencing. It works

10 position October/November 2017

by enabling farmers to create a virtual fence via an app that communicates with a collar worn by each animal.

Animals are trained to respond to prompts provided by the collar, which can also collect and communicate data to help alert farmers to any health or production issues.

The system involves livestock being fitted with GPS collars which emit sounds and weak electric current that is variable

based on the cow’s location and behaviour. The system is smart enough to know if the cow is moving in the correct direction (where the farmer has indicated they want the cattle), or spooked and unable to respond to the collar’s stimulation.

Farmers have had success using the collars in break feeding, where the animals are rotated around large pastures systematically to improve regrowth. They’ve

also used the devices to keep animals away from sensitive riparian zones.

The eShepherd system is estimated to cost about $5000 to set up and then $60-90 for each collar and ongoing maintenance, this is significantly less than the estimated $5000 per kilometre it costs producers to put up and maintain a standard fence. eShepherd is expected to be commercially available in early 2018.

GeoSmart Asia to join Locate18 in Adelaide Asia-Pacific’s premier geospatial events, GeoSmart Asia and Locate, are joining forces from 9-11 April, 2018 in Adelaide, Australia’s space innovation hub.

This year’s theme is ‘The Art, Science and Business of Geospatial’, and organisers say the conference will bring a sharper focus on technological advancements in the geospatial industry and discuss solution-centric applications with the aim of spurring new business models.

Chair of Locate Conferences Australia Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse says the new format will be in line with the 2026 Spatial Industry Transformation and Growth Agenda (2026Agenda), which aims to ensure the Australian spatial

sector makes the most of growth opportunities.

“GeoSmart Asia has always been a successful platform for both spatial and non-spatial professionals in Asia and Pacific and every year it grows bringing different perspective and new thoughts to the user community,” said Mohamed-

Ghouse. “The collaboration between Locate and Geospatial Media will bring strengths and new insights to their respective delegates.”

CEO Sanjay Kumar’s India-based Geospatial Media runs the annual GeoSmart Asia and Geospatial World Forums. He says the joining of

expertise will promote the use of geospatial technologies for larger societal benefit.

“This strategic collaboration shall enable geospatial industry players from the region, as well as the international arena to get a deeper insight into the prospects, challenges and opportunities that awaits them in Asia Pacific region,” Kumar said.

In April 2017, the Locate Conference partnered with the International Society for Digital Earth to deliver one of the largest ever spatial gatherings in the Australasian region.

The call for papers is now open for GeoSmart Asia 2018 + Locate18. Go to http://geosmartasia.org before 14 December to submit an abstract.

www.spatialsource.com.au 11

news “No thanks” the most common response for a driverless ride A survey of more than 1500 people in the US and Germany found that 55 percent of respondents will not consider riding in a fully

autonomous vehicle, while 71 percent may consider riding in a partially autonomous vehicle. Consumer and social acceptance is a key driver in autonomous vehicle adoption.

Concerns around technology failures and security are key reasons why many consumers

are cautious about fully autonomous vehicles. “Fear of autonomous vehicles getting confused by unexpected situations, safety concerns around equipment and system failures and vehicle and system security are top concerns around using fully autonomous vehicles,” explains Mike Ramsey, research director at Gartner.

The survey found that consumers who currently embrace on-demand car services are more likely to ride in and purchase partially and fully autonomous vehicles. “This signifies that these more evolved users of transportation methods are more open toward the concept of autonomous cars,” said Mr. Ramsey.

Motorists triumph when government and utilities synergise Recurring roadworks that frustrate motorists and ratepayers will be slashed with the launch of a groundbreaking collaboration called iWORCS. Developed in collaboration by NSW Streets Opening Coordination

Council (SOCC), Sydney Water, local councils, and Esri Australia, it is estimated that iWORCS could save hundreds of thousands of dollars every year as councils and utilities harmonise their work schedules.

Australian Defence signs $100 million deal for high-res satellite imagery True to its word, the Australian government has started ploughing money into its surveillance capabilities with a new $83 million USD A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket carrying the WorldView-4 spacecraft lifts off.

($104 AUD) contract with DigitalGlobe. The agreement will give the Department of Defence (DoD) access to all of DigitalGlobe’s satellite imagery, which spans 16 years, through a Direct Access Program (DAP) contract.

DigitalGlobe currently provides highresolution imagery

to Australia via SecureWatch, a cloud-based portal to access DigitalGlobe’s satellite constellation. Since the announcement of the new satellite imagery budget in June of this year, speculation was rife that either DigitalGlobe or Airbus would provide the service. The four-year contract, beginning in January 2018, will allow the Australian government to access the commercial satellite imaging constellation

to support its objectives in defence, border protection, and humanitarian missions.

As a DAP partner, the DoD will be able to directly task and download imagery in real-time to its ground station from all five DigitalGlobe satellites— including WorldView-4, launched in November 2016, and WorldView-3, launched in August 2014, which are the world’s two highest-resolution commercial satellites.

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

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Q&A with Sylvia Michael

Looking back on 30 years of remote sensing: Q&A with Sylvia Michael Sylvia Michael is the Geospatial Processing and Technical Solutions Manager at Geoimage. She was honoured at last year’s Queensland Spatial Excellence Awards as the professional of the year for 2016 – a title well-earned according to her colleagues. Professor Stuart Phinn of the University of Queensland has Sylvia Michael at the 2016 Qld Spatial Excellence Awards worked with Sylvia since 1990 and said, “A large number of us have successful, agencies, institutions and careers because of the work she has supported. Without this input Australia’s Earth Observation capability would not be where it is today”.

With a background in geology, Sylvia has a long history with satellite imagery. Amongst the longest, actually. She is considered one of the earliest adopters of image processing technologies for mineral exploration, and she still has the passion that drove her nearly 30 years ago to co-found Geoimage.

She’s a self-described scientist at heart, who, according to the GM of Geoimage, Mark Edwards, “quite literally lives, eats and breathes satellite imagery remote sensing solutions.”

Sylvia, or Syl as all of her colleagues refer to her, spoke with Position magazine about the history of Landsat and the evolution of satellite imagery into a ubiquitous product with seemingly limitless applications.

You got into remote sensing before it was even a thing. How? I was working for eleven years with the exploration arm of MIM Holdings [Mount Isa Mines]. In the early 80s, all the major exploration companies got into image processing and remote sensing. They were pretty much the only commercial groups that could afford to get into that space due to the hardware, software, and data costs. Even though we’re talking about a Landsat scene, which is freely downloadable now, we’re talking about $5,000 in those days, which was significant expense. The company invested in a hardware/software system to process Landsat imagery, and that’s when I got involved with that particular science. At that time, there really wasn’t

14 position October/November 2017

a lot of satellite imagery around to play with, so we also used to do things like grid airborne magnetics and radiometrics, and stitch grids. I like to tell people I grew up with remote sensing, or at least remote sensing grew up with me.

How has the mining industry traditionally used remote sensing?

There are certain satellite-borne sensors that collect images in the shortwave infrared, which is very useful for finding alteration minerals at surface. If you get certain alteration minerals at the surface, it could be indicative of ore bodies.

These days we can do a lot of the processing and analysis of satellite imagery at great distances from where the prospect is. I call it “objective analysis”

because of the fact that we keep our hands away from the end users on the ground.

We only use the data that we collect over the area that they’re interested in, and we just extract as much information as we can out of that dataset set without having a priori ground knowledge.

What are some of the most transformative changes you’ve seen in the business?

What I find the most exciting, in an exploration space, is the breadth of choice that we have, both in terms of spatial resolution and also the spectral characteristics. Up until about 18 months ago, the best you could get was 30 m resolution per pixel. With that resolution, you don’t necessarily pick up smaller areas that potentially have the mineral

assemblages that you’re trying to find.

Today there is much higher resolution, and as a result we have much better discrimination on the ground, whether you’re doing geological mapping or you’re trying to find these mineral assemblages.

The other advance I feel is very important is not just how the technology has progressed, but that the use of the imagery has become so prolific. Initially, the mineral exploration industry would have been one of the great users of it,

but now there are more and more people using, and therefore more and more people writing about it and showing us what they can do with it. It’s become part of everything everyone does, and certainly in a science industry, like agriculture or oil and gas. The lowered cost of the data now means that nearly everyone has access. I don’t think there is any industry these days that could not benefit and doesn’t benefit from satellite imagery. So that, I think, is a great advance.

Sunday Mail, 1988. Remote sensing was considered “space-age” and “an arcane art”.

Have you seen any use of the imagery that has surprised or impressed you?

it seems to me that we [Australia] are amazing in that space.

Do you think the full potential of remote sensing has been realised by all industries?

It always impresses me!

I love looking at imagery, and I love seeing what you can learn from it. But I would have to say it’s the agricultural industry that impresses me most. I find it mind-blowing what they use it for, particularly here in Australia. I’m getting more involved with it, and

I think the science in the spectral characteristics of imagery is not utilised as much as it could be. I think some industries with less of a science foundation have a tendency to use remote sensing imagery simply as a visual aid where I believe it could be used for much more. ■

ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA #Locate18

THEME: THE ART, SCIENCE AND BUSINESS OF GEOSPATIAL

SAVE THE DATE 9-11 APRIL 2018

ORGANISERS

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cover story

DIGITAL MINES On the pathway to mining without miners ELIZABETH ABBEY

T

he age of the digital mines is here, Australia. They’re neither a futuristic fantasy, nor a frightening iron bot nightmare (thinking back to 1989 and Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive).

Australian mining giants took the lead a decade ago to research and develop technology which has now secured their position as world leaders in the race to mine without miners.

“Digital mines” is a term used to describe highly wired, intensely tracked, and heavily automated mining operations.

The benefits of the digital mine are far-reaching for places like Australia’s remote and climatically extreme iron ore deposits, where the road to full automation is well underway.

The evolution of the modern mine is the result of a volatile market and a focus on longer asset lifecycle coupled

16 position October/November 2017

with the continued triumph of capital over labour. Virtually all the notable innovations developed in the last decade were designed to reduce or eliminate human presence at the mine site. This has the obvious advantage of improved safety, but automation of systems has also been shown to improve efficiency and thereby the bottom line.

Autonomous haulage systems reduce fuel consumption and extend tyre life, and autonomous train loading and transportation can run products straight to port. Automated underground mining systems improve accuracy and allow continuous longwall mining and haulage operations, and automated drilling increases efficiency. Software can autonomously interpret data and make changes to the parameters of processes or machinery to improve results on the fly.

The conversion to automation requires high-precision location data and monitoring. Not only is every individual haulage unit fitted with GPS or GNSS, but so is every other interacting vehicle.

LiDAR is used for collision prevention and drones monitor road conditions and maintenance issues. All of this hinges on location data being real-time, highly accurate, and dependable.

The financial benefits are reaped by reducing shift changes and operator fatigue, minimising operating costs, increasing productivity, optimising plant and equipment use, and improving safety for workers. However, the increased efficiency has shifted the needs of mines and created operations that required a smaller labour force.

As a result, automation is bad news for unskilled labour and those performing

tasks that are historically dangerous or time consuming.

Rio Tinto launched their Mine of the Future in 2008, what former CEO Sam Walsh described in an interview with Business Spectator as “all the things that will actually give the quantum leap in performance and productivity.” With a central hub in Perth, 69 autonomous haulage trucks are remotely operated 1200 km away in the Pilbara. But these enhancements don’t come quickly or cheaply. The operation is supported through university partnerships, including a $21 M deal with the University of Sydney for the development of mine automation technology, and a $10 M deal with Curtin University for materials sensing technology for applications such as ore grading and waste detection.

Walsh also offered insight into looking outside the traditionally obstinate mining sector for inspiration.

“We’re looking at aerospace. We’re looking at oil and gas. We’re looking at some parts of manufacturing.” He continued, “We’re even looking at agriculture. You know, technology for sorting millions of items an hour. It’s going to come from agriculture, food products.

It’s not going to come from mining.”

And when it comes to bringing it all together, Walsh noted that the toughest

Seven of Rio Tinto’s copper and coal operations are monitored remotely through their Processing Excellence Centre (PEC) in Brisbane. Image: Rio Tinto

The evolution of the modern mine is the result of a volatile market and a focus on longer asset lifecycle coupled with the continued triumph of capital over labour.

part wasn’t in the lab or behind the workstation developing the technology, but rather in the boardroom. “It’s not the idea, it’s the actual implementation.”

The onus is on management to overcome their own bias for historical ways to bring about change.

Change also needs to come in the way that we prepare mining engineers before they even get to the workplace. Dr Mehmet Kizil is an associate professor at the University of Queensland School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering. His

Autonomous haulage trucks are fitted with high-precision GPS, obstacle detection, and a wireless network system. Image credit: Rio Tinto and Christian Sprogoe Photography.

www.spatialsource.com.au 17

cover story

Image courtesy of Rio Tinto.

research students work on a broad range of projects that feed directly into mining optimisation, and he’s keen to introduce mine automation and data analytics into their mining curriculum. Dr Kizil says updating the curriculum is an ongoing agenda item at UQ, but admits regretfully, it’s a lengthy process. “Change is slow," he says. "To implement something you have to start the conversation a year ago.”

they acquire, which Dr Kizil refers to as “cyber garbage”. Not that the data are meaningless, but without evaluation and analysis it can’t be converted into the enhancements that probably drove the initial business decision to adopt real-time data acquisition in the first place.

Not surprisingly, mining automation has been met with a fair amount of disapproval. Adopters of automation have

Adopters of automation have been heavily criticised for the resultant reduction in jobs, which may in itself be a false paradigm.

Beyond the educational hurdles, Dr Kizil sees Big Data, the constant flood of bits and bytes that comes with many sensors that might be attached to a single vehicle, as the single biggest challenge to tackle.

“Our industry is behind in analysing this data, Dr Kizil says. "We have to learn how to store and analyse and convert these data into useful information, KPIs and knowledge. We can produce data in real time, but we can’t analyse it in real time – for that we need machine learning.”

Many mining companies don’t have the capacity to analyse the real-time data

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been heavily criticised for the resultant reduction in jobs, which may in itself be a false paradigm. True, the number of haul truck drivers and ore graders has been reduced, but the need for remote operators and maintenance personnel has increased. And under a lower-cost environment, mines can continue to be operational for longer and with lower quality ore.

In an address at a business leadership gathering earlier this year, Mike Henry of BHP Minerals Australia described the move to automation as one borne out of necessity.

“Without advancements like these that keep us competitive, the losses in investment and jobs would be much greater,” Henry explains.

Intentional or not, many of the technological improvements that have led to a smaller workforce have also reduced the environmental impact of mines, such as reduced fuel consumption. They’ve also been successful in reducing the frequency and severity of hazards faced by mine workers. When Bingham Canyon experienced one of the largest landslides every recorded, no loss of life occurred due in no small part to the use of radar, prisms and real-time geotechnical sensors that gave workers enough warning to evacuate. Dangerously unstable areas were then cleared using remotely control excavators.

The migration of the mining industry to automation will drive continued enhancements and improvements in positioning and location data. Adopters will also have to tackle new challenges to digital security and network reliability.

While automation remains an expensive undertaking, primarily reserved for majors with deeply-lined pockets, manual mining operations will eventually join the ranks of the pit ponies and canaries as the tide of technology floods the industry without ebb. ■

MicroSurvey is registered in the U.S. Patent and TrademarkOffice

by MicroSurvey Software Inc. MicroSurvey is part of Hexagon.

The robotic cavity scanner is deployed down the drill hole to survey the size of the void.

The scanner will talk to the computer & create point cloud georeferenced data, which will then be plotted to the existing mine map.

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Mapping the voids in

BURKINA FASO Artisanal mining can create dangerous networks of underground rabbit warrens.

Mapping these voids is critical for safe operations and effective ore extraction.

JULIA REYNOLDS

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hroughout much of Africa, artisanal mining is a major contributor to mineral exports and provides an important source of income to local communities. These local community mining activities have produced significant output of gold, diamonds, tin, tantalum, and gemstones throughout many regions of Equatorial Africa and beyond.

These artisanal operations, usually undertaken by self-taught local community miners, range from surface activities, such as shallow surface pitting or gold and mineral panning, to more organised efforts that go much deeper.

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Occasionally, even shaft sinking and underground excavation down through the surficial oxidised zone and into the hard rock below is observed.

The depths and extent to which the artisanal miners have excavated frequently comes as a surprise to the modern mining operators, who tend to mine at greater depths than artisanal workings. Occasionally these modern and artisinal workings intersect, creating dangerous instability and risk of flooding.

One such instance befell Roxgold, a Toronto-based Canadian mining company, who commissioned a modern gold mining

operation on the Hounde Greenstone Belt in south-western Burkina Faso.

The area had been extensively mined by local operations, which penetrated into the underlying hard rock that was being targeted. As Roxgold’s operations progressed, the upper production level of the new mine began breaking through into old artisanal workings 40-45 m below the surface pitting and shafts.

Roxgold deployed a cavity monitoring scanner (CMS) down surface drill holes and artisinal shafts to investigate the extent of the subsurface voids. They found that the artisanal mining was generally

following narrow, high grade veins, leaving relatively narrow partly open voids. Many of these earlier workings were either mud- or water-filled, and one of the questions which needed to be resolved by laser scanning was how interconnected these voids were.

Most of the shafts were unlined, and only where they were free of mud and Crews line up the borehole cavity scanner and its accessories, such as cable, stack of rods, and the central unit (yellow box).

debris could they be laser scanned. Due to its size and technical limitations, the CMS was incapable of providing the necessary imagery of the narrow voids intersected by surface and underground drill holes.

To assess the full extent of the offending artisanal mine, Austech’s CALS 3D down-hole laser scanner and ancillary equipment was air-freighted from Melbourne to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, and road transported to the mine site. The 50 mm diameter laser scanner can be lowered down most exploration sized surface drill holes and can be pushed up underground holes using hinged carbon-fibre rods.

The 3d imagery provided by the scanner revealed the artisanal workings

3D renderings of the voids are visualised using Renishaw Cavity Profiler software.

had penetrated into the high-grade ore within the crown pillar of the modern mine and were at risk of allowing surface runoff to enter. By using Austech’s more agile laser scanner, Roxgold was able to adapt their operational program quickly to account for the unexpected challenges introduced by the artisanal mine in order to safely extract the high-grade ore.

Julia Reynolds is the General Manger of Austech Surveying and Mapping Pty Ltd. ■

NSW geoscience at your fingertips

minview.geoscience.nsw.gov.au

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Australia’s largest water provider drives collaboration tool to prevent roadworks disorder Discover how Sydney Water is using a cloud-based scheduling tool to reduce traffic congestion by ensuring road opening and resurfacing is minimised.

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ausing angst and frustration for Sydney commuters and ratepayers, poorly planned underground maintenance projects can result in unnecessary traffic congestion as separate maintenance works dig up the same location multiple times within weeks or months.

With Sydney Water citing an annual water main renewal program of over $50 million in works, there is a need for better collaboration to get New South Wales (NSW) councils, utilities and agencies working smarter to plan and share proposed works and coordinate costs, resources and schedules.

Sydney Water Australia’s largest water and wastewater service provider, Sydney Water delivers water, wastewater and some recycled water services to around 5 million people across Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Illawara region, an area

“Too often when utilities and councils work independently, projects aren’t aligned, causing re-work, customer frustration and waste” Stuart McDonald, Wastewater & Stormwater Team Leader, Sydney Water.

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spanning more than twelve thousand square kilometres.

The Sydney Water network is made up of 21,000 kilometres of water mains, 24,500 kilometres in sewer mains and 450 kilometres of stormwater channels and pipes.

Sydney Water identified the need to take a new approach to planned works across the region, using unprecedented technology.

The Challenge Currently, councils provide their planned works in an excel or PDF format which makes it hard to overlay Sydney Water’s planned works and requires significant resources to manually check each location for opportunities. Utilities also only share their planned works as they become state significant projects such as the CBD Light Rail or North West Rail Link.

In some situations, roads are resurfaced before the renewal of assets can be identified or planned for construction. Sydney Water felt that there had to be a better way to 'cut to the chase' and find opportunities to collaborate with other infrastructure providers.

Specifically, they required: • A shared tool for capital works management among councils, utilities and agencies to save time, cuts costs and reduce inconvenience to the community and staff.

• A solution to prevent unnecessary repeat roadworks, underground maintenance or repairs made in the same location.

• A central platform of information to visualise planned works across multiple organisations in real-time.

The Solution To achieve a large-scale adaption of a capital works tool, Sydney Water approached NSW Streets Opening Coordination Council (SOCC), a voluntary association of utilities dedicated to achieving cooperative and efficient practices associated with street services, to champion a ground-breaking intelligent mapping platform.

Sharing Sydney Water’s vision, SOCC coordinated the development of iWORCS™, a collective platform to inform and manage capital works, using Esri Australia’s SmarterWX platform.

A pilot online platform was tested.

From June 2015 to September 2016, Sydney Water and nine Sydney councils uploaded their work programs to create a central live display of planned works.

During this period, several opportunities were identified and savings were recorded through the sharing of the cost of road surfacing and better timing of works. The current iWORCS™ collaboration tool was then custom built in January – February 2017, delivered through a Software as a Service (SaaS) scalable cloud platform powered by SmarterWX. Councils, utilities and agencies utilise iWORCS™ using several simple steps: • Each organisation manages their capital works by uploading their project data into iWORCS™.

• Data is published within the application and instantly becomes viewable by all participating organisations.

• Users can upload data and set exclusion zones - areas where projects

Image courtesy of Sydney Water

“Using iWORCS™ we forecast savings of up to $1 million in the next two years, and with more than 50 NSW councils, utilities and agencies expected to join, the money saved will increase significantly.”

Stuart McDonald, Wastewater & Stormwater Team Leader, Sydney Water. cannot occur during a certain period, for example during public events such as a fun run, parade, or community festival.

• The system intuitively identifies works programs occupying the same space and time range as other scheduled projects.

• The system identifies scheduled conflicts and notifies all relevant project owners via an alert, allowing for smoother communication and collaboration between stakeholders.

The Innovation iWORCS™ provides a central record of planned works to assist in the future planning, scheduling, and coordination of activities between participating organisations. Its purpose is to improve collaboration and to minimise the cost and disruption of roadworks, while addressing community concerns over multiple excavations of a road by different project teams.

In a typical scenario for Sydney Water, such as replacing a water main, iWORCS™ may prevent situations where previously large costs were spent to excavate and reinstate a road, soon after the road had been resurfaced for maintenance. It can also highlight design conflicts of other planned underground works early in the planning process leading to cost savings.

The Outcomes iWORCS™ presents an opportunity to adopt a best practice approach to capital works management – which puts community stakeholders first.

Key outcomes from the platform include: • Better co-ordination between underground utility works, avoiding damage to other underground services.

• Minimised impacts of underground utility works on both natural and built environments.

• Minimised interference to traffic and pedestrian flow caused by road openings for the installation, operation and maintenance of utility services.

• Reduced disruption to local communities.

• Reduced duplication of remediation efforts.

• Reduced costs of roadworks.

• Minimised disruption to road users.

• Better quality roads.

• Reduced impact of roadworks on the lifecycle of the road network.

Stakeholders from across New South Wales that have already joined the collaborative platform include: • SOCC • Sydney Water • Roads and Maritime Services • City of Sydney • Wollongong City Council • Lane Cove Council

• • • • •

Jemena Gas Randwick City Council Georges River Council Canterbury-Bankstown Council Northern Beaches Council

“For current footpath improvement work on Bourke Street, Surry Hills, iWORCS™ has delivered immediate benefits for the community by improving coordination and avoiding the cost and disruption of any unnecessary duplicated work,” Clover Moore, Lord Mayor, City of Sydney.

For more information on how to apply SmarterWX GIS technology in your business visit www.esriaustralia.com.au. ■ Information provided by Esri Australia www.spatialsource.com.au 23

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The Evolution of Professional Land Surveying DUSTIN PRICE

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or any major construction project, the land survey provides a foundation that can go a long way toward determining the eventual success or failure of the project. For one, no project can actually begin until the land survey has been completed. This means that a survey that takes too long could end up being a major bottleneck that causes delays in the project strategy. At the same time, these surveys must be approached with a very high level of detail and accuracy. Otherwise, the project will start off on a shaky foundation, which could lead to expensive mistakes and time-consuming rework later on in the project.

In order to meet the seemingly conflicting priorities of speed and accuracy, today's construction project leaders need to look to new land surveying technologies, which can help deliver results that land surveyors of the past have only dreamed of. Luckily, there are several new technologies on the scene today that are up to the task.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will become increasingly important Perhaps no new technology in the past few decades has had as big an effect on the world of professional land surveying as the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

Commonly known as drones, these machines have grown increasingly affordable in recent years, so it’s no surprise to see that they’re beginning to be adopted in a variety of new industry settings. Professional land surveying is one area where UAVs seem poised to make a particularly big splash.

The thing that makes UAVs such a good fit for professional land surveying is that they can provide that unique blend

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of speed and accuracy that today's construction project managers so desperately need. Today's UAVs move quickly, covering large distances in relatively short periods of time. Unlike traditional terrestrial surveying teams (which must move from place Dustin Price to place, setting up and breaking down equipment as they go) UAVs can capture images of the terrain below them without stopping.

Better battery lives are also helping individual UAVs stay in the air for longer amounts of time, which also helps to ensure a streamlined scanning process.

UAVs also have another significant advantage over traditional land surveying teams: they are less affected by the conditions on the ground below them. Difficult terrain can create real problems for terrestrial surveying teams, slowing them down and making it more difficult for them to gather complete data. Since UAVs travel over the ground as the crow flies, they are able to cover even the most difficult terrain with the same level of speed they always provide.

With all the benefits they can offer, expect to see UAVs play an increasingly important role in the land surveying industry of the future.

3D laser scanning will make data available in real time 3D laser scanning, commonly known as LiDAR, has been used to capture valuable surveying data for some time now. By using scanners to release millions of laser points at the feature being scanned, and then tracking the flight path of those laser points as they return to the scanners, land surveyors can form a point cloud that shows a very detailed, accurate representation of the feature in question.

This point cloud can then be used to support the creation of 3D models or other vital project documentation.

Where things start to get really interesting is when laser scanning starts to provide access to point cloud data in real time. Some LiDAR systems already have this level of speed, and we can expect to see it become more commonplace going into the future.

The implications of this development are huge. As noted previously, preventing delays is one of a project manager’s main concerns in the land surveying process. Simply put, you can’t get any faster than real-time data access. This means that organizations will be able to take advantage of 3D models without having to worry that creating such a model would be a timeconsuming effort. As a result, 3D models are likely to become a standard part of the land surveying process.

With streamlined access to 3D models of the project site, administrators will be able to make confident, informed decisions to support their project plan. These decisions will, in turn, support better results throughout the entire project.

Project owners will need to find a way to address exponential data growth So-called "Big Data" is one of the most important business concepts of our time, creating both challenges and opportunities across industries. The land surveying space is certainly no exception to this rule. So many of the beneficial technologies that will emerge in years to come (including the ones discussed in this article) are beneficial precisely because they create more data. More data equals a more detailed survey, which in turn leads to a better project plan.

At the same time, all this additional data can place added strain on IT systems that may not have been built with such a large volume of data in mind. Building a new data storage infrastructure from scratch would likely be prohibitively expensive, not to mention timeconsuming. In order to keep up with the waves of data new surveying technologies are capturing, many organizations are turning to cloud-based storage.

Cloud-based storage is an ideal fit to meet the demands of exponential data growth because it empowers organizations to scale their data storage capacity up or down as their needs change. This means that the organization won't have to overpay now just to build

Drones have taken off in the surveying industry.

to the people who need it to do their jobs.

With the cloud, workers can pull data from a centralized location no matter where they happen to be or what devices they are using.

Final thoughts

a data center large enough to support all the data that they might eventually need to store. Instead, organizations will work with a cloud service provider, knowing that the data capacity they need will always be available when they need it.

Cloud storage can also support the goal of making sure that data is stored securely, while also being readily available

SPECIALISTS IN PORTABLE MAPPING SYSTEMS

As you explore the new technologies discussed in this article, it's important to remember that experience counts. Since these technologies are so new, not all surveying providers have deep experience using them. Ensuring that you work with one of the more experienced surveyors is the best way to ensure you get the most value out of these new solutions.

Dustin Price is a licensed land surveyor and the Operations Manager at Landpoint. ■

CONTACT Erron 0447 440 234 Max 0428 501 887

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Heritage in Digital Reality.

It’s better than being there.

By integrating survey data acquired from a variety of instruments, a Queensland firm has provided its client with high precision design criteria in a format the client can literally see, not just imagine.

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otton and grain growers on Queensland’s Darling Downs rely on the rail line through Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley to transport their produce to the Port of Brisbane.

Many tunnels on the line are heritage listed, having been built in the 1860s.

With produce containers increasing in size, the old rail tunnels will soon be too small. Worse still, along each tunnel the width varies, roof heights are inconsistent, and walls and roofs have irregular projections.

South East Queensland based survey and planning firm Bennett + Bennett were engaged for a high precision survey of eleven tunnels up to 540m long, with a view to the tunnels being preserved but having their floors lowered and the track realigned - to provide the necessary freight clearance.

The rail line is busy every day with passengers, coal freight and agricultural

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products. To miminise disruptions, Bennett + Bennett utilised and integrated laser scanning and conventional survey; they formed an eight-person specialist survey team to capture all the necessary data, while only having full access to the rail corridor during one 48-hour track closure.

Bennett + Bennett exclusively uses Leica laser scanning equipment, and sources its equipment and support services from C.R.Kennedy - the national distributor for Leica Geosystems products in Australia.

The team used total stations to pick up ground surface topography, underground services, Queensland Rail’s reference markers and other features outside the scope of 3D laser scanning.

During the 48-hour track closure, various engineers, project managers and geotechnical and heritage consultants were also working in the tunnels, so

flexibility was essential when setting up for point cloud data acquisition. For this reason, mobile laser scanning from a rail mounted trolley would have been impractical. Scanning the irregular terrain outside the tunnels would have been difficult too.

Leica P40 scanning the portal of Tunnel 6.

Topographical surfaces and tri-meshes were generated from pointcloud.

Tunnel 8 side port with Leica P40 scanning inside the tunnel.

Precision tri-mesh of Tunnel 8.

Instead, the survey team used Leica P20 and P40 ScanStations to acquire the point cloud data from 250 locations, concentrating on features such as the tunnel approaches, portals and interiors and the tracks themselves. C.R.Kennedy made a P40 ScanStation available for hire to the survey team at short notice. It proved so efficient that the team ended up buying it. Data was recorded on a grid smaller than 5mm, and more than 100GB of data was acquired for each tunnel.

To provide the client with a realistic colour visualisation of the data, Bennett + Bennett also took 360 degree panoramic photographs at each control point. This required artificial lighting inside the tunnels. The project area

was also captured on video for quality assurance purposes.

The raw scan data and panoramic images were then imported into Leica Cyclone 9.1 software for processing and registration to survey control. Features were then extracted from the point clouds to form a detail survey, while precision 3D digital meshes were created using the 3DReshaper program. Rail track designers will later use a digital model of the new trains to ensure there’s sufficient clearance to the features defined by the mesh.

TruView files were also generated from Cyclone 9.1 and were uploaded to Leica’s TruView Global software. This has allowed the project to come to life

Artificial lighting improved image quality inside the Dark tunnels. Scan data hosted online via Leica TruView Global panoramic pointcloud viewer.

C.R.Kennedy made a P40 ScanStation available for hire to the survey team at short notice. It proved so efficient that the team ended up buying it.

Data was recorded on a grid smaller than 5mm, and more than 100GB of data was acquired for each tunnel. in dimensionally correct photorealistic digital reality and has enabled users to view the project, pan, zoom, measure and markup.

Data acquisition was completed within the 48-hour track closure; no further site visits were required, and Bennett + Bennett delivered their client’s high quality design requirements within two weeks of completing the field work.

A sample of Bennett + Bennett’s digital reality of the tunnels can be seen in a 2 minute video at http://bennettandbennett.com.au/ laserscanning-blog/hxgn-live-2017. ■ Information provided by C.R.Kennedy www.spatialsource.com.au 27

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The Big Spend Australia’s state and federal governments are spending big money on transportation, but are these projects actually improving travel outcomes for citizens and businesses?

JON FAIRALL

A

ustralia spends an enormous amount on infrastructure. In May, the Federal Treasurer, Scott Morrison, announced the most ambitious spending program in a generation.

His budget provides $20 billion in capital spending.

The most high-profile commitment will be a $5.3 billion investment in a new airport at Badgerys Creek, west of the Sydney CBD. The government wants the new airport operating by 2026.

The government also wants to build an inland freight line from Melbourne to Brisbane. $8.4 billion will be provided to the Australian Rail Track Corporation for the line.

Road spending dominates state budgets. New South Wales alone will spend $20 billion, mainly on new roads.

Nationally, over the next four years, state and federal governments have committed a massive $73.3 billion. It’s about four per cent of the national budget.

With such large amounts of money in play, one might suppose hard, evidencebased policy and planning would be the norm. At the very least, one would

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suppose that roads and railways are being built in the places where they are needed and that there would be a clear methodology for evaluating and comparing competing projects.

On the surface, at least, information infrastructures exist that are tailor-made for the task. At both state and federal level, bureaucrats in planning and infrastructure departments enjoy the fruits of years of development of spatial, statistical and financial analysis packages.

Or consider the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network.

“AURIN is designed”, says its website, “to enable planners and researchers to make informed decisions about future infrastructure and urban environments based on realistic scenarios and evidencebased analysis”.

It was established in June 2010, by the Federal government as part of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. Today, AURIN has grown to cover more than 70 institutions including many universities.

More than 500 people from the research, policy and practice communities work

on its projects. More than 100 people are involved in AURIN committees and expert groups.

They have access to more than 1600 datasets from over 60 different data sources. AURIN offers a suite of tools covering spatial and statistical modelling, planning and visualisation for interrogating those data sets.

Clearly, information infrastructures such as AURIN derive much of their power from the fact that they can model every conceivable impact of a new road, railway or building. In contrast, some engineering consultancies run specialpurpose modeling services that may not be as comprehensive, but claim more accuracy because of their tighter focus.

For instance, Veitch Lister Consulting is a transport engineering consultant with a specialty in forecasting the traffic density on un-built roads. The company has created the Zenith transport model for this purpose. It claims to have made accurate assessments of future traffic volumes even when governments relied on overly optimist forecasts from project proponents.

However, the evidence seems to be that the investment in time, energy and money in these information systems is not having the desired result. Billion-dollar projects that have run off the rails, or at least, have had unintended consequences, are a dime a dozen.

Consider the 4.8 km Clem Jones Tunnel which runs under the Brisbane River between Woolloongabba and Bowen Hills.

The $3.2 billion tunnel was proposed in 2001 by Lord Mayor Jim Soorley and enthusiastically endorsed by Premier Campbell Newman. It opened in 2010.

Sydney’s current Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, has argued that the same fate will befall the Westconnex Motorway.

Initiated by then Prime Minister Tony Abbot, the project is currently the flagship of the state government’s infrastructure program. It is a $16.5 billion behemoth that will wend its way across the inner suburbs of the city.

What’s going on? Why is the value of evidence not self-evident?

“Australia is crying out for a more rigorous, evidence-based approach to building infrastructure, that the

The real problem with shrouding infrastructure spending in secrecy is not that it is an affront to democratic principles, but that it protects decision-makers from competing ideas.

Motorists stayed away in droves. By 2011, the owners were bankrupt.

The Cross-City Tunnel in Sydney is even worse. Introduced with much fanfare by the then transport minister, Carl Scully, its first private operator lasted less than two years. Forecasters predicted that 90,000 vehicles a day would use the tunnel. But the NSW Auditor General reported, five years after it was opened, less than 40,000 cars a day passing through the tunnel, and even today, it is quite possible to drive through the tunnel in lonely splendor, while contemplating the folly of one’s fellow Australians.

community understands”, says Andrew Dingjan, the director of AURIN. One central issue seems to be overly optimistic traffic forecasts. In 2006, Bent Flyvberg reported in an article in the journal Traffic Reviews that globally, in over half of transport infrastructure projects, the difference between projected and actual traffic flows was 20 per cent; for a quarter of projects it is almost 50 per cent.

A study by Standard and Poor’s estimates that globally, on average, forecasts overestimate demand by 30 per cent.

Transport models have been in development since the 1950s. The technology became far more useful when spatial information processing matured in the 1990s.

A typical four-step model consists of a land use layer. The region is divided into suitably small zones that can be described by relevant characteristics such as homes, work places, places of entertainment and so on. A trip generation layer can then be created by adding household demographics and other socio-economic factors. Trip distribution can be generated by matching sources and sinks for journeys. People in households have an empirical propensity to go to work, go home, go out to play, go home to sleep and so on.

At this point, it may be relevant to consider the question of mode, that is: a percentage of people will prefer to do some of their travelling by car, other by public transport, riding a bicycle or walking.

Critically, they will also choose between different routes. Some drivers will choose the shortest route, the quickest, or perhaps the cheapest.

This sort of model underpins traffic modelling by most government planning bureaucracies in Australia and quite a few consultancies. However, they have been criticised for not providing a realistic picture of the way drivers make decisions about when and where to drive.

Some newer models attempt to map the locations of the activities that people need to perform. Travel is then an attribute of the system. This makes

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it possible to model the relationship between travel decisions, land use decisions and environmental factors such as emissions and pollution. However, the big problem is that they require finer grained spatial data than four-step models to be effective.

Either way, it’s hard to understand how such a step by step approach, if done correctly, can lead to errors of 50 per cent.

But that has occurred time and again in Australia.

It is little surprise that modelling has placed Westconnex under a cloud.

Lord Mayor Clover Moore is a trenchant critic of the project. She cites transport modeling by SOS Economics and Veitch Lister Consulting that shows traffic volumes will be insufficient to pay the interest on the loan incurred by the operators for the motorway, leaving tax payers to pick up the tab. At the same time, their analysis shows the motorway will overload inner-city streets. Overall, critics claim that while it will move the traffic jams about a bit, it will do almost nothing to ease Sydney’s congestion.

Moore’s critique is fiercely contested by the project proponents and by the state government, both of whom insist the financial modeling has been done with due prudence.

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A second factor that seems to get in the way of evidence-based spending is secrecy. Australian governments of all shades have made a point of carefully managing the flow of information about new projects, on the basis that the details are commercial-in-confidence. It makes it impossible for the public to test traffic forecasts or financial models. It’s a strategy that invites tunnel vision. The people in the know have a vested interest in the project proceeding and those on the outside are left guessing.

Westconnex is a case in point. The companies involved in building the project have joined the state government in shrouding the project in secrecy. They decline to share its financial or traffic modeling. However, it is worth noting that the company responsible for the Westconnex traffic modeling, AECOM, paid out $280 million for the flawed models it used on the Brisbane tunnel.

The real problem with shrouding infrastructure spending in secrecy is not that it is an affront to democratic principles but, that it protects decisionmakers from competing ideas.

Bob Nairn, a consulting engineer with experience in transport planning told the Australasian Transport Research Forum in 2016 that “the most effective

method of reducing forecasting risk is to employ an independent expert to conduct a peer review. When the methodology is muddled, it needs to be criticised.

“Unfortunately, muddled or deficient methodology is frequently encountered in Australia and elsewhere, even for major toll roads, where substantial funds are to be invested”, he says.

A paper by the Westconnex Action Group, a lobby group opposed to the motorway, suggests the real problem with that project is that modeling and evidence-based data do not form the basis of the decision, they are being used to shore up a decision that is already made.

“The stated objectives for WestConnex were contrived to fit the project after it had already been announced. Its objectives have no associated targets by which their achievement can be ever be determined”, they say.

In a logical world, billion-dollar investment decisions would involve a cost/ benefit analysis based on peer-reviewed modeling. Importantly, the cost/benefit analysis would also consider alternatives.

But the world is not logical.

Jon Fairall was the foundation editor of Position magazine, and now works as a freelance journalist and author. ■

feature

Why location data is the driving force behind smart cities JOHN RENARD

I

n January 2016, the United Nations unveiled 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that member countries must meet by 2030. As you’d expect, most of these Goals involve climate action and socioeconomic change. Yet one goal really stands out – making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.

As the global population continues to expand rapidly, urbanisation is a mega trend across the globe, more specifically in Africa and Asia. More than half of the world’s population already lives in urban spaces and it is expected that by 2030, this number will rise to about five billion.

In this context, sustainable development, as envisaged by the United Nations, will be a pipe dream without sustainable urban development. And that’s where the concept of a ‘smart city’, though around for at least two decades, becomes incredibly significant.

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Many of the world’s leading governments are engaged in making smart cities part of their strategy for both the present and the future. For instance, the Australian Government’s Smart Cities Plan aims to support the creation of productive, accessible, liveable cities that attract talent, encourage innovation and create jobs and growth required to succeed in the 21st century economy.

Meanwhile, the Indian government launched its ‘Smart Cities Mission’ in 2015 to enhance the quality of urban life in 100 cities across the country, and the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC), supported by the European Commission, is bringing together cities, industry, and citizens to improve urban life and make communities more competitive through integrated and sustainable solutions. The initiative supports cities in finding the right partners and solutions to achieve social, environmental, and economic sustainability across Europe.

While these pockets of smart city initiatives thus far should be commended, intelligent digital systems have so far been deployed in cities across the world in a piecemeal fashion, with varying degrees of success. To become truly smart however, it is imperative that city councils and governments integrate the human, physical, and digital systems operating within their built environment to enable true urban reform.

Why an integrated approach is critical While IT provides a holistic framework for smart cities’ infrastructure, data and information are the key ingredients in achieving this reform. Fundamentally a smart city is one that holistically unifies data from a wide range of sources – authoritative data sources, embedded sensors, public services, citizen reports, utility companies, and more – to generate actionable intelligence that facilitates improved governance and citizen services

John Renard

cables, data cables, telecommunication cables and special networks connecting individual companies. The system has been built to better manage urban space for the next 200 years.

Geo-enabled platforms One important aspect that acts as a force multiplier in smart cities is the geographical context of the data.

According to a 2015 study by Dalberg in association with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Google, smart maps (geospatial data) can help India gain upwards of $8 billion in savings, save 13,000 lives, and reduce one million metric tons of carbon emissions a year, and this is in cities alone. Location is a key enabler in these solutions.

Location and geospatial technology enables precise mapping of utility assets, urban properties, transportation infrastructure and government facilities. When this data is integrated with non-spatial data from disparate and multiple sub-systems of a city using a GISenabled enterprise information system, it allows city agencies to integrate various subsystems and put the data into a precise context, which provides them with the ability to derive insights, visualise and extract actionable intelligence to respond to every situation holistically. This ability makes location data a unique and powerful unifying component in a city enterprise, and is critical to increase the smartness index of a city.

To become truly smart, it is imperative that city councils and governments integrate the human, physical, and digital systems operating within their built environment to enable true urban reform. through better decision-making.

One method for unifying data is to aggregate all the different data streams in a city under a single roof, in the form of an operations centre. Such centres act as unifying hubs that break down the silos in city administration. Another way to bring about this integration is by co-locating different infrastructure components.

Constructed and equipped over the last four decades, Prague’s underground utility tunnels are a case in point.

Spanning 90 kilometres underneath the whole city including its historical centre, these tunnels (called kolektory in Czech) house everything from gas pipes, steam pipes, water mains, high and low voltage

Cities making the most of location City governments are cognizant of the significance of location technology and are using it in smart city programmes.

Barcelona was recognised as the

smartest city in the world in 2015, having harnessed technology extensively to transform itself with data-driven smart urban systems. It integrated ongoing projects and identified 12 areas for intervention, including transportation, water, energy, waste, and open government and initiated 22 programmes, where location technology played a foundational role in several initiatives.

Public safety is of paramount importance for cities, especially around major events, and city authorities are effectively using social media, one of the richest sources of location data, to ensure the safety of their citizens. A police department in the US used Geofeedia (a platform for analysing location data from social media) in real-time to better anticipate crime during the US Open for Surfing. Meanwhile, city councillors in Chicago monitor social media to understand public sentiment around specific services, and send relevant geotagged posts to the concerned agencies to follow- up.

However, investments in location technology and other IT tools to create economic, social, and environmental improvements for citizens is only part of the smart city story. While it is necessary, it is not sufficient to make cities truly ‘smart’ as we understand it. There is an urgent need for political, administrative, and social groups, at local, regional and international levels, to come together to debate the appropriate policies and measures required to ensure a positive outcome from technological investments and the equal provision of resources to citizens in the urban space. Without such an exercise, technology solutions to the smart city conundrum will remain locked away in the expensive ivory towers distant from future cities.

John Renard is President and BU Head of Utilities and Geospatial at Cyient. ■ www.spatialsource.com.au 33

UAVs can aid in the detection of nitrogen content and fertilizer need in a field through spectral analysis of blue, green, red and near infrared bands.

feature

Setting the standard in agriculture Growing pressure on the agri-industry means that geospatial technologies are playing a critical role in increasing efficiency - but, paradoxically, the creation of new technology without regard to standards is making its use unnecessarily inefficient.

SIMON CHESTER

T

he Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations predicts the world population will increase to some 9.7 billion people by 2050. In order to support such a population, the FAO estimates that overall food production will need to increase by 50% from the production levels of 2012.

The need for increased production also comes at a time when the changing climate is posing a host of new challenges.

Geospatial technologies have an important role to play in the future of agriculture, as they can provide the information and methods needed to increase the level of food production while ensuring sustainable use of Earth’s natural resources. Already, the farm business, farm supply chain, and public agricultural policies are increasingly relying on quantitative data about crops, soils, water, weather, markets, energy, and biotechnology, across scales reaching far beyond the paddock fence.

Farmers and others involved in the agri-industry, including processors, distributors, retailers, and governments, are using this data to make better decisions. Food safety now requires sharing information about agriculture globally, both with the food industry and with citizens. Relevant, timely data not only informs the business operation, it informs (new) business models, and is essential for ethical, environmental, legislative, and numerous other reasons.

Geospatial data is now central to farming.

There is plenty of existing and potential spatial data that could greatly benefit the agri-industry: including weather patterns and history; soil types and condition;

34 position October/November 2017

water availability; pest infestations; biodiversity; logistics and transport; food consumption patterns; and more. Indeed, many large and small firms are already providing a wide range of agricultural data collection, analysis, and exploitation products and services.

Understandably, this data is created by many different providers working with a wide variety of technologies, which has resulted in it being stored in a variety of formats and encodings. However, for this data to be useful, it needs to be shareable - easily discovered, ingested, integrated, and fully compatible with an analyst’s spatial system of choice.

Currently, the relatively recently ‘spatialised’ agri-industry reflects the IT industry of a few decades ago: independent players are staking out their claims in this ‘wild west’ by creating independent solutions that don’t play well with each other. This means that data relevant to a farm business may be - at best - difficult to integrate into the systems upon which they make their decisions, and - at worst - impossible to.

In order to function properly, an efficient and transparent data marketplace requires standards for accurate and straightforward interchange of data between diverse vendor platforms.

Thankfully, this is an achievable task.

Standards benefit all The benefits of using standards in geospatial applications have been well established (and also thoroughly discussed in the OGC Whitepaper The Importance of Going ‘Open’ available for free at: http://portal.opengeospatial.

org/files/6211), as their use solves some important geospatial needs: 1. The need for organizations to have access to each other’s spatial information without copying and converting whole data sets.

2. The need to have the pieces of a solution work together seamlessly and with minimal fuss.

3. The need to gain access the global, open, communication network that is the Internet.

To quote the whitepaper: “The general solution to these needs: geoprocessing systems and components that interoperate across open interfaces in the context of global (or in some cases local) distributed computing platforms (usually the Web.)” Farmers in particular are time poor, so data collection, integration, use, and sharing needs to be be simple and easy.

One example for how open standards help make farmers lives easier in this regard, comes from New Zealand: the OVERSEER® is an agricultural management tool that assists farmers and their advisers in examining nutrient use and movements within a farm, in order to optimise production and environmental outcomes.

An important input to the OVERSEER model is information about a farm’s soil and its drainage qualities. Until a year ago, farmers had to use an online service provided by Landcare Research, S-map Online, to obtain the soils information they needed to enter into OVERSEER. This was time consuming and prone to transcription errors, so Landcare Research staff worked with OVERSEER to provide an OGC web feature service

(WFS), that allows the OVERSEER application to directly and securely request soils information from Landcare.

There are countless potential applications of OGC standards that could similarly benefit the agriculture community. So, to aid in addressing the need for better system and data interoperability within agriculture, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) chartered a specific Agriculture Domain Working Group (Ag DWG) with the explicit mission to: identify geospatial interoperability issues and challenges within the agriculture domain, then examine ways in which those challenges can be met through application of existing OGC standards, or through development of new geospatial interoperability standards under the auspices of OGC. Agriculture touches many aspects of the work that OGC is already doing to promote interoperability of geospatial data and geographic analysis. As such, many of the data interoperability issues faced by the agriculture community can be addressed by existing standards. Not only the host of existing standards that support and enhance geospatial data software, models, and analytics, but also those that govern data collection: the growing ubiquity and importance of agricultural sensors – on tractors and other equipment, as part of in situ observation meshes, or collecting aerial and satellite imagery on planes or UAVs – aligns agriculture with the work that OGC is doing to address the promise and challenges of UAVs and the Internet of Things.

But there is still work to be done.

OGC’s Ag DWG serves as a forum for geoinformatics users from across the globe to discuss the geospatial data issues affecting agriculture. Using the information gained in this forum, the Ag DWG refines and presents interoperability-related issues to OGC’s Technical Committee, who advance new standards, or align existing standards efforts, with said issues.

Importantly, the Ag DWG also serves as a liaison to other industry, government, independent, research, and standards organizations active within the agricultural community, which helps ensure that as many voices as possible are being heard - which is critical when creating useful standards - and that any work on new standards isn’t being double-handled.

One such example of this industry outreach is OGC’s next LocationPowers Summit, sub-titled Data, Interoperability and Ag Tech, happening alongside OGC’s Technical Committee meeting to be held this December in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

Image courtesy of Landcare Research.

The OGC Soil IE Healthy, productive soils are essential to agriculture and the community must work closely with land managers, regulators, and scientists to manage them. Accurately observed and modelled soils data provide the evidence required for all involved to assess, use, and monitor soils, but as it stands, data is currently widely distributed, patchy, and difficult to access.

In 2015, the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS) Working Group on Soil Information Standards (WGSIS) approached the OGC Ag DWG about conducting a soil data interoperability experiment. An OGC Interoperability Experiment (IE) is a rapid, low overhead, formally structured OGC-facilitated activity in which members achieve specific technical objectives that further the OGC Standards Baseline. The Soil Data IE was lead by Landcare Research (New Zealand) with participants from a number of national institutions such as CSIRO, USGS, Federation University (Australia), and the World Soil Data Centre (ISRIC) in the Netherlands.

The Soils IE evaluated existing soil information models and standards, and proposed a common core model, including a GML/XML schema, which was tested through the deployment of OGC web services and demonstration clients against an agreed set of use cases for the exchange and analysis of soil data. The IE was a great success showing that the problem of soil data interoperability can be addressed using OGC standards and that current technology allows the deployment of services to support soil data exchange. The OGC and IUSS WGSIS are now looking at working with other international initiatives to progress this standards work.

Farms are increasingly using sensors, such as this Cosmic Ray Sensor used for soil moisture measurements, to gain a better operating picture.

The LocationPowers Summit will, through presentations and discussions, identify data use and data sharing issues in agricultural technologies and highlight where geospatial contributions and collaborations on international geospatial data standards could aid in solving the issues.

Topics to be covered at the Summit include: precision agriculture and farm information systems; supply chains and traceability; big agricultural data; bringing together agricultural and scientific data; and interoperating with government. The speakers will be drawn from international organisations such as AgGateway, and the New Zealand and Australian agricultural industry, research organisations, and government.

The summit is open to OGC members and non-members alike, and has two goals. First it will be an opportunity for producers, technical innovators, scientists, regional and central government and businesses to learn about the importance and power of location and location-related data for agriculture.

Second, the presentations, conversations, and idea sharing will aid in the standards development process, informing the future direction and work of the OGC Ag DWG so that, through collaboration with relevant global partners, it continues to develop relevant and useful standards - to the benefit of not just the farmers, but the global population that relies on their produce.

For more information on the Agriculture DWG, visit www.opengeospatial.org. For further information on free data, Interoperability and Ag Tech LocationPowers Summit, visit www.locationpowers.net. ■ www.spatialsource.com.au 35

feature

3D mapping to transform the future of work in Australia

S

imilar to the evolution of music from Sony’s ubiquitous Walkman to iPods to on-demand streaming like Spotify, aerial mapping technology is transforming rapidly, giving businesses powerful new ways to see “reality” instantly — without actually being there.

With recent innovations in 3D mapping technology, almost anyone will be able to access a three-dimensional view of the real world. Picture the city or town you live in. What would it be like to see at scale an entire cityscape from above without leaving the office — to be able to swoop down any street and zoom up on any office tower or home, any highway or green strip and have an exact sense of the environment and the path of the sun as it casts shadows through the day? Imagine how easy access to views of the real world might revolutionise business. It can change the way a developer plans a new residential complex, a local government approves a massive road project, or an insurance underwriter treats a homeowner policy.

2D aerial imagery has already transformed the way people work When we look back, high-resolution 2D aerial imagery was available mainly to a privileged few: large companies and governments that could afford to hire an aerial photographer, engage a fleet of planes, and wait weeks, if not months, for a bird’s-eye map to be constructed. The service was expensive—and obsolete by the time the customer received it.

The model has changed from a onetime installation to delivering imagery as a subscription service, and businesses are now able to access as much or as little as they need of hundreds of thousands of 2D images across Australia. This has opened the aerial imagery content to a broad range of industries, making it easily available and affordable for one-man proprietorships to large corporations.

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Security companies now evaluate risks at public events using 2D aerial imagery.

Insurance companies assess on-site risks without having to leave the office.

Historians, urban planner, or anyone interested in change over time, can look back over ten years’ worth of imagery to study how a place has evolved.

Aerial imagery meets 3D Now imagine how the nature of work can be transformed with easy access to 3D models, reconstructed from data that is captured and updated frequently.

Suddenly, the real world unfolds as it is today and as it’s constantly evolving.

A variety of industries will be able to exploit a new mapping reality to plan, design, and communicate better, make faster estimates and more effective decisions about how to execute projects.

There are, to be sure, many producers of 3D models but only now are we starting to see the 3D models of what’s actually on the ground at a large scale, in the context of cities.

The need for 3D models and where it can take us Think about the case of a developer who intends to put up a residential skyscraper in Sydney’s CBD. The developer can provide not just a 3D model of the building, but various real-life perspectives taking into account the entire cityscape— reality in context. This could show the prospective project among existing buildings, showing a realistic view from every floor of what the scenery is like and the effect of sun and shadows throughout the day. The architect can get a clear grasp of what, if any, design changes might be needed. And the municipal housing authority has more information to make better decisions about whether to approve the construction permit.

What about the telco planning for fifth generation wireless networks? 5G

will allow for much faster downloads on mobile devices - think 600 movies per minute to a 5G smartphone. It’s coming in the next few years and will require the installation of new telecom towers, among other equipment. One of the biggest challenges for this group is that 5G technology is very sensitive to line of sight. Trees, buildings, overpasses, bridges—they can all impact the transmission of high-frequency signals, causing issues to connections. But an accurate 3D model of the environment can help optimise the design, plan, and execution of a very expensive project, saving the telco precious planning time and money.

Now consider how 3D can radically change the work of a solar installer. An accurate estimate of the job depends, obviously, on time and materials, but also on the projected performance of the panels. An up-to-date 3D model can help with the assessment of the roof slope, any obstructions, sun angles during the day, and the shadowing effect of surrounding trees and neighboring buildings. A small scale 3D capture won’t give a complete picture, but a broad 3D model of the whole area will.

It doesn’t stop here, 3D aerial maps promise exciting new frontiers. From markets for autonomous cars or drone deliveries, where a clear snapshot of reality on the ground can be a matter of smooth performance or grave mishap. It might open new approaches to disaster relief and land uses. It could even lead to new developments in virtual reality or next-generation hologram technology.

We’re just at the beginning of a dynamic new age for 3D aerial technology, where future uses lie somewhere beyond our imaginations.

Rob Newman was appointed as CEO of Nearmap on October 2015, after having been a Non-Executive Director of Nearmap (formerly ipernica) for almost 5 years. ■

The Australasian magazine of surveying, mapping & geo-information

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It covers the increasing use of geospatial technologies and analysis in decision-making for businesses and government.

Technologies addressed include satellite and aerial remote sensing, land and hydrographic surveying, satellite positioning systems, photogrammetry, mobile mapping and GIS. Position contains news, views and applications stories, as well as coverage of the latest technologies that interest professionals working with spatial information.

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new products

Trimble introduces a 10” tough tablet, T10 Combined with integrated GNSS capabilities, the T10 is a powerful, rugged device created for survey fieldwork and GIS data collection and at the same time supports demanding desktop applications.

The T10 sports a powerful Intel 6th Generation Core i7 processor which can handle complex, data-hungry applications and eliminate the need to carry a separate laptop computer in addition to a survey controller or data collector. With the tablet, the user can rapidly and efficiently processes large data sets such as maps, satellite imagery, image, point clouds, as well as geospatial field data for detailed analysis and visualization out in the field.

Leica tilt-compensating GNSS Leica Geosystems announced the release of the GS18 T, the world’s fastest GNSS RTK rover. The rover is a calibrationfree tilt compensating GNSS. GNSS measurements can be taken from any position on site, saving users up to 20 per cent of time in the field over conventional surveying practices as you no longer need to hold the pole vertical to level the bubble – users can measure with a tilted

pole close to buildings, underneath cars and close to metallic objects.

With integrated quality assurance, the GS18 T records exactly how the pole was levelled during the measurement. The GS18 T then stores the values, ensuring measurement traceability and complete quality reporting. Field and office software packages have been updated to support the new features.

SimActive releases Correlator3D version 7.0 SimActive’s Correlator3D software is a patented end-to-end photogrammetry solution for the generation of high-quality geospatial data from satellite and aerial imagery, including UAVs. With the release of v.7.0, users will see a complete redesign of its 3D generation engine enabling substantial quality and speed improvements. Correlator3D performs aerial triangulation and produces dense digital surface models, digital terrain models, point clouds, orthomosaics and vectorised 3D features.

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FARO announces Visual Inspect for 3D and AR FARO has announced the availability of the Visual Inspect product family, including an augmented reality option.

This innovative platform enables large, complex 3D CAD (computer-aided design) data to be transferred to an iPad and then used for mobile visualization and comparison to real world conditions.

Visual Inspect moves 3D CAD viewing away from the traditional desktop PC to a mobile “in hand, on demand” solution.

The 3D CAD data is stored locally on the iPad through an innovative, compressed, mobile format. The end user is able to document problems and errors with text and images and then easily export both into a Microsoft Excel office document.

The integrated iPad camera supports Visual Inspect AR as a more cost effective alternative to other Augmented Reality (AR) products that require expensive cameras.

DJI launches new privacy mode T-MAPY offers 3D Objects tech for Web GIS T-MAPY has recently introduced their 3D Objects technology for direct integration with their T-MAPY Web GIS applications. Using the optional 3D module, users can upload photos of an object (e.g. a sculpture) to the T-MAPY 3D Cloud, then receive a fully interactive 3D model that can be immediately used in T-MAPY Web GIS. 360° 3D models represent a brand new attribute type of GIS features.

It allows interactive viewing and analysing of the whole objects or its parts. 3D models have very high information and documentation value and the best thing is that they are directly integrated in T-MAPY Web GIS apps using the 3D module. 360° 3D models of the real objects are available either for internal purposes or public or both depending on a client’s need. T-MAPY is the world’s first and only Web GIS that enables users to use 360° 3D models directly in Web GIS. 360° 3D models can be used for many different purposes including the documentation of sculptures or memorials. These 360° 3D models can also be used in a public map for tourists and help a town, city, region, country to increase income from tourism.

DJI has launched a new Local Data Mode that stops internet traffic to and from its DJI Pilot app, in order to provide enhanced data privacy assurances for sensitive government and enterprise customers.

Local Data Mode will be available in the next update on the DJI Pilot app on CrystalSky and for select Android tablets. When an operator activates Local Data Mode, the app will stop sending or receiving any data over the internet.

This adds an additional layer of security for operators of flights involving critical

infrastructure, governmental projects or other sensitive missions.

Since Local Data Mode blocks all internet data, the DJI Pilot app will not be able to detect the location of the user, show the map and geofencing information such as No Fly Zones and temporary flight restrictions. In addition, it will not notify drone operators of firmware updates.

Telemetry data on flight logs such as altitude, distance or speed will remain stored on the aircraft even if the user deactivates Local Data Mode.

Phase One introduces new Aerial System Phase One’s iXU-RS 190MP Aerial System is built on the new, dual CMOS sensor, dual lens iXU-RS1900 camera, which is capable of capturing images at 190 megapixels. This system addresses a wide variety of challenging aerial applications, such as remote sensing, monitoring, inspection, and disaster management.

At the heart of the fully integrated 190MP Aerial System is the IXURS1900 camera. It features two CMOS sensors and two 90 mm lenses for capturing RGB information. Key imaging attributes include a small pixel size (4.6 µ), large image area (16,470 x 11,540), high image capture rate of 0.6 sec and exposure time of

up to 1/2000 sec. An optional 4-Band configuration, adding a 50 mm lens for capturing NIR information, provides 4-Band (RGB, NIR) imagery. Integrated iX Capture software automatically generates distortion-free images and automatically performs an accurate matching of the NIR and RGB images.

www.spatialsource.com.au 39

sssi

News and views from the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute

SSSI Board – 2017 President – Gaby van Wyk

Recent activities of the Spatial Information and Cartography Commission

President-Elect – Zaffar Mohamed Ghouse NSW Director – Zaffar Mohamed Ghouse NT Director – Rob Sarib QLD Director – Lee Hellen SA Director – Franco Rea TAS Director – Alex Leith VIC Director – Vacant WA Director – Kerry Smyth ACT Director – Vacant Hydrography Commission Director – Richard Cullen YP representative (Observer) – Richard Syme Company Secretary – Jonathan Saxon

40 position October/November 2017

I

n the last edition I was going back in time and was introducing some examples of early beginnings of map making which were found in caves, e.g., in Lascaux in France or hidden in Aboriginal song lines. In this edition I would like to continue to honour the outgoing international map year by giving an insight of a potential future of cartography.

This first initiative was derived from a catastrophe, the disappearing of flight MH370. In the effort of finding the whereabouts and solving the disappearance of the plane, a range of companies were instructed to scan and ultimately map the waters of the Indian Ocean showing twisted canyons, rocky outcrops, and expansive plateaus as seen in the image on the left and even objects that litter the sea bed, e.g. shipwrecks as seen on the image on the right, some of which are intact or broken apart. Even smaller objects like ship cables, individual oil barrels, and whale skeletons were retrieved making it a great tool for geologists, marine biologists, and other scientists in getting

closer to finding information of an almost unexplored world.

You can find out more information at www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/thesearch-for-flight-mh370-hasproducedsome-of-the-most-detailed-maps-of-thesea-floor-ever/ The world’s first Space Detective Agency is trying to assist the fight against illegal dumping (alone in England more than 1000 illegal waste sites get created every year leading to a turnover of waste crime that is bigger than the one of big companies like McDonalds) by using a new service ‘Spy in the Sky’ satellite technology.

This new service is called Waste from Space. It is based on the development of a semi-automated detection model utilizing satellite data in conjunction with machine learning algorithms, which offer an effective and commercially viable geospatial intelligence tool that can detect serious waste crime.

SSSI sustaining partners

Commission Chairs Engineering & Mine Surveying A/g Chair Vacant Hydrography Commission Chair Richard Cullen chair.hc@sssi.org.au View of virtual museum of old historic building at Bad Segeberg.

More information can be found at www.geospatialworld.net/news/spy-skytechnology-tackle-illegaldumping-waste/ The last initiative is a virtual 4D model of the oldest building in the German city of Bad Segeberg using a game engine, which enables the user to look and walk around freely or through teleportation by clicking on the desired position on a miniature overview map. A user can find out information

by opening up interactively 1 of 52 clickable information signs, which open menus with further information about the object of interest. Apart from exploring the building in its current form interactively the user is able to go back in time and explore the individual construction phases of the building through animations, an exploded view of every state of construction and the slow display of changes in the appearance of the building.

If you would like to read more about this exciting project please go to https:// www.giminternational.com/content/ article/the-development-of-a-virtualmuseum-in-germany Hanno Klahn is the Spatial Information and Cartography Commission Chair.

Land Surveying Commission Chair Lindsay Perry chair.lsc@sssi.org.au Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry Commission Chair Craig Smith chair.rspc@sssi.org.au Spatial Information & Cartography Commission Chair Hanno Klahn chair.sicc@sssi.org.au Regional Committee Chairs ACT Regional Chair – Greg Ledwidge chair.act@sssi.org.au NSW Regional Chair – Zaffar Mohamed Ghouse 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

SSSI NSW & ACT Annual Regional Conference 2017 Each year the SSSI NSW & ACT hold their premier event, the SSSI NSW & ACT Regional Conference to support, promote and showcase the people, projects, technology and innovations of the surveying and spatial sciences industry.

The theme for the 2017 conference is “The relevance of Spatial in the Digital Economy”.

This unique, single stream platform attracts SSSI members and industry contacts to network, share ideas and learn about innovations and industry advancements.

Key representatives from the land surveying, spatial information and cartography, remote sensing, photogrammetry, hydrography, engineering and mining surveying, and others in the spatial community come together to learn, share, network, and enjoy.

The 2017 SSSI NSW & ACT Regional Conference looks to set a new knowledge sharing benchmark, as it will be held in partnership with NSW Spatial Services.

Taking place at The Rydges Mount

Panorama in Bathurst, NSW over the 6th & 7th of December 2017, the joint conference will be co-convened by Bruce Thompson, Executive Director, NSW Spatial Services, and Dr Zaffar Sadiq MohamedGhouse, Chair SSSI NSW. The full program and tickets are expected to be released mid-late October.

In the interim, further information can be found at www.sssinswconference.com.au The 2017 SSSI NSW & ACT Individual Spatial Excellence Awards night will also be held the conference, on the 6th of December 2017. The closing date for Award nominations is Monday, October 30th 2017. Information on the awards categories can be found at www. spatialexcellence.awardsplatform.com Sponsors and exhibitors are currently being sought for both the SSSI NSW & ACT Regional conference, and The SSSI NSW & ACT Individual Spatial Excellence Awards night. For information regarding sponsorship opportunities, please contact Katya Zahn at rom.nsw@sssi.org.au

SA Regional Chair – Franco Rea chair.sa@sssi.org.au TAS Regional Chair – Alex Leith chair.tas@sssi.org.au VIC Regional Chair – Werner Hennecke chair.vic@sssi.org.au WA Regional Chair – Kerry Smyth 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

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The power of satellite imagery can only be realised through an understanding of its colour components. Through intelligent mixing of colours, both visible and near infrared, a world previously unseen comes into focus.

Normal colour is a 3-band colour composite where the colours are represented in their true respective bands: red, green and blue.

The normal colour can be enhanced with the combination of the visible green + near infrared (NIR) used in the green band, and red and blue in their respective bands. Vegetation has a strong response in the NIR and hence the image has a brighter green.

The human eye can distinguish more variation in the colour red than in green or blue. In false colour, the NIR, red and green are displayed in RGB with blue excluded. This enhancement is very useful in displaying zones of healthy versus non-healthy vegetation.

This image combines three of the additional four multispectral bands available on the WorldView-2 and WorldView-3: coastal, near infrared 2, and yellow are displayed in the RGB bands. This composite is useful for shallow water applications.

This image displays the last of the additional multispectral bands: the second NIR band, the Red Edge band, and the yellow band in RGB. This display is useful for detecting subtle changes in vegetation.

Normalised Difference Vegetation Index, or NDVI, displayed in this image is calculated from the near infrared and red channels and is not displayed in the usual RGB bands. Instead, the calculation generates a raster with values ranging from -1 to +1. NDVI is a standardised way to quantify vegetation biomass. High-value red colours reect the dense vegetation of the creek beds and lowvalue deep greens indicate sparse coverage in the harvested paddocks and unvegetated areas.

Satellite imagery Š DigitalGlobe

Call 1300 886 982 for more information survey.crkennedy.com.au/gis

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