ALA Peter Doherty 25 June 2013

Atlas of Living Australia
Regional Environmental
Accounts
25 June 2013
Peter Doherty
Program Manager
peter.doherty@csiro.au
Dr John La Salle
Director
john.lasalle@csiro.au
Peter Brenton
FieldData
peter.brenton@csiro.au
The Atlas is funded by the Australian Government under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy
and further supported by the Super Science Initiative of the Education Investment Fund
The Atlas of Living Australia
• Background
• The vision
• Overview of ALA capabilities
• Relevance to Regional Environmental Accounts
The Atlas of Living Australia
“Sharing biodiversity knowledge”
• Over $40m of direct investment from Federal Dept
Science/Innovation – hosted by CSIRO
• Part of NCRIS (TERN, IMOS) – we are a non-commercial entity
• Fully Open Source software, openly licensed data (Creative
Commons)
• 39 million records on Australian species – specimens and
observations + images, literature, keys, sequences + more..
• Over 500 data sets - Integrated with 388 spatial layers – explore
species distribution against environmental factors (temp,
precipitation)
• Data Capture + Mobile tools
• Open, Free and Extensible!
The Atlas of Living Australia
• Advanced and powerful capabilities
Data Capture -
Including Citizen Scientists
Data Management
Data Discovery
Data Visualisation - Communication
Data Analysis/Reporting!
The Vision
Present state
Pre-european state
benchmarks
Present state (future)
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Making Sense of the Data
ALA – Demonstration
Data Capture – Projects
Atlas Tools – Data Capture
Data Capture (FieldData) Software
– Standardised, electronic data recording
– Can support MERI reporting metrics
– Supports data collection for:
• Project details (secured)
• Project financials (secured)
•
•
•
•
•
•
Condition assessment – baseline & monitoring
Community engagement
Works – tree planting
Works – weed management
Works – protection
Biological occurrence
Also (if needed):
• Works – fire management
• Works – stream restoration
• Others? …
– Desktop (browser-based) & mobile data capture – including offline
– Provides standardised data recording capability for people who
don’t have their own tools.
Atlas Tools - Portals
NRM / SOE Aggregation Portal
– Could leverage existing tried and tested framework for
delivering aggregated views & data visualisation.
– Allows easy aggregation of data from multiple sources (eg.
CMA’s with their own tools).
– Leverages all Atlas tools and web services through a single
interface.
• Spatial visualisation & analytics
• Spatial modelling tools
• Data mining & filtering
• Data access & download
• Reporting
– Optimised for high performance with large data volumes.
– Reaches a national audience – communities and
researchers
Making Sense of the Data
• Local site baseline assessments are fundamentally important
to understanding landscape change.
• Establish monitoring benchmarks - funded activities should
mandate standardised condition assessment as a prerequisite to commencement of all works.
• Standardised data collection forms & methods, and data
consolidation into an aggregation hub will enable:
– spatial & temporal monitoring of landscape change;
– statistically significant analysis of the impacts of
intervention activities and other types of events;
– cost effective analysis; and
– validation & refinement of landscape scale condition &
change models (especially if combined with a subbioregion/landuse based, proportionally representative
assessment methodology).
The Atlas of Living Australia Participants
The Council of Heads of Australian
Faunal Collections (CHAFC)
The Council of Heads of Australian
Entomological Collections (CHAEC)
The Australian Microbial Resources
Research Network (AMRRN)
The Council of Heads of Australasian
Museum Directors (CAMD)
The Atlas is funded by the
Australian Government under the
National Collaborative Research
Infrastructure Strategy
and further supported by the
Super Science Initiative of the
Education Investment Fund
Data Capture – Projects,
Activities…
Data Capture – Reveg activity
Data Capture – Site Assessment
Dashboard
Supporting Environmental Information
and Reporting – Stakeholders/Context
OUTCOME AREAS
Biodiversity Fund
On-ground data
Data Capture
Mapping, Modelling
& Analysis
Reports & views
of aggregated data
Citizen Science (trained)
GER Pilot Project
ACC
LOP
Landscape
Observation
Partnership
NCRIS SEWPaC
Science
Analysis
Australian
Connectivity
Council
To be rolled out
across corridors
TERN
Ausplots
ERIN
Data Capture
Data standards
MERI
Use of volunteers
Uniform reporting
of environmental
outcomes at
national scale
Environmental
monitoring and
reporting
Conservation
Policy
NPEI
NERP
xxx
Natural Resource
Management
Invasive Species
ALA
TERN
Ausplots
IMOS
AuScope
Collect data once – make it freely accessible – use it many times
Shared data standards – interoperability – no data silos
Open source – creative commons
Concept Model
Architectural Model
Information Flow Model
The Atlas of Living Australia
• 36m+ records
• Observations and
scientifically
vouchered
specimens
• Allows exploration
of data against
environmental,
contextual layers,
literature and lots
more
•Supporting the
standardised,
electronic capture of
data with mobile
support
Open Infrastructure
One
Infrastructure,
many systems