Three data sets containing locational and attribute information for places respectively on the Commonwealth, National, and World Heritage Lists determined by the Australian Government Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities - Heritage Division. Places subject to confidentiality agreements are not included in these data. The Commonwealth Heritage List is a list of natural, Indigenous and historic heritage places owned or controlled by the Australian Government The National Heritage List has been established to list places of outstanding heritage significance to Australia. It includes natural, historic and Indigenous places that are of outstanding national heritage value to the Australian nation. The World Heritage List contains sites selected on the basis of ten cultural and natural criteria under the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted by UNESCO in 1972.

This research utilises metadata from GA's centralised metadata store containing the history of the equipment changes which have taken place at all GNSS stations; such as antenna or receiver swaps, firmware upgrades and removal/ alteration of antenna domes and cables. Several change detection algorithms have been implemented for automatic detection of discontinuities in the coordinate time series. Once offsets are detected, their position in time is correlated with equipment changes or earthquake occurrences nearby the station. If a correlation is found and the offset is visibly evident, the offset is introduced into a database. This information is used in the routine combination of weekly SINEX solutions using the CATREF software to produce an enhanced set of coordinates and velocities. It is shown that after cleansing the offsets in time series using this approach, the quality of the combined APREF solution is improved in terms of WRMS. By analysing time series coordinates at a few stations using CATS software, it is shown that the uncertainty of velocity estimates is improved after offsets are detected and removed from the time series.

In the 2011/12 Budget, the Australian Government announced funding of a four year National CO2 Infrastructure Plan (NCIP) to accelerate the identification and development of suitable long term CO2 storage sites, within reasonable distances of major energy and industrial emission sources. The NCIP funding follows on from funding announced earlier in 2011 from the Carbon Storage Taskforce through the National Carbon Mapping and Infrastructure Plan and previous funding recommended by the former National Low Emissions Coal Council. Four offshore sedimentary basins and several onshore basins have been identified for study and pre-competitive data acquisition.

This is a placeholder record only. The product may be released by GA in the future, but at the moment we are only hosting the metadata.

Map compiled on request from AGS Native Title Case QUD6040/2001 Proclamation 6 See 2008/3111 for particulars.

Tide gauge data forms the basis for determining global or local sea level rise with respect to a global geocentric reference frame. Data from repeated precise levelling connections between the tide gauge and a series of coastal and inland benchmarks, including a Continuous GPS (CGPS) benchmark, is used to determine the stability of tide gauges at 12 locations in the South Pacific. The method for determining this is based on a constant velocity model which minimises the net movement amongst a set of datum benchmarks surveyed since the installation of the tide gauges. Tide gauges were found to be sinking, relative to the CGPS benchmark, in Pohnpei (FSM), Samoa, Vanuatu, Tonga, Nauru, Tuvalu, Fiji and Cook Is; listed in order of the sinking rate, with a maximum of -1.01 - 0.63 mm/yr at Pohnpei (FSM) and a minimum of -0.03 - 0.81mm/yr at Cook Is. The tide gauge was rising, relative to the CGPS benchmark, in Solomon Is, Manus Is (PNG), Kiribati and Marshall Is, with a maximum of 3.12 - 0.49mm/yr in Solomon Is and a minimum of 0.01 - 0.91mm/yr in Marshall Is. However, these estimates are unreliable for the Solomon Is and Marshall Is, which have recently established CGPS benchmarks and have been surveyed less than 3 times. In Tonga and Cook Is, the tide gauge was found to be disturbed or affected by survey errors whereas the Vanuatu results were affected by earthquakes. It was also found that the constant velocity model did not fit the observations at the tide gauges in Tonga, Cook Is, Fiji, Marshall Is and Vanuatu, which had large variations in their velocities. This is an indicator of the high frequency (short period) motion of the tide gauge structure, which cannot be measured by the levelling method since these have a higher frequency than the time interval between levelling surveys.

Severe wind damage accounts for about 40 percent of the total building damage observed in Australia during the 20th century. Climate change has the potential to significantly affect severe wind hazard and the resulting level of loss. W report on a nationally consistent assessment of severe wind hazard across the Australian continent, and also severe wind risk to residential houses (quantified in terms of annualised loss). A computational framework has been developed to quantify both the wind hazard and risk due to severe winds, based on innovative modeling techniques and application of the National Exposure Information System (NEXIS). A combination of tropical cyclone, synoptic and thunderstorm wind hazard estimates is used to provide a revised estimate of the severe wind hazard across Australia. The hazard modeling utilises both 'current climate' information and also simulations forced by IPCC SRES climate change scenarios (employed to estimate how the wind hazard may be influenced by climate change). Our analysis has identified regions where the design wind speed depicted in the Australian/New Zealand Wind Loading Standard (AS/NZS 1170.2, 2010) is lower than 'new' hazard analysis. In considering future climate scenarios, four case study regions are used to illustrate when the wind loading standard may be inadequate, and where retrofitting is indicated as a viable adaptation option at either the present or at a specified future time. The comparison of current and projected future risk, currently only considers direct costs (structural damage to houses) associated with severe wind hazard. A broader assessment methodology is discussed.

Tropical cyclones pose a significant threat to islands in the tropical western Pacific. The extreme winds from these severe storms can cause extensive damage to housing, infrastructure and food production. As part of the Pacific Climate Change Science Program (PCCSP), Geoscience Australia assessed the wind hazard posed by tropical cyclones for 14 islands in the western Pacific and East Timor. The wind hazard was assessed for both the current climate and for the future climate under the A2 SRES emission scenario. Wind hazard maps were generated using Geoscience Australia's Tropical Cyclone Risk Model (TCRM) that applies a statistical-parametric process to estimate return period wind speeds. To obtain a robust estimate of wind hazard from a short historical track record, TCRM produces several thousand years worth of tracks that are statistically similar to the input track dataset. The model then applies a parametric wind profile to these tracks and fits a Generalized Extreme Value distribution to the maximum wind speeds at each location. To estimate how the hazard may change in the future, tracks of Tropical Cyclone-Like Vortices (TCLVs) detected in dynamically downscaled global climate model are used as input into TCRM. This is performed for four downscaled global climate models for two twenty year periods centered on 1990 and 2090 under the A2 SRES emission scenario. This study provides the first detailed assessment of the current wind hazard for this region, despite the fact that these counties are both highly exposed and vulnerable to these severe storms. The hazard climate projections should be treated with caution due to known deficiencies in the global climate models and poor agreement between models of the hazard projections. However, keeping these limitations in mind, the results suggest that the wind hazard will decrease north of 20º latitude in the South Pacific by 2090.

This is a placeholder record only. The product may be released by GA in the future, but at the moment we are only hosting the metadata.

Manila LiDAR Project 2011 Original Data Supply September 2011, provided by Fugro Spatial.