Abstract submitted for presentation to European Geosciences Union General Assembly, April, 2019

This poster will present on the tools and their implementation for structured linked data at Geoscience Australia (GA). The datasets include: samples, sites, surveys, placenames. The goal is to have persistent identifiers and their profiles is governed through organisational policy with entities and relationships conceptualised in ontologies. Tools include the PID service, pyLDAPI https://github.com/RDFLib/pyLDAPI, and including current work to investigate the new content negotiation by profile – separate from media type, standardising these profiles and the expression of relationships to other features. Profile templates are implemented in entity specific pyLDAPI implementations with data transformed and delivered as standard formats and profiles, sourced from an internal, organisational point of truth – a common organisational data model with well-defined internal identifiers. Applications using these mechanisms to publish such open data at the feature level granularity and their relationships include the geoscience AusGIN portal (http://www.geoscience.gov.au/) and Location Index initiative (LOC-I).

This synthesis of geophysical results for Australia is designed to provide an summary of the character of the Australian continent through the extensive information available at the continental scale. We present a broad range of geophysical attributes for the continent nation. We also endeavour to examine the relationships between different fields, and their relations to known resources. The work represents part of a continuing collaboration between the Research School of Earth Sciences at The Australian National University and Geoscience Australia with the objective of bringing together all aspects of the structure of Australia in convenient forms. The results build on the extensive data bases assembled at Geoscience Australia, particularly for potential fields, supplemented by the full range of seismological information mostly from the Australian National University. The book builds in part on the AUSREM project sponsored by the AuScope infrastructure organisation to develop a 3-D representation of seismological structure beneath the Australian region. The diverse and extensive geophysical data sets available for Australia in part reflect the poor outcrop of bedrock geology for this ancient weathered continent and the economic importance of this geology to the Australian economy through its resource potential. Geophysics provides an important way to examine the structures that lie beneath the cover. This book is intended to make a contribution to the UNCOVER initiative, which has identified improved information on the subsurface as a prerequisite for extending exploration in Australia from regions of exposure into those with sedimentary cover. To aid in cross comparison of results from different disciplines an effort has been made to present all continental scale geophysical information with a common format and map projection. It is hoped that this compilation of the many different facets of geophysical studies of the continent will make a contribution to the understanding of Australia's lithospheric architecture and its evolution. We have not attempted to impose interpretations on the datasets, rather we believe that the diverse strands of information may inspire new ways of looking at the continent.

A review of mineral exploration trends, activities and discoveries in Australia in 2019-2020

This document sets out the five year strategy for the marine geoscience program at Geoscience Australia, for the period 2018-2023. This strategy delivers to Geoscience Australia's Strategy 2028 in the area of 'Managing Australia's marine jurisdictions to support sustainable use of our marine environment.' The strategy includes four key activities: (1) National Coordination of Seabed Mapping; (2) Data Acquisition for Marine and Coastal Baselines and Monitoring; (3) Marine Geoscience Data Accessibility, and; (4) Marine Geoscience Advice.

Geoscience Australia is Australia’s Earth science public sector organisation, recognised for its expert data capabilities and high level of expertise. As the nation’s trusted advisor on geology and geography the organisation is the premium provider of data, science and analysis for decision makers. Internally, Geoscience Australia is currently targeting and refining its core capabilities in order to establish and clearly articulate our value proposition and service offering to stakeholders.

National meteorological and hydrological services (NMHSs) provide severe weather warning information to inform decision-making by emergency management (EM) services and to allow communities to take defensive and mitigation action prior to and during severe weather events. Globally, warning information issued by NMHSs varies widely from solely hazard-based to impact-based forecasting encompassing the exposure and vulnerability of communities to severe weather. The most advanced of these systems explicitly and quantitatively model the impacts of hazards on sectors of interest. Incorporating impact information into severe weather warnings contextualises and personalises the warning information, increasing the likelihood that individuals and communities will take preparatory action. This paper reviews a selection of current efforts towards severe weather warnings and impact forecasting capabilities globally and highlights uncertainties that currently limit forecasts and modelling of multi-hazard events.

The emerging global trend of satellite operators producing analysis ready data combined with open source tools for managing and exploiting this data are leading to more and more countries using Earth observation data to drive progress against key national and international development agendas. This paper provides examples from Australia, Mexico, Switzerland and Tanzania on how the Open Data Cube technology has been combined with analysis ready data to provide new insights and support better policy making across issues as diverse as water resource management through to urbanization and environmental-economic accounting.

Australia has been, and continues to be, a leader in isotope geochronology and geochemistry. While new isotopic data is being produced with ever increasing pace and diversity, there is also a rich legacy of existing high-quality age and isotopic data, most of which have been dispersed across a multitude of journal papers, reports and theses. Where compilations of isotopic data exist, they tend to have been undertaken at variable geographic scale, with variable purpose, format, styles, levels of detail and completeness. Consequently, it has been difficult to visualise or interrogate the collective value of age and isotopic data at continental-scale. Age and isotopic patterns at continental scale can provide intriguing insights into the temporal and chemical evolution of the continent (Fraser et al, 2020). As national custodian of geoscience data, Geoscience Australia has addressed this challenge by developing an Isotopic Atlas of Australia, which currently (as of November 2020) consists of national-scale coverages of four widely-used age and isotopic data-types: 4008 U-Pb mineral ages from magmatic, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks 2651 Sm-Nd whole-rock analyses, primarily of granites and felsic volcanics 5696 Lu-Hf (136 samples) and 553 O-isotope (24 samples) analyses of zircon 1522 Pb-Pb analyses of ores and ore-related minerals These isotopic coverages are now freely available as web-services for use and download from the GA Portal. While there is more legacy data to be added, and a never-ending stream of new data constantly emerging, the provision of these national coverages with consistent classification and attribution provides a range of benefits: vastly reduces duplication of effort in compiling bespoke datasets for specific regions or use-cases data density is sufficient to reveal meaningful temporal and spatial patterns a guide to the existence and source of data in areas of interest, and of major data gaps to be addressed in future work facilitates production of thematic maps from subsets of data. For example, a magmatic age map, or K-Ar mica cooling age map sample metadata such as lithology and stratigraphic unit is associated with each isotopic result, allowing for further filtering, subsetting and interpretation. The Isotopic Atlas of Australia will continue to develop via the addition of both new and legacy data to existing coverages, and by the addition of new data coverages from a wider range of isotopic systems and a wider range of geological sample media (e.g. soil, regolith and groundwater).

A review of mineral exploration trends, activities and discoveries in Australia in 2020