Fire-Note is a 6000+ circulation bulletin of the Aust. Fire and Emergency Service Australia Council (AFAC). This Fire-Note introduces GA's NEXIS (National EXposure Information System) to the fire and emergency services community.

The Australian Geological Survey Organisation (AGSO) presents its solutions to mapping and GIS on the Internet. Software used is based on commercial and open source products. A distributed web mapping system is demonstrated, and concepts of distributed web mapping discussed. Systems for online delivery of spatial data are also demonstrated. AGSO has been providing Internet access to spatial data since 1996. AGSO is the main repository for national geoscientific data, and services a wide range of clients across industry, government and the general public. Data provided range from point data, such as site descriptions and scientific analysis of samples, to line, polygon and grid data, such as geological and geophysical surveys and associated maps. AGSO currently holds 500 MB of GIS data and a similar amount of image data on its web site; these data are expected to expand to a number of terabytes over the next few years. A primary role of AGSO is to provide its data to clients and stakeholders in as efficient a way as possible, hence its choice of Internet delivery. The major obstacle for supplying data of large volume over the Internet is bandwidth. Many AGSO clients are in remote locations with low bandwidth connections to the Internet. Possible solutions to this problem are presented. Examples of AGSO web tools are available at http://www.agso.gov.au/map/

Digital technology and the Internet have contributed to the information explosion and in part the widespread increase in the use of spatial information. In this regard community needs for geoscientific information has extended beyond the traditional area of mineral and petroleum exploration. Geoscience is now recognised by society as having a part to play in the achievement of social wellbeing and environmental outcomes. This paper examines whether the geoscience data providers are playing their part in the data explosion. It looks at how geoscience can be applied to real world problems and questions whether the data providers are up to the mark in satisfying the immediate expectations of users as well as initiating new areas of application. The discussion incorporates issues of price, accessibility, formats and data assemblage in relation to a hierarchy of need for decision making.

No abstract available

Over the past 10 years, Australia has maintained 65-85% self-sufficiency in oil and better than 100% suffiency in gas. This has generated significant societal benefits in terms of employment, balance of payments, and revenue. However the decline of the super-giant Gippsland fields, discovery of smaller oil pools on the Northwest Shelf, and the increasing reliance on condensate to sustain our liquids supply sharpens the focus on Australia's need to increase exporation and discover more oil. Australia is competing in the global market place for exploration funds but as it is relatively under-explored there is a need to simulate interest through access to pre-competitive data and information. Public access to exploration and production data is a key plank in Australian promotion of petroleum exploration acreage. Access results from legislation that initially subsidised exploration in return for lodgement and public availability of exploration and production (E&P) data. Today publicly available E&P data ranges from digital seismic tapes, to core and cuttings samples from wells, and access to relational databases, including organic geochemistry, biostratigraphy, and shows information. Seismic information is being progressively consolidated to high density media. Under the Commonwealth Government?s Spatial Information and Data Access Policy, announced in 2001, company data is publicly available at the cost of transfer, after a relatively brief confidentiality period. In addition, pre-competitive regional studies relating to petroleum prospectivity, undertaken by Government, and databases and spatial information is free over the Internet, further reducing the cost of exploration. In cooperation with the Australian States and the Northern Territory, we are working towards jointly presenting Australian opportunities through the Geoscience Portal (http://www.geoscience.gov.au) and a virtual one stop data repository. The challenge now is to translate data availability to increased exploration uptake, through client information, and through ever-improving on-line access.

The Australian National Marine Data Group was formed by the Heads of Marine Agencies (HOMA) to promote improved interchange of marine data in Australia. The ANMDG held a workshop of practitioners in May 2002 with the intention of identifying major areas of interest and tasks for working groups to address in order to make progress with development of marine data interchange in Australia. This Proceedings CD contains the presentations by speakers in the form of PowerPoint slides and a few Acrobat documents. It was distributed to participants in the workshop.

The International Forest Carbon Initiative, IFCI, is part of Australia's contribution to international efforts on reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. It focuses on technology transfer to developing countries by assisting them to implement national carbon accounting schemes modelled on that established by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. Key inputs to those accounting schemes are mosaics of the best available satellite scenes in a given year. Collections of these mosaics, spanning periods of at least a decade, are used to determine changes to the extent and type of forest cover. Those characterisations are used to determine net forest carbon flux, which is a significant component of overall carbon flows in tropical countries. In support of these activities, Geoscience Australia manages a project to obtain, process, archive and distribute large volumes of satellite data, initially with a focus on Indonesia and other parts of Asia. Three key changes from 'business as usual' activities were required to process and manage, on a large scale, a satellite data time-series to support the International Forest Carbon Initiative. First, at Geoscience Australia, a new facility known as the Earth Observation Data Store is being developed. Secondly, innovative techniques such as the use of USB Flash Drives for data distribution and of DVDs for quick look catalogue distribution have proved beneficial for the participating agencies in developing countries, as well as for data transfers from regional satellite archives. Thirdly, much of the data, especially the Landsat satellite imagery, has for the first time been made available to the users with minimal restrictions, via the employment of open content licensing known as Creative Commons.

Earth comprises systems of enormous complexity that sustain all life and control the distribution of our mineral, energy and water resources. Increasingly earth scientists are now moving away from focusing on single domain research on understanding isolated parts of these intricate systems to adopting multidisciplinary, computationally intensive integrated methodologies to model and simulate the real world complexities of earth systems science. Simultaneously developments in information technology are increasing the capacity of computational systems to credibly simulate complex systems. Real world Solid Earth and Environmental Science data sets are extremely heterogenous, complex and large, and are currently in the order of terabytes (1012 bytes). However, the size and complexity of geoscience data sets are also exponentially increasing, as more powerful modern computing systems combine with enhanced engineering capacity to design and build automated instruments to collect more data and new data types. We are rapidly moving into an era when Earth Scientists will need to have the capacity to analyse petabyte (1015 bytes) databases if they are to realistically model and simulate complex earth processes. Although digital geoscientific data sets are becoming increasingly available over the Internet, current Internet technologies only allow for the downloading of data (if the connection is fast enough): integration, processing and analysis then has to take place locally. As data sets get larger and more complex, then large computational resources are required to effectively process these data. Such resources are increasingly only available to the major industry players, which in turn creates a strong bias against the Small to Middle Enterprises, as well as many University researchers. For those that do not have access to large-scale computing resources, analysis of these voluminous data sets has to be compromised by dividing the data set into smaller units, accepting sub-optimal solutions and/or introducing sub-optimal approximations. It is clear that if we are to begin grappling with accurate analysis of large-scale geoscientific data sets to enable sustainable management of our mineral, energy and water resources, then current computational infrastructures are no longer viable.

Geoscience Australia (GA) produces geoscientific and geospatial data for the benefit of the Australian government and community, to inform public policy, to promote development of Australia's economy, to assist environmental management and to help manage and mitigate natural hazards. Users of GA's data want to know that data are produced to known standards using open and accountable processes and come from a unique and reliable source. Single Point of Truth (SPOT) is Geoscience Australia's standard for processes that produce data. The SPOT methodology describes a consistent approach to transforming an existing data theme into a SPOT. The same methodology can be used for developing a SPOT for a new data theme.

Legacy product - no abstract available