Satellite navigation is an important capability in our modern lives—we use it to find the nearest petrol station, order food at home, and track an arriving package. Accurate satellite-enabled positioning and timing technology is also becoming vital in many industrial sectors of the economy, including transport, agriculture, resources, and utilities. On behalf of the Australian government and in partnership with New Zealand, Geoscience Australia is improving satellite navigation capability for everyone with the Southern Positioning Augmentation Network, or SouthPAN. SouthPAN is a Satellite-Based Augmentation System that will use new spacecraft, ground sensors, and other infrastructure to broadcast corrections that complement existing Global Navigation Satellite Systems—like GPS, for example. SouthPAN services will commence in 2022 and be progressively improved in the coming years, ultimately being used in their most critical application: by aircraft to land at airports.

Every day, humanity benefits from geodesy. Geodesy is the science of measuring the size, shape, orientation and gravity field of our planet and it is a foundation for evidence-based policies, decisions and program delivery. Geodesy is used every day, in the fields of civil engineering, industrial automation, agriculture, construction, mining, financial transactions, intelligent transport systems, disaster response and emergency management, environmental studies and scientific research. Furthermore, geodesy enables accurate collection, management and alignment of nationally integrated geospatial information – a key requirement for societal, environmental and economic activities, the measuring and monitoring of progress of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Small Island Developing States Accelerated Modalities of Action (SAMOA) Pathway, and other global, regional and national development agenda and initiatives.

The Flying Hellfish provide Geoscience Australia with web portals of an unprecedented quality and impact. They have achieved this by embracing automation, digital culture and cloud to uplift Geoscience Australia's web portal presence to scale and meet the demands of the modern user. In 2014 these concepts were only ideas and experiments. However, since the team formed in 2016 they have been on a transformational journey towards a new way of working which has delivered radically better digital products than what was available at the outset. User experience is now at the forefront of our web portals, with the common look and feel providing a seamless experience across more than 15 digital products on any device (including smartphones). The security has been proven to be state-of-the-art, and the products are designed to be fast and responsive. In this presentation you will learn how the team utilises NoOps (the No Operations paradigm) to build, operate and support these products while continuing to quickly and efficiently deliver new and innovative digital products.

Precise positioning based on constellations of navigation satellites brings significant economic and social benefits to Australia. Precise positioning reduces fertiliser and chemical spray waste in agriculture. It improves the efficiency of operations in large mine sites. Precise positioning improves safety in aircraft operations and can even give added freedom of movement to sight impaired people. The rationale behind the Ginan project is to develop the software and data products to allow everybody in Australia to enjoy the benefits of precise positioning through the creation of new services and products, and in doing so drive economic growth enhancing Australia's prosperity.

"History provides a limited picture of what can happen from tropical cyclones (TCs). Take the example of Port Hedland or Townsville, with limited numbers of close TC impacts, especially in recent decades, where many communities have gone through rapid growth. How could emergency services in these towns prepare adequately for a major TC strike with no recent experience? How do they know if they have sufficient resources? Will they need to call in resources from other regions or further afield? In this presentation, we will discuss two parts of this problem – developing plausible scenarios of TCs for use in exercises and then evaluating the impacts of a selection of these events to guide planning and response actions for emergency services. GA’s Tropical Cyclone Hazard Assessment (TCHA) provides the backbone of impact scenario modelling – a stochastic catalogue of 10,000 years of plausible TC events that users can delve into. We connect the scenarios to our extensive built environment data collection and the corresponding vulnerability modelling capability to deliver tangible information on the impacts that as-yet unseen events could deliver to communities around our northern coastline.

Exploring for the Future (EFTF) is a multiyear (2016–2024) initiative of the Australian Government, conducted by Geoscience Australia. This program aims to improve Australia’s desirability for industry investment in resource exploration of frontier regions across Australia. This paper will focus on the science impacts from the EFTF program in northern Australia derived from the acquisition and interpretation of seismic surveys, the drilling of the NDI Carrara 1 and also complementary scientific analysis and interpretation to determine the resource potential of the region. This work was undertaken in collaboration with the Northern Territory Geological Survey, the Queensland Geological Survey, AuScope and the MinEx CRC. These new data link the highly prospective resource rich areas of the McArthur Basin and Mt Isa Province via a continuous seismic traverse across central northern Australia. The Exploring for the Future program aims to further de-risk exploration within greenfield regions and position northern Australia for future exploration investment. [Carr] The Sherbrook Supersequence is the youngest of four Cretaceous supersequences in the Otway Basin and was deposited during a phase of crustal extension. This presentation shows how a basin-scale gross depositional environment (GDE) map for the Sherbrook SS was constructed, the significance of the map for the Austral 3 petroleum system, and why GDE mapping is important for pre-competitive basin studies at Geoscience Australia. [Abbott]

Our planet provides everything we need for our lives, including the food we eat. As the human population increases and expectations for lifestyle quality increases, so too do the pressures placed on our planet to provide that food. We therefore need to be better at producing food and understanding how that links to our scientific understanding of our planet. For National Science Week 2021, the Geoscience Australia public seminar (co-sponsored by the ACT Division of the Geological Society of Australia and the ACT Branch of the Australian Marine Sciences Association) will present four speakers to demonstrate how geoscience is integral to the provision of our food. Steve Hill – The Long View: Across many disciplines of geoscience and different spatial scales, geology, soils and even plate tectonics influence our food (and wine). Andrew Carroll – Finding Important Seabed Habitat (FISH): Did you know that seabed mapping data directly contributes $9 billion to the Australian economy each year and employs over 56,000 people? For the fishing and aquaculture sectors, seabed mapping is valued at $3 billion. However, only one quarter of Australia’s seabed is mapped! Learn how GA is addressing this challenge to support the rapid growth of Australia's Blue Economy. Claire Krause – Food at Scale: In a country as big and dynamic as Australia, producing food is no small task. Satellite imagery is being leveraged to map, monitor and understand Australia’s food production regions and to identify and manage challenges in the sector. Anna Riddell – From Paddock to Plate with Positioning: Have you ever wondered how your food arrives on your plate and the role that navigation satellites play? Positioning is becoming ubiquitous in everyday life and even has a part in enabling our food to be grown, harvested and transported.

Geoscience Australia's value to the nation, outlined in our overarching Strategy 2028, is through our science. However, the way that we apply our science to support a strong economy, resilient society and sustainable environment cannot be taken for granted. Our new Science Strategy 2028, to be launched by Geoscience Australia's Chief Scientist, Dr Steve Hill, during this event, will support Strategy 2028 in our mission to be the nation's trusted advisor on the geology and geography of Australia. It will provide strategic direction for developing and delivering the science that underpins our core business. Dr Hill will outline how our guiding Science Principles apply to our way of working -- not just the way in which we work as an organisation, but also in the way that we work with our partners in using science to create benefits for all Australians.

The AusAEM survey is the world's largest airborne electromagnetic (AEM) survey flown to date, extending across an area exceeding 3.5 million km2 over Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland, New South Wales Victoria and South Australia. Airborne electromagnetics is a geophysical method at the forefront in addressing the challenge of exploration under cover. In collaboration with the state and territory geological surveys, Geoscience Australia has led a national initiative whose goal is to acquire AEM data at a nominal line spacing of 20 km across Australia. The interpreted AEM conductivity sections were inverted using Geoscience Australia's open source Layered Earth Inversion Sample-By-Sample Time Domain Electromagnetics (GALEISBSTDEM) inversion. Horizontal along-flight line resolution is 12.5 m, and the vertical resolution varies exponentially with depth. Inversion cell sizes increase from 4.0 m at the surface to ~55 m in the bottom cell of the conductivity sections, ~500 m below surface. Consequently, the ability to resolve fine detail varies with depth. Using this dataset, we interpret the depth to chronostratigraphic surfaces, assembled stratigraphic relationship information, and delineated structural and electrically conductive features. Our results improved understanding of upper-crustal geology, led to 3D mapping of palaeovalleys, prompted further investigation of electrical conductors and their relationship to structural features and mineralisation, and helped us continuously connect correlative outcropping units separated by up to hundreds of kilometres. Our interpretation is designed to improve targeting and outcomes for mineral, energy and groundwater exploration, and contributes to our understanding of the chronostratigraphic, structural and upper-crustal evolution of northern Australia. Almost 200,000 regional depth measurements have been collected, each attributed with detailed geological information, are an important step towards a national geological framework, and offer a regional context for more detailed, smaller-scale AEM surveys. The AusAEM programme delivers much more than just reliable depth-to-cover estimates and the location of paleochannels. It can reveal basin architecture and regionally map structures, making it a crucial layer of data for mineral, energy and groundwater and exploration. It has become an essential part of data-driven decision making for conservation and environmental management.

In recent years, the application of passive seismic imaging techniques has gained significant traction in the industry and national programs, despite its long-standing utilization in academia. During this talk, we will highlight several innovative techniques that our team has developed and successfully implemented in a scalable and efficient manner. These techniques have proven instrumental in identifying fundamental structures within the Earth's subsurface, providing valuable insights previously untapped by conventional methods. Join us as we delve into the transformative potential of passive seismic imaging and its emerging role in advancing our understanding of Earth's 3D structure.