First up was our work on Retromaps, which recently won the Spatial Enablement category of the Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards for Western Australia. 

This project started a very long time ago when we started thinking about what to do with maps in Archives around Australia.  We had been working with the State Records Office of Western Australia (SROWA) on implementing a new Archival Management System for their use (based on the open source Access To Memory platform), and so we picked up some publicly available maps and in December 2015, we georeferenced a few, and did a basic web map (located here).  Then, in 2016, Damien Hassan from SROWA came to one of our QGIS training courses, and we talked about how to digitise those maps (again, here).  Damien worked on the digitisation of those 2,202 plans over the course of the next few years, and Retromaps was born from that massive effort.  Next thing I know, Damian Shepherd and I are standing in front of a room full of spatial people accepting an award for the project on behalf of our teams that worked so hard on this project.

About a week later, we were invited by the team at South Coast NRM to watch the 2021 Australian BioSecurity Awards, where there was particular mention of the Project Dieback project – which we have assisted with the development of the Dieback Information Delivery and Management System (DIDMS), which was again contributed to by a large group of people over the years.  Their acceptance speech was a good one to see:

There’s nothing better than hearing that our clients have won awards for work that we’ve done with them, as it really does make us feel like we’ve done a good job.  Some, like Retromaps, end up being years in the making, but that’s still a great reminder of what we’ve delivered.

Really – what we want to say is “thank you” to our clients for choosing us to work with them, and hopefully we can help our future clients win more awards!

If you would like to know more about how Gaia Resources can help you, then feel free to get in touch via email, or start a conversation with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Piers

P.S. For those not in Australia – the title “Straight to the pool room” is a great line from an Australian film called “The Castle”, meaning that it’s worthy of being treasured!

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We are always looking to improve GRID to create further efficiencies for the user and increasing data quality. One suggestion that arose during the workshop was to see whether it was possible to enter field data on a tablet device in remote areas. This would allow SCNRM staff to plot their work areas, fill out form fields and upload photos straight to their newly created GRID feature.

On the second day of the workshop Tracey, together with a few of the workshop participants, went out to Mt Manypeaks north-east of Albany, to a granite outcrop with cultural significance at the edge of Lake Pleasant View. SCNRM Project Officer for Cultural Heritage Peter ‘Twigg’ Twigg has been working there with local indigenous teams focussing on weed management.

Twigg and Ray used GRID on the iPad to perform a variety of common tasks. With Tracey’s guidance, Twigg was able to:

• add features to his GRID instance including points, lines and polygons, and upload PDFs and images,
• take photos on the iPad and load them directly into GRID – a great time saver as it avoids double-handling images back at the office.

Of course, we also discovered some of the current limitations of using GRID in a web browser on a mobile device, such as:

• employing tablets with 4G connectivity would have been helpful, but we were able to hotspot from our phones and use SCNRM’s wifi-only iPads without much hassle,
• GRID does not yet have a mobile responsive design, so there were some limitations and display issues such as some menus overlapping, and a popup the popup window that couldn’t be closed.

So, future enhancements necessary to use GRID in the field would include:

• a mobile-responsive design,
• a GPS location button that users can tap so the map zooms to their current location,
• offline data entry when field work is done outside the range of mobile networks.

Please note, this will be the last face-to-face training session we undertake for the foreseeable future, given the COVID-19 shutdowns in place across Australia. However, we do freely provide a great set of QGIS online training videos for those who would like to upskill during this downtime. (You can keep up to date with Gaia Resources responses to the COVID-19 in these posts).

If you’d like to discuss any of the topics covered in this post, please drop us a line at training@gaiaresources.com.au, or connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Alex

The post Testing GRID in the field appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The program is managed by the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) and is delivered in partnership with seven regional Natural Resource Management (NRM) groups. The program currently has almost 2000 properties across Western Australia.

Land for Wildlife property owners, Robyn and Andy McElroy, at Boyup Brook – photo ©Parks and Wildlife

The team here at Gaia Resources are really excited to support this valuable nature conservation program by doing what we love – delivering sustainable technology solutions to make the world a better place.

We developed a web-based spatial system to manage information about the existing LFW properties and new applicants to the program.

The system allows DBCA and regional NRM officers to view and edit the data in an integrated system, with all officers able to see updates in real-time. This makes collaboration much easier, both within each group and across all eight organisations. It also saves officer time (previously information was stored across multiple formats and systems) allowing officers to focus on the landholders and wildlife conservation.

The LFW GRID allows real-time collaboration and centralised data management for many users across eight partner organisations

The system also has a new webpage for the public to register their interest in the program. This connects directly into the spatial system, so DBCA and NRM officers can see new applications in real-time.

The LFW registration page submits data directly into the LFW GRID, visible to DBCA and NRM officers in real-time

We also set up the system to trigger an email to the LFW program coordinator and relevant regional NRM group as soon as a new application is submitted.

The system is based on our GRID product (Geographic & Reporting Information Database). This is an easy-to-use, online geographical information system (GIS) for regional NRM groups.

It allows regional NRM staff to record valuable information about NRM work in their region (for example, weed control, revegetation etc) and encourages real-time collaboration between staff within an NRM group, and across multiple NRM groups working on the same project.

GRID was originally developed for South West Catchments Council and is currently in use in seven NRM groups, and two other whole-of-state programs (State NRM and the Dieback Information Delivery and Management System).

GRID is a great example of how NRM groups can leverage and build upon each other’s investment in one system, resulting in a product that is tailored for each group’s specific needs but grounded in a common platform with which the vast majority of the NRM community are familiar.

For LFW we worked closely with DBCA, Peel-Harvey Catchment Council (PHCC) and the other regional NRM groups to tailor this version of GRID to suit the workflow and partnership-based delivery of the LFW program. This work was completed as part of a State NRM Program funded project, managed by the PHCC and DBCA.

If you’d like to know more about GRID and how it can help you improve collaboration and efficiency in your organisation and partnerships, please send me an email or start a conversation via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Gill

The post Land for Wildlife gets a boost with GRID appeared first on Gaia Resources.

It’s a great question and gets at the core of a lot of the work I’ve been involved in over the last 15yrs on both sides of the fence helping government and proponents to limit environmental impacts – particularly in relation to approvals, reporting and compliance.

A common theme at the NT Resources Week back in September – and again in conversation at the Territory NRM conference in Darwin – was that we live in a time of rapidly changing and evolving technology, and this represents major challenges for the regulators and proponents alike to communicate and report on projects, and to weave their way through environmental risks from the approvals stage through to closure.

The chairman of the NTEPA – Paul Vogel – at NT Resources Week discussing key issues and opportunities in environmental regulation.

It was presentations by Paul Vogel (NTEPA) and others that brought a few things home to me about how environmental technology  – including emerging opportunities in data science and machine learning  – can make a difference. Here’s some of the ways in which we have helped organisations such as regulators and resource companies, including:

• System health checks,
• New and improved data sources,
• Monitoring and automated reporting,
• System development, and 
• Data analytics and data science.

Some thoughts on these areas follow.

System health checks

We can undertake independent reviews of how well an organisation’s technology systems are performing in the areas of data collection and discovery, software and automation, hardware and processes (like we did for the Independence Group and the WA Office of the Environmental Protection Agency). These health checks are ways in which technology can reduce operating costs for environmental regulatory processes.

One of the key parts of this approach is our independence at Gaia Resources – we are not resellers of any software, so we can recommend the best of breed solutions to our clients.

New and improved data sources

Data is being collected in unprecedented volumes, with organisations involved in applications for water and soil quality monitoring, ground disturbance tracking, logistics, energy efficiency etc. Sensors on the waterways, on vehicles, drones and on satellites, or behind the electricity meter, are all gathering massive amounts of time series data to monitor our environment.

We keep a close eye on new sources of data – such as remote sensing products and sensor data – that might benefit regulators (and indeed, any of our clients) through integration for their compliance monitoring programs.  Some recent ones we’ve found include:

• Weather and metocean data for field sample analysis, 
• Smart Cities sensors (like at the City of Darwin) for heat, dust and air quality, 
• Satellite imagery (e.g. Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2) for vegetation cover, health and flooding,
• Drone data products for site compliance and risk assessment,
• Broadscale data products from Digital Earth Australia for regional assessments.

Through our products like GRID, we also provide managed services where we provide these sorts of new data source to our clients as layers in that web mapping solution that they can then use across their operations.

Open data products from Digital Earth Australia (Geoscience Australia) like mangrove cover and intertidal extents can easily be brought into GRID and other GIS packages for monitoring projects (Source: National Map).

Monitoring and Automated Reporting

Whether we are talking about land clearing, air quality or other metrics, this is about using the aggregated data sources (including smart data sensors and field data) to assist the regulators and proponents to improve the accuracy of their work, and save time and money through push-button reporting. In turn, the regulator receives more accurate, consistent and timely reports against environmental conditions and thresholds – benefiting the environment. 

Recent advances in remote sensing offer a powerful tool to answer the question “Are we having the minimal impact we said we were going to have?” Imagery from free (or near free) satellite platforms can now give us a snapshot every few days about land disturbance, vegetation health, soil moisture, dust and other factors. Drone imagery offers another more localised dimension to site monitoring capabilities – and drones can of course do other things, as we have found in our work with Wildlife Drones. 

System Development

Regulators often have processes that may or may not have systems to support them – online systems can simplify and standardise the submission of data, like Environmental Impact Assessment data, which has the benefit of streamlining processes – and this can also deal with one of the pain points I’ve heard from both regulators and proponents around understanding the status of an application.

Data Analytics and Data Science

Using the knowledge of past disturbance and a range of aggregated environmental data, the environmental impact of a current application can be assessed against a broad range of potential impact variables (see our previous blog on this topic, focusing on cumulative impacts).  With advances in data science, machine learning and big data, predictive modelling is becoming more and more realistic for regulators to take up and use in their operations.

If you’d like to know more about our work in the environmental regulation space, or want to share your ideas on how we could be further leveraging new technologies in this area, then please feel to start a conversation on any of the regular channels ( Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook) or send me an email on chris.roach@gaiaresources.com.au.

Chris

The post Technology and Environmental Regulation appeared first on Gaia Resources.

In spatial technology, the word “topology” is all about the building blocks of geometry. Like other ‘ology’ words (e.g. geology and biology) it has its root in the study of something – and in this case we are talking about the study of geometrical properties and spatial relationships between constituent parts of a shape or a set of related shapes. Topology considers anything from the individual feature to the relationship between features. Individual features can be in the form of points, lines or polygons. Furthermore a polygon can be broken down into its constituent nodes/vertices, segments/edges and faces (see schematic below). Topology usually deals with the way in which features interact with adjacent or connecting features.

A 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional shape consists of different geometry types (Source: Cc-by-sa-3.0)

The job of maintaining topologically consistent data is critical if you are in the business of using spatial data to do anything beyond make basic maps; for example, accurately calculating area of different vegetation types in a study area.  Encompassing this process is a huge range of software, tools, and features that enable users to maintain a healthy dataset or database – and we’ve been crazy dedicated enough to go through these for you. Scroll down to find out how you can get a handle on your funky topology.

Topology Errors

In your GIS travels you may come across a number of topology errors, each with their own whirlwind of disaster! Sometimes the topology issue is not easy to spot until you try and run a geoprocessing tool and it just falls over with a generic error message. The problem is often so small and at such a minute scale, that you wouldn’t know it is a problem until you get these errors trying to work with the geometry.

Example of how ET Geowizards software deals with overlapping polygons (Source: ET SpatialTechniques).

Some of the common topology errors include:

• Overlaps – where polygons overlap each other (and they should not),
• Gaps – where there is dead space between polygons (but there should not be),
• Slivers – our favourites, caused by tiny little pieces not matching up,
• Dangles – where lines hang over the edge of something, and,
• Bowties – where there’s been issues from the digitising of the data and polygons are self-intersecting.

Depending on the purpose of your data, there are several other error types you can look for with the topology software and tools available.

If you encounter any of these it is probably safe to say any further analysis on the data will create more problems, and you need to get that stuff fixed up!

Quantum GIS (QGIS)

QGIS (a free and open source GIS package) has a topology checker tool built into its core product. Users are able to set specific rules which will point to that error’s location and allow you to focus on it and fix it. This can be more of a manual task of fixing one error at a time from the list generated, but very helpful nevertheless considering that some of these errors could be tiny.  I had the pleasure of working on one native wildlife habitat project with over 25,000 errors in one dataset, and I should point out there are ways of streamlining these tools to efficiently deal errors of that scale.

Example of the topology checker tool in QGIS

Check out our QGIS video tutorials where we go through this tool and others. There are also new tools in version 3.x to ensure topology is digitised correctly and errors are kept to a minimum.

The added bonus with QGIS is the multiple GIS software packages and plug-ins that extend the core product. This opens up other avenues in order to investigate topology tools for your particular purpose.  In particular, check out GRASS “v.clean” in the QGIS processing toolbox!

ArcGIS

ArcGIS is a leading proprietary GIS desktop software and has multiple tools for establishing topology rules, as well as checking and fixing errors. Using topology features in ArcGIS requires an  upgrade to the middle tier license – called Standard – that comes at an additional price to the Basic product.

There are excellent topology tools and workflows that can be used to setup new data or import existing data – embedding specific topological rules (i.e. no gaps, no overlaps, etc.) so by the end of your project you will be the proud owner of topologically correct data.

Other commercial software out there also deals with topology issues in a range of other ways.

ET GeoWizards

ET GeoWizards is an extension tool for ArcGIS as well as having its own standalone software product. It has a once-off cost – a relatively small investment for something that we consider to be good value for money. This link will give you an overview of what ET GeoWizards offers in terms of topology and how it goes about identifying, maintaining, and fixing topology errors.

For the functionality and quality of output that ET GeoWizards offers to ArcGIS Basic users out there the relatively low price point is justified in our opinion.

PostGIS

PostGIS is a free and open source spatial database software that includes a small number of topology tools. It’s a bit more complex than the ‘usual’ desktop tools, but it’s worth reviewing for larger corporate systems.  Check them out here!

So what?

So, you’ve come to the realisation that you have a (topology) problem. Great! You’ve accepted the challenge and your data is on the road to recovery; so, which toolset is best for you? Well, there’s a bunch of different ways in which these software packages can be used on their own or in combination to deal with different topology issues; as shown below:

Matching topology needs and software in a “simple” diagram

We have come across multiple instances where datasets needed some topology love (click here for project examples). Depending on the use case the software chosen usually stood up to the task and in some workflows the process could be automated.  In our disturbance mapping work for various mining companies for instance, their tenements, disturbance and various other datasets were overlapping and convoluted in ways that made it impossible for them to get an accurate a reliable snapshot and statistics for environmental reporting.  With a mixture of ET GeoWizards, QGIS, and automated processes we were able to cleanse their data and output a result for the client to report efficiently and effectively.  We also documented the on-going processing that was needed for their team to continue to maintain a topologically clean data store into the future. This is something that we’re working up right now into a separate blog article, focusing on the entire chain from capturing disturbance through to processing results, from start to finish.

If you would like to know more about this subject or how we can help your business understand, cope, or survive topology in GIS, then please drop me a line, or start a conversation on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Jake

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The State NRM Office are a part of the State government Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) and are involved in coordinating, funding and reporting on NRM efforts in the State. A big part of that is their provision of the Community Stewardship Grants round released in mid 2018. Their existing grant software – while powerful in its own right – did not allow applicants to specify where they were going to be doing particular proposed activities “on the ground”. A whole range of questions could begin to be answered with this data, to do with geographic distribution of activities by type, alignment with regional strategies, and program effectiveness.

As an existing GRID customer, the State NRM office saw the potential in the web mapping product to help them catalog these proposed activities and to assess and track grant applications from organisations spread all over the State. However, they needed something that would be simple to use with no training required, and guide them smoothly through the steps of their application. GRID with its rich functionality and different modules just wasn’t going to work as an entry point for applicants new to the world of geospatial software. While GRID is great for a range of NRM activities, we were looking here at applicants who initially had one task they needed to achieve. If you think about the experience you get when you use a (good) in-car navigation or banking app, that’s the kind of experience we were going for where there are minimal mouse clicks and buttons involved – as outlined in the accompanying video we made to help grant applicants.

Our team for the project, including one of our Technical Leads, Tony Prior, along with fellow software engineer James Patrick and yours truly, were all convinced that there was a good fit between the grant application process and GRID. Something more tailored and targeted to the grant process was needed; at the end of the day the data it would generate is also of importance for State NRM office business processes.

So, we designed and implemented a RESTful API (Application Interface) as an enhancement to GRID. This gives us a means of exchanging data  between GRID and a separate web application that we developed, called GRID Grants. GRID Grants provides a step-by-step workflow to define proposed on-ground and capability activities like fencing, weed control, and community events. The State NRM office is able to control several aspects of the GRID Grants content through GRID itself. As shown in the video above, applicants can search for a location, specify a number of activities, draw specific features on a map view and enter other relevant data.

The RESTful API opens the door for future similar projects where GRID integration is required.  It’s also a mobile responsive tool written in Angular, which shows how we can leverage the best frameworks for the solutions that we offer.

We didn’t only just deliver a technical solution, though – we wanted to make sure that it worked for our audience before we released it! We do adopt an Agile methodology to software development where it works for our clients and their projects, and this enables client feedback to be taken into consideration during the development of a product. This provided real benefit during the GRID Grants development – we had the opportunity to have a second crack at our “less than ideal” first version.  The first time around made sense to those familiar with data entry products, but not to the general public. Through consultation with the client and testing – with real applicants! – we were able to flesh-out an alternative user experience design that ‘clicked’ for people of varying technical backgrounds. With this change, our testers suddenly understood the link between features on the map and the information they needed to associate with that feature.

So along the way in the project, we also did some swift pivots to help the client with issues other than just delivering a technical solution. We also developed the YouTube help video above, which the State NRM Office really appreciated when the grant round opened and some 150 applicants suddenly started using the system.  We also provided additional phone and email support for the applicants when half the State NRM office got sick in the final days of the application round!

We’ve had some great feedback directly from applicants, and we are looking forward to the next phase of work with the State NRM Office to help with even smoother and easier tracking of the approved projects and reporting.  Working with the NRM industry is very close to our core mission of enabling our clients to make the positive changes to the environment they look after, and so this is a great opportunity to support the industry even more.

If GRID, or GRID Grants, look like solutions that your organisation could use for managing your spatial data, feel free to reach out and start a conversation with either Tony or myself. We can contacted by email, or feel free to kick off a chat with us via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Chris

The post StateNRM takes GRID to the next level with GRID Grants appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Marie Taylor welcomed us with a spirited and compassionate message of sharing and caring for country.

The opening address, by the Minister for Regional Development; Agriculture & Food, the Hon. Alannah MacTiernan MLC, was forthright and announced that she was working to ensure $7.5M as a recurring item in the State budget for the State Natural Resources Management Office, who administer the grants rounds where this can be applied for (which just closed on Monday).

Hon. Alannah MacTiernan updating the audience on her work supporting the Landcare community

Some of the other highlights included:

• Dr Nic Dunlop from the Conservation Council WA presented ‘A Citizen Science Model for Measuring NRM Outcomes’, asking the question — ‘how do we measure project success?’  He also discussed the use of birds as a surrogate for vegetation health, and the use of adaptive management methods.
• Jo Ludbrook from Coastcare in the Southwest & Peel regions (CoastSWaP) presented their work and was one of a number of people who discussed their agencies use of the NACC software ‘Photomon‘ which helps photographically monitor landscape change over time.  
• Dr. Guy Boggs from WA’s Biodiversity Science Institute (WABSI) gave a thought-provoking look at their take on ‘Linking Science and Research with On­ground Action’.
• You can watch many of the day’s talks on WALN’s YouTube Channel!

Guy discussing Research – Policy Relations in his talk

During the day I spoke with many friendly and committed people with great ideas, motivations and projects. If there was one message I took from this was that in an environment with increasing need for action yet reduced funding, there is an even greater need for efficiency. This would perhaps best come from comprehensive community access to shared, reliable, current information on the environment and the people and projects working across the land – something we have been working towards with GRID, our easy-to-use online GIS for the natural resource management community, as well as other citizen science projects.

If you’d like to know more about how we can help you with developing project data management, citizen science programs or how a smartphone app could improve your community engagement and scientific data capture, then please leave a comment below, start a chat with us via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, or email me directly via alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au.

Alex

The post WA Landcare Network Forum appeared first on Gaia Resources.

On this trip, we provided an overview of GRID’s new features with staff from the various offices of the South-West Catchments Council (SWCC).  Staff came from across the South-West region of Western Austalia, including some remote participants connecting via Google Hangouts.  The Bunbury Regional Library provided a computer room to serve as our “classroom” for the day and was conveniently just a stone’s throw from Café 140 (side note: they didn’t have cafes as nice as this one when I lived in Bunbury!).  As seems to be expected when you hire rooms, there were some technical difficulties with the projector and wifi, but we pushed on.

These sorts of events provide us with the perfect opportunity to interact directly with our customers to really immerse them in the material we are presenting, seek feedback on how GRID is performing for them, and build a picture of what enhancements and functionality that they would like to see.  As we revealed each feature in detail and fielded questions from participants a few things became apparent…

GRID can’t be a one size fits all

GRID serves multiple purposes for multiple people, even just within one organisation. Among attendees that day alone we had people who relied on SWCC GRID for data management, data extraction for further interrogation in a desktop GIS program (mainly QGIS, which we have been helping SWCC with for a while now – and released our environmental training as a free on-line course recently), a range of mapping and reporting tasks, investigating what activities are taking place in neighbouring regions, and even managing volunteer groups and their associated on-ground activities.

With such a diverse range of applications by the people that use it, it’s clear GRID needs to be versatile, and any additions we make must both cater to the needs of one group of people whilst also not limiting others. This balance can be delicate and tricky to achieve, despite our clients all being in the NRM space, and is something we are continually attempting to improve.

Showing is better than telling

As we’ve come to suspect, it seems that most people don’t read our email communications or the release notes that document the new features that we release in each new GRID build, so although we had excitedly described these new features previously, most people in the room were unaware the features even existed.  As an example, as we described the ‘new’ filtering options (which were released in 1.3 back in September 2017), faces lit up around the room.

“I didn’t even know I could do that”.

“That’s going to be great for ____”

This has led us to rethink the way we announce upgrades and features in future and really assess the best way to convey the information so that it reaches people, and they truly understand the new features and what they can do… perhaps time for more online videos!

Having time for discussions is critical

With these GRID training ‘update’ sessions, Chris and I have endeavoured to create a comfortable training environment without too rigid of a structure. The benefit to this personable approach is participants relax and talk to us honestly about anything and everything GRID-related, giving us some very valuable feedback. The little ‘whinges’ that people may have had at the back of their mind tend to get expressed, and often they are actually things that are caused by a misunderstanding, and many are already solvable, or are easily fixable.

Best of all, the things that aren’t immediately rectifiable help us to create two lists – a ‘Fix It’ list for immediate investigation when we get back to the office, and a ‘Wishlist’ for future upgrades. Being face to face with clients really allows us to flesh out Wishlist ideas and bounce them off others in the room for refining.  This all goes into our work towards the next roadmapping session we will have with our customers for GRID (where we’ll roll out the GRID Bucks, just like we did last year).

Chris discussing enhancement ideas with Joanna while we show off some shiny new GRID features.

This particular session with SWCC was jam-packed with information, both giving and receiving, and went well and truly went over schedule. But the invaluable feedback we received made every minute worthwhile.

Some other learning curves for me in particular:

• Some of our descriptions of the new features were a little confusing for participants, because I had assumed (wrongly!) that all attendees were well-practiced in using GRID. We need to put aside any assumptions and cater to the least experienced people in the room, which can be a real challenge – but that’s something to work on in future.
• During demos, everything can go wrong will go wrong. Wifi, projectors, remote connections, internet speeds… So we need to be (even more) prepared, set up exceedingly early, and have a backup plan for everything – and make sure a good cafe is close by!
• And speaking of which, put a time limit on coffee breaks or you’ll lose half the class for an extended period!

We always love catching up with the crew at SWCC and for me, I got to put more faces to the names I hear on the phone.  I know that all our team are very grateful to have such a fantastic client relationship and look forward to putting all the feedback to use.

If you’d like to know more about GRID, or how we can deliver training for you, then feel free to contact either email myself or Chris, call us on (08) 92277309 or start a conversation with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Tracey

The post You can’t beat face-to-face interaction! appeared first on Gaia Resources.

PHCC staff learning how to add aerial imagery as a WMS layer to GRID.

What I also really enjoy doing is taking some time out from focusing inwardly on the technology (e.g. staring at screens) to engage with the GRID community and find out more about how people are using the product. Sure, we all know that GRID provides a means to capture, visualise and report on environmentally focused activities; but you learn something new every time you talk to people.

Our last training session was in Mandurah, at the Peel Harvey Catchment Council offices (well, in the Shed). Two weeks before that we were at the Peppermint Grove Library showing GRID to Coastcare groups in the Perth NRM region. In April we will be in Bunbury for the South West Catchment Council team, and in May it looks like we will run a similar refresher course in Perth for the Rangelands NRM team, and in Geraldton for the Northern Agricultural Catchment Council.

Chris explaining how the new filtering tools work

When I first started with Gaia Resources, NACC had just come on board, and the GRID Enhancements Project was just gaining momentum. Since then I have seen our development team put in some incredibly useful features you might be familiar from using expensive off-the-shelf GIS applications and business systems (like filtering, symbolising by attribute and permissions models). They’ve included some long-asked for enhancements driven by our annual roadmap workshops, and some bonus improvements along the way. We’ve blogged previously about a number of these, so I’ll let you read about them in those entries; but the wonderful thing is seeing people’s eyes light up as they realise how they can put the new tools to use in managing their own environmental data. And, inevitably, good new functionality prompts us all to think about other things that would be useful… so, looking forward to bringing more of that to the table in 2018!

If you’re interested in GRID, feel free to get in touch with me directly, or start a conversation with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Chris

The post GRID Refresher training appeared first on Gaia Resources.

When you host a SaaS (Software as a Service) product on behalf of customers, you come across the occasional bug or issue that needs resolving, a server that needs some love, or customers will tell you about useful enhancements and minor tweaks that can make it more effective for their particular business needs. Taking our GRID web mapping product as an example, these support items are generally things that are covered by the annual support and maintenance agreements – or support blocks – we have with Natural Resource Management (NRM) groups.

What I wanted to talk about in this article is something a bit set aside from bugs and enhancements, called Problem Management.

A problem in the IT or software development sense, is a special type of issue where the cause is unknown at the time that issue is raised, and a process is needed to investigate and manage the ‘root cause’. With most stock standard issues, the support team have a good sense – once they are aware of its existence – of what caused the issue; and therefore can quickly formulate a plan of attack for fixing it.  This involves creating a ticket in our issue tracking system, assigning a team member to ‘replicate’ the issue and write some code (a ‘fix’), and a second team member to quality control the result before it is deployed.

As we learned in a recent experience with a problem that surfaced in GRID, we needed more brain power and a plan of attack. The problem manifested itself in recurring missing attribute data across more than one GRID instance – but despite a couple rounds of testing by one of our team it was unclear what the cause could be. We had some great collaboration from Tilo and Ray at the South Coast NRM office, who helped us recognise when and how the problem was happening, and the specific layer that it was affecting. It seemed impossible to replicate this mysterious phenomenon, and the best information we had were the dates of the last daily backup where that data was still present.

Tony, James and Serge at work in our new Flux shared workspace environment*

We recognised the critical importance of confidence and reliability in the data for our GRID customers, and so took this problem very seriously despite knowing that the data could be restored where necessary.  As part of this process, we piled the brains trust into a “war room” – one of the benefits of our new offices in Perth at FLUX – with a bunch of markers and whiteboards, and discussed a plan of attack that focused on what we call the band-aid (short-term), medicine (middle-term) and surgery ( long-term) approaches:

• Band-aid: when we know the problem has occurred, restore the offending data and notify the customer.
• Medicine: put a range of diagnostic logging in place to recognise when the problem has occurred, so we can apply the band-aid before customers are negatively impacted (this is something we now have occurring on a daily basis).
• Surgery: identify the root cause of the problem and remove it.

Problem management is more than assigning a resource and saying “You sir, find out what’s wrong… and fix it!” Our workshop also came up with three strong leads on what to investigate, clarity about who was responsible, and a commitment to meet on a regular basis until a root cause is understood. If those leads did not bear fruit then the team would come together again and discuss another line of investigation.

Within two days of focused attention, and involving three of our developers, we had successfully cracked the nut. Along with better monitoring or GRID and tighter processes, we found that complex layer settings around symbology – and a bug in the code – were causing the back-end server to time out and not save properly. This resulted in certain data not being displayed on the GRID application. It was our new diagnostic tools (and help from our NRM testers) that pinpointed the root cause. From there the solution was actually straight-forward, and a fix was applied that can handle the more complex symbology settings.

The experience has had a few positive outcomes for GRID and Gaia Resources as a business. Firstly we have identified the root cause of this particular problem and resolved it. Secondly, we have transformed our Problem Management process, and are better equipped as a team to recognise when an issue is “more than meets the eye.” Thirdly, the diagnostic logging we now have in place is going to pay dividends for future troubleshooting, which we hope will result in increased responsiveness and issue resolution time for our customers. Not just for GRID but across our other solutions too.

We’d be keen to hear your feedback on this – and if your organisation has processes to deal with problem management – so please get in touch via email or start a conversation with us on our  Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn feeds.

Chris

* Editor’s note: I thought James was the “dance guy”, not Serge?

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Troy Bennell from the Ngalang Wongi telling the cultural story of the area around Honeymoon Pool, Collie.

Being only one year into my role with Gaia Resources and my first time in Collie (and to this event), I wasn’t sure what to expect; but the packed set of talks gave me an inkling that I was in for a good learning experience and a bit of fun.  The event didn’t disappoint. We had a field trip, an aboriginal cultural tour, mountain biking excursions, mascots, mascots in a dance-off, politicians, politicians dressing up as mascots (no, not really) – and yes – good old networking and inspiring presentations on a range of NRM topics.

There were some good insights provided by Adrian Ward (Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists) and robust debate on economic, political and psychological drivers behind environmental funding and programs. With the National Landcare Program – Phase 2 funding round and competitive tendering process underway, understanding these drivers and how they translated into local projects was on the mind for many in the room. Alannah McTiernan made some State funding announcements and stressed the importance of sustainable farming initiatives and getting funding to the people on the ground. Many of the talks though were showcasing the fantastic work of NRM staff and volunteers throughout the region – from tree planting, to dune rehabilitation, to youth education programs, bike and 4WD track maintenance and working with dairy farmers.

Phoebe the Phasogale and Diana Blacklock presenting the recent activities from the Wagin-Woodanilling Landcare Group

The best part overall to me was being able to hear about the activities dedicated people are doing on the ground to help manage our natural environment, and the challenges they face in trying to make every dollar stretch as far as possible. On the drive home, my mind was buzzing around how we at Gaia Resources are already preparing to help with that “value for money” challenge.

The first lightbulb moment I had… we’ve been putting a lot of thinking into a stripped down mobile friendly version of GRID, one that would support exactly those Landcare people on the ground by making it more efficient for them to capture their activities in the field. This would translate into less time and resources spent back in the office entering data from paper and excel into GRID. There are also many mobile applications out there that can do a great job (see our Mobile GIS blog), so we haven’t forgotten there may be a need to integrate GRID with one or two of them. The challenge is designing something that requires little or no training, and supports a set of specific NRM workflows.

The second lightbulb moment was around being able to tell a good story. These small groups rely heavily on grant funding from State and Commonwealth bodies. Banks (like National Australia Bank) and other private organisations are also recognising the need to invest in our environment, and are joining the party with their own grants programs. Hence the other way we can help – so my drive time thinking went – was to help these groups to compile their historical activity data in GRID, generate statistics and other products that helped tell a compelling story in their grant applications. GRID has a lot of filtering and reporting functionality released in the last year that can get them there, and QGIS is a powerful tool they can bring to bear for more sophisticated processing.  Of course GRID already delivers a lot of value to the NRM organisations – letting NRM staff be self-sufficient, and letting NRM GIS staff get on with some of the more interesting and powerful analysis that the NRM community need.

And, as Simon and Piers were discussing in recent blog comments, there’s some changes to the way we run QGIS training that will also deliver good value and impact to the NRM community, so stay tuned for that.

Finally, I have to say a big thanks to Damien Postma and all the SWCC crew who welcomed me in, and hosted such a great event.  While the rest of the team were in Perth moving offices, I got to spend a very interesting and fun couple of days with our clients, learning more about what they do and how we can help them – something we’ll get stuck into straight away now we’re settled into our new offices.

Chris

P.S. If you want to know more about the conference, or about some of our work above, then feel free to drop a comment below, or start a conversation with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

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This last update is all about access permissions, which is the ability for GRID administrators to tailor content to different groups of people. About three weeks ago we finished the development side of the State NRM Community Capability Grants funded project and were pretty happy with the way the functionality worked – and while we could have released it into the wild, our team knew that this was a pretty major update, and needed transition support to help NRM champions understand and use the new functions effectively.

So we’ve been working one-on-one with each NRM Group to explain how it can work, and to understand how they will apply Groups to their Projects, Activities and Base Layers. We can then help them with a plan and support to migrate their GRID into the new paradigm. This is part of our commitment to go beyond the time frame (and budget) to ensure a smooth transition for all of our GRID clients. Feedback so far has been fantastic and engaging, and goes to show how interested everyone is to get started.

The bigger picture here is that GRID has until now been about providing internal, external and public views of content (e.g one view for each type of user). With permissions applied, this can be extended in whatever direction the NRM group requires by supporting many tailored views for different functional or organisational groups that the NRM group works with.

For instance, a number of external Landcare officers in a catchment area could now see each other’s Activities and collaborate; but also see only the 3-4 Base Layers and Projects that are relevant for their work. Conversely, other Landcare officers in other catchments could be set up to not see those same features but have their own features visible.

Through Group settings this person sees a limited set of Projects relevant for their work.

In another use case, sensitive content like Declared Rare Flora and Fauna data can be published on GRID just to the people who are authorised (or licensed) to use it. There are a number of other benefits that come from this permissions model, including the ability to manage closed projects, to tailor project pull-down choices and to improve data quality. We’ve also taken the opportunity to implement searchable tables across all administrator functions, which should help NRM champions to more efficiently manage content and permissions settings.

If you have thoughts on how GRID can be tailored to suit your organisational needs, feel free to email me directly or start up a conversation on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn

Chris

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