Gaia Resources has recently been working with the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation to develop a submissions portal for biodiversity surveys and environmental impact assessment.

The new submissions portal complements DWER’s existing online repository of land-based biodiversity surveys in Western Australia, known as the Index of Biodiversity Surveys for Assessments (IBSA).

The objective of IBSA is to capture and consolidate data contained in biodiversity survey reports to support assessments and compliance under the Environmental Protection Act (1986). The survey data and reports are available for everyone to download from the IBSA repository, delivering:

• improved quality of data for assessment
• a broader decision-making base for regulators
• an expanded knowledge base of WA’s flora and fauna
• improved availability of environmental information for the community.

The new IBSA Submissions portal enables proponents to submit and digitally sign a data package for later ingestion into IBSA itself (Source: DWER 2020 IBSA factsheet)

The new IBSA Submission Portal makes it easy for proponents to submit biodiversity surveys via a single page web-form. The web-form automatically validates files on upload and immediately alerts the proponent when information or files do not meet the IBSA data standards. This makes completing the process very responsive for the proponent and provides greater consistency in the submissions process. It also provides efficiency gains for the DWER officers, significantly reducing the time they need to spend checking IBSA submissions, which results in time savings for the broader environmental assessment process.

We developed the IBSA Submissions Portal using Serverless technology; this is a lightweight, innovative approach that provides a highly responsive system but eliminates the cost of managing servers. A key component of the Serverless approach was ensuring that the new submissions portal is a conduit, temporarily housing the data packages until they are incorporated into DWERs existing IBSA database.

While the submission workflow is relatively simple at this stage (survey submission and sign-off), it has a flexible design that can be expanded to accommodate more complex workflow steps if required. The project was designed and delivered within a three month period, including significant testing rounds.

The IBSA Submissions Portal is now launched and in production.

If you’d like to know more about our work with portal development using serverless technologies, and how it can help you improve your stakeholder interactions and process efficiency, please send me an email or start a conversation via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Gill