From the remote sensing related challenges, one of them particularly caught my attention:  Identifying risk with science + communities, focusing on landslides. The challenge consisted of developing a tool using data from NASA satellites and ground-based sources to determine the risk of landslides in rural communities, and share the results with local communities and governments. I spoke to some friends about this, we decided to participate and registered as a team: the Landslide Detection Squad.

Trees tilting due to the effect of rock/soil sliding. Image credit mdpi.com

Before the event there was an information night held by Space Hub Perth and Core Innovation Hub, where speakers from BINAR, ICRAR and previous winners of the hackathon from Perth answered questions and gave us an insight of the current spatial situation in WA and Australia. It was a good chance to get motivation for working on spatial topics.

On the day of the hackathon, the team gathered at UWA Venture, excited to start the challenge. We kicked off by pitching some ideas and brainstorming on a white board, until we came up with what would be our project. Our objective was to detect the early stages of a landslide, with the purpose of warning the population living in risk areas. We needed to identify a parameter to measure that would indicate some kind of movement on the ground, so we chose trees. On forested slopes, tilting of trees and change in canopy structure can indicate soil and rock movement is occurring, which is a precursor to landslide events. Due to the use of remote sensing data, our tool could be applied in forested areas prone to landslide occurrence at a low cost.

Remote sensing data provides a low cost option to detect changes in canopy structure. Photo Credit

Photo Credit

Taking advantage of new sensors (e.g. cubesats and UAVs) providing high-resolution images and deep learning technologies for tree detection, we proposed and prototyped a method that detects a canopy movement on slopes that is indicative of landslide risk. This information could be used to enhance landslide risk models and is embedded within a system that generates dynamic risk maps, publishes alerts when situations are critical, and supports government agencies to plan ahead for emergency situations.

Spending the weekend doing something for science might not sound attractive to everyone, but it has its rewards! Chris from Gaia Resources, who was very supportive of my participation, suggested making this hackathon part of my professional development plan with the company. Taking part in this event allowed me to network with people from different backgrounds who are interested in the space field. As a team, we learned about landslides and prevention systems, and got the chance to build a new model which could help prevent disasters. 

However, that is not it: our team came first in Perth and our project will be competing in the global round! Now it is a matter of waiting for the global results. Even if we do not win, taking part in a hackathon was a great experience and I encourage everyone to try it!

Have you ever participated in a hackathon? How did you find the experience? Please share in the comments, or start a conversation with us on one of our social media platforms –  Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Rocío

The post NASA’s Space App Challenge: identifying landslide risk using remote sensing data appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The local Larrakia people actually observe 6 seasons (November and December is “Balnba” or Rainy Season), and in many respects I think that is more appropriate than the two “Wet” and “Dry” because there are significant changes between the Big Wind Time, the Build Up, the Rainy Season and the Monsoon Season.

The Gulumoerrgin Season calendar has six overlapping seasons and characteristics (Source: CSIRO and contributors Lorraine Williams, Judith Williams, Maureen Ogden, Keith Risk and Anne Risk)

I’m pretty sure I was already sweating the moment I got out of my car en-route to a Territory NRM conference workshop at the Charles Darwin University Waterfront Campus at 7:30am, but I’m mostly used to it now. “It’s a thing” as my colleague Tony likes to say, and it is only temporary. At this time of year the sun is hot, and clouds start to gather in the afternoon while the humidity rises, and on rare late afternoons the sweet relief of rain buckets down for an hour or so to cool us all down.

That day though was one of those hide-from-the-sun-like-a-vampire sort of days (fine if you stay in the shadows) – and silly me I was wearing pants on this particular day. Unlike the park rangers, land managers and researchers gathered at the conference who do a lot of work out in the field conducting savanna burning programs, protecting rock art and preserving biodiversity – I tend to sit in an air conditioned office most of the time tapping away at the computer and really can’t hold a candle to the important work these people do.

What we are trying to do though, is help by increasing the accessibility and power of data to aid in their planning and decision making. So at this workshop I was helping to demonstrate the new tools and technology being leveraged by the the North Australia and Rangelands Fire Information (NAFI) service. The NAFI team have been busy development of new tools, the SMERF dashboard and enhanced services on their website. Our part in this has been to develop a plugin for QGIS that increases the accessibility of the NAFI data products on that free and open-source GIS platform, and a mobile app for Android and iOS that provides near real-time fire mapping in the field.

Peter Jacklyn shows workshop attendees around the features of the NAFI website.

Participants at the workshop got to see a sneak peek of the app that is still in development, including the live fire hotspots and firescars against a backdrop of 3 base map options. We got some valuable feedback from Kakadu Park Rangers and others about how the app would be useful and what would make it even better in the next version. So there was real excitement about the ability to download imagery and topo maps for offline use, and the way in which the app automatically updates hotspots and firescars while you are online (and have the app active). The directional GPS position was also really important for field crew, and they showed us how they are currently producing static PDF maps and sending them out with field crews. One of the most interesting insights was to hear that rangers are able to receive a decent 3G/4G signal while in the air above a remote area – so theoretically our app could be updating information while in the air to be used offline back on the ground. We got some other really good ideas out of the interactions at the workshop, and so I am looking forward to continuing to work with the NAFI team.

I also attended one day of the conference itself, and went along to the Gala Dinner to see the deserving recipients of Territory NRM awards. There were some pretty interesting talks – including research findings from Bretty Murphy (Charles Darwin Uni – RIEL) about the shocking impact of two amplifying issues, of fire and feral cats, facing small threatened mammals in the Top End. The one that captured everyone’s heart though, was from school kids at the Manyalluk School and their teacher Ben Kleinig. Ben’s initiative to seek and use STEM funding for educational applications with a drone and motion sensor cameras – and these indigenous childrens’ enthusiasm – was truly inspiring. Here’s the description from the Territory NRM conference program:

“Students from Manyallaluk School are passionate about their country and through STEM subjects are gaining skills to fly drones; record, graph and analyse data; present findings; set-up of trail cameras and camera traps; and to use a snake camera. Key topics are buffalo and their impact on the environment, how plastic waste can harm turtles, different habitats for different species, and surveying species with a focus on comparing feral to native animal numbers. Students have been empowered to think about interesting careers that utilise technology in the environment, including land management, and plans for the future include a partnership with TNRM to build a feral animal exclusion zone to study and survey, using DNA testing to locate and map Gouldian finches and other species, ongoing surveying of wildlife in different habitats, and the ongoing challenge of photographing the elusive echidna.”

They have their own Youtube channel (with videos like the one we saw below), and I smile every time I think about the kids in lab coats showing their charts and saying “Let’s see what the data tells us.” As someone who gets passionate about data and data science, it is really uplifting to see technology, data and environmental issues being tackled by young regional students. Not surprisingly they won the Next Generation NRM Award.

So another great year for NRM in the Territory, and a fantastic job by the Territory NRM organisation in bringing us all together. If anyone wants to find out more about our collaboration with the NAFI team, or to chat about ways in which we can help with your NRM projects please feel free to start up a conversation on our regular channels on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. 

Chris

The post Recap on the Territory NRM conference appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The 2019 Territory NRM Conference featured a number of presentations like this one in the Darwin Convention Centre and the nearby CDU Waterfront campus (Source: Territory NRM)

In this year’s conference, the NAFI team will facilitate a workshop to look at recent developments in some of the important tools that land managers depend on for monitoring fires across 70% of Australia. The workshop will be demonstrating some of the latest tools leveraging NAFI for accessing and analysing fire information for NRM support. Part of that will be on their new Plugin for our favourite QGIS software (which we have blogged about previously), and our current project to develop a NAFI mobile app for Android and iOS devices. Also on the agenda will be the latest developments in providing sophisticated fire history analysis information through the Savanna Monitoring and Evaluation Metrics (SMERF) interface.

The NAFI QGIS plugin was released earlier this year, providing an easy to use interface to access fire information data products.

Those attending will get to see a preview of our “test” app development to date, and we’ll have a few devices on hand so they can play with a test version. We’ll talk about the future vision and invite participants to provide feedback on how they see the app being used in the field. These sorts of sessions are gold for us in the development space, because we can really get a sense of where the high value functionality lies. Obviously the true power behind the app is the NAFI data products, but we are really excited about  what this means for those who use them. So as not to give everything away, we’ll blog after the event to provide a recap.

So if you are heading along to the Territory NRM conference, tap elbows with Chris and feel free to strike up a conversation. Or get in touch online through on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. 

The post Preview of the Territory NRM Conference 2020 appeared first on Gaia Resources.

More recent work focused on improvements in real-time data display of the drone position and radio tags, offline base-map useability and back-end data processing. Wildlife Drones have presented their integrated solution to conferences around Australia, and have a growing client base where our desktop app is a critical component contributing to important wildlife conservation efforts and research.

Debbie Saunders demonstrating the Wildlife Drones method

Dr Debbie Saunders, CEO of Wildlife Drones, gave us a great wrap:

“Gaia Resources did a wonderful job turning all our user interface ideas into reality.  Within a relatively short period of time we went from having a general idea of what we wanted to having a very impressive, incredibly user friendly and intuitive user interface.  This has dramatically increased our ability to demonstrate our technology to anyone who is interested.  All the feedback from customers, investors and the broader community has been overwhelming positive and we are also now thoroughly enjoying using our cutting edge technology with much greater ease.”

Wildlife Drones are currently working on a project looking at the differences in behaviour and movement of Koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) in burnt and non-burnt environments. In this recent article, Debbie says:

“Usually when you are tagging wild animals there are always some that disappear, there are always some that take off. You end up spending all your time and effort looking for the missing animals. When you are on the ground with a handheld receiver, you’re tracking one animal at the time, you’re taking hours. With the drone we can track [the signals of] 40 animals at the same time, we could see all of the koalas all the time.”

In the aftermath of last summers devastating bushfires there is a lot of work going on in New South Wales and Victoria to monitor remaining populations of Koala and drones are playing a crucial and time-saving role in this research.

Over much the same timeframe, Gaia Resources has been working with the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE) to develop another approach to monitoring Koala populations, via the I Spy Koala citizen science app. There is clearly a role for both approaches to help save our dwindling Koala populations, and perhaps there may be some synergy between them.

More information about this project can be found in our blogs and project page. And you can hear more about Wildlife Drones direct from Debbie in this upcoming Environmental Institute webinar.

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

Alex

The post Drones for Wildlife 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.

Obligatory photo I took of Uluru at sunset (left) – which I must say was spectacular from this vantage point and around the base (no – I didn’t climb). An example of Geoscience Australia hardcopy maps (right – source: Geoscience Australia).

They still offer their widely used digital map products of course, but while our car passed through the spinifex spotted plains and dirt tracks heading to telegraph stations, meteorite craters and memorials, this news filled me with a sense of sadness and resignation, in the same way one might feel about the passing of a former Prime Minister or great author. There is a lot of history tied up in topographic maps, and many stories and discoveries to be made as one passes their finger from where they are to where they could go. Some might say you get a bigger picture with a hardcopy map, a broader perspective on the landscape. However, I like so many of us tend not to feel the need for hardcopy maps anymore. In saying that, I can vividly remember when they were essential kit.

Anyone over 25 years of age probably remembers the UBD and how indispensable that was for getting around the city and suburbs, or finding that elusive house party? How many of us, upon getting our first car,  received one of these map books as a present from a wise friend or relative? Now of course all that content is reliably available on our phones at the press of a button. Or is that actually true? Let’s ignore the 2012 Apple Maps debacle for the time being… When you think of remote area travel, and battery charging, the digital content is not available all the time really is it? Although this is something we work on with our own apps at Gaia Resources – but more on that later.

Now back to the recap on my trip – I’ve just left Aileron Roadhouse (with its seriously impressive 17m high Man on the Hill  and equally impressive Anmatjere Woman and Child sculptures). We’ve already passed through Alice Springs after having camped at a spectacular spot called the Ellery Creek Big Hole in the West McDonnell National Park.

The 17m high sculpture of the Man on the Hill (left) and the Woman and child (right) puts Aileron Roadhouse on the map! Worth a stop.

This is a unique place of twisted folding rocks surrounding a water hole that would make any geologist forget how cold the water is and jump straight in to get to the other side (I feel a chicken joke coming on).

The Ellery Creek Bighole in the McDonnell Ranges was a seriously gnarly place 400 million years ago, and pretty impressive results today.

So within 2 minutes of driving north from Aileron we are again out of mobile data range, and I instinctively pull out the Australia Road and 4WD Atlas to reflect on the last few days travel and to look ahead. Yep, back to the hard copy map. In fact, the map book has been pulled out so many times now and used a way to discuss sealed and unsealed route options, distances and interesting spots to have lunch or stay overnight. It’s a way of sharing stories with fellow travellers at the pub and at the campground – friendly people who have been where you are going and can impart local knowledge of road conditions, food options and the value of taking a small detour to relax in one of many waterholes spotted through the truly massive Northern Territory.

 Our camping set-up at Devils Marbles (left) and the girls in my life relaxing at sunset. One of those magical places you might have driven past if it weren’t for someone at your campsite sharing their story.
Below: Play time! A Big Red joey kangaroo was being fostered at the Nyinkka Nyunyu Art & Culture Centre.

Using a map to share stories reminds me of the Australian indigenous people who have been doing something very similar for a lot longer than topographic maps have been around. We stepped in to look at a number of aboriginal art galleries on our trip into the Red Centre including at Uluru and Tennant Creek (the latter gallery had this little trooper at left as the main attraction).

It’s fascinating to learn how different regions use different styles of dot painting to share stories of the landscape, food (bush tucker) and water sources, and special meeting places.  In the  Nyinkka Nyunyu Art & Culture Centre in Tennant Creek for instance, we got to meet the female artists of the Barkely Region who paint circular patterns representing soaks (near surface water sources), bush tucker (grubs, ants, goannas) and medicinal plants.

In the region around Uluru, painting on canvas is relatively new but the women of the Anangu Uwankaruku Punu often combine dot paintings with the beautiful swaying leaf patterns representing medicinal plants like the Irmangka-Irmangka which is used as a sticky gel for tea, application on the chest for colds and headaches, or on bites and stings.

Groups around the Central Desert regions often employ the patchwork dot painting pattern I really like as a map geek because it practically represents an aerial interpretation of the landscape and different vegetation assemblages of their region. I can almost imagine the way in which their art serves a very practical purpose and focal point to educate and share knowledge.

I’m not saying that hardcopy topographic maps have been rendered to the status of a historical archive or art work – in fact we see old maps being re-used and delivering new insights to current challenges including the work Jake in our team has done previously with the State Records Office and their historical map archives. Visualisation of historical map features changing over time can help us understand the history of places and how cities grew and evolved. Government agencies are realising that their aerial imagery and cadastral map archives are treasure troves of information to help with planning decisions, genealogical enquiries and archaeological studies.

It’s been a long time since Gaia Resources had a plotter in the corner of the office pumping out large-scale maps for our clients – but it used to be all about those A0 and A1 plots depicting our client’s survey data, landuse and satellite imagery, unrolled fresh off the plotter and straight into a meeting of scientists and decision makers. As a spatial company in the early days, Piers would tell you we lived and breathed that kind of work.

These days we get more involved in system development and mobile applications with mapping functionality that depend on digital products like those from Geoscience Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology, and State government portals. Leveraging the Digital Earth Australia products for our NRM clients GRID web mapping system and Here as the base for the desktop app we’ve built for Wildlife Drones are good examples.

We have also pumped a fair amount of research and development into building an offline maps capability in our mobile applications – recognising that base maps like the 250k Topographic Series, Here, Google Maps and Mapbox offer offline APIs and are in demand for our clients working out beyond mobile range. In some cases – like for our Health department clients monitoring mosquitoes – it is actually as much about being offline in an urban environment where the field workforce can still collect location-specific field data using devices without SIM cards or wifi coverage.

Jake from our team near Tom Price demonstrating a Fulcrum-based project for the Banjima Rangers (left). Field data capture and access to base maps can be challenging when you are deep in the Western Australian bushland (right).

On reflection, what I think you realise as a mapping professional is that you haven’t given up on those hardcopy maps – you have been part of a story of their evolution into something that continues to have great relevance in people’s lives. I love hearing about a new insight from an old map made digital, or a new digital product that could be a game changer for our clients – just as much as I still enjoy thumbing over towns and tracks on my 4WD Atlas as I travel around this big red continent.

If you’d like to know more about our work with historical maps, or how we can deliver digital mapping products, systems and mobile apps to help with your business, 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 Are hardcopy maps a thing of the past? appeared first on Gaia Resources.

For the uninitiated, a Georabble is a semi-regular networking event held in a pub with some quick format talks (less than 10 minutes), some nibbles and the occasional free beer put on by an event sponsor. People come to the event for a variety of reasons: to learn, to make new connections or catch up with old colleagues, to step away from the daily grind or gaze above the cubicle wall.

There are a few simple rules to follow at the event:

1. Celebrate each others’ triumphs
2. Respect each others’ choice – no technology bigotry
3. No sales pitches – this includes services, software, data etc.
4. No company logos or ‘about us’ slides
5. Keep it short – 10 minutes per talk.

Georabble can mean many things to different people (source: georabble.org).

Apart from the Georabble logo itself, the sponsor has the only free ticket to give his/her company a plug. When a speaker – in their rush and excitement to tell their story – inevitably slips up and mentions their favorite software package or organisation, you get to witness the comical call of the native Rabbler gently heckling them like some well meaning but mischievous Uncle: “Rabble, rabble!” This is a good natured heckle though and is just intended to keep to the spirit of the event.

I recently co-organised the first Georabble in Darwin held on 12 September and used some experience/learnings from speaking in Perth and once in Melbourne to help us get the Darwin chapter initiated. We also had help from the other administrators across the country who are very active with Slack and social media platforms. From the time I moved up here though, I met some great people who manage weeds programs, conserve threatened species, create software, detect bushfires, develop environmental impact assessments and manage cadastral frameworks. It dawned on me as I interacted with these new contacts, that there wasn’t really a forum for geospatial professionals, and that while some didn’t realise it they all shared the same passion despite being spread across very different industries.

We had a small gathering at the Darwin event, but the people that did come were treated to four interesting (and varied) talks – one on the state of the Northern Territory’s cadastral framework and moves towards exciting future 3D data products. There was a presentation on the use of terrestrial laser scanning to characterise Savannah glider tree hollow habitat with some great insights into this marsupials’ adaptation in different climate conditions. We travelled (in our minds) to Tasmanian forests to understand why some pockets of forest were able to sustain decades of bushfire activity, and in another talk how open-source software had been leveraged to create a mapping application for wildlife tracking with drones. You can also read about that last one in our other blogs here and here.

Darwin geo-obsessed people hearing about Tasmanian fire ecology (top) and
findings from an terrestrial laser scanning tree survey (bottom).

I picked up a very important message in organising this event – one of inclusion and diversity. Spatial technology is embedded now in so many professions, and it comes in so many different guises that you can’t afford to be precious about traditional terms. There are data scientists, planners, engineers, ecologists, botanists, public health practitioners, farmers, policy makers, geoscientists… man I could just go on, but I’ll spare you! All of these professions out there that are creating, relying upon and making decisions with location data. Every one is (hopefully) interested in maintaining data quality, understanding where to get information, how to use it properly, and to gain some insights from the triumphs or tribulations of other spatially aware people.

Georabble is that forum. Those who attended the Darwin one are all keen to run another – so I would call that a great success!

If you are interested in this event, keep an eye out on the Georabble website or @georabble Twitter feed for the next one in your city- and bring a friend, it’s a blast! Or feel free to drop me a line directly via chris@gaiaresources.com.au, or start a conversation with us on social media via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Chris

The post Why do we Rabble? appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The technology was inspired by a need to understand more about the movements of small, migratory Swift Parrots within their winter range.  The Swift Parrot is one of Australia’s priority bird species for conservation action and is listed as critically endangered under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999.

The critically endangered Swift Parrot (image source: Brett Allen)

Compared to conventional tracking methods, the Wildlife Drones approach has some distinct advantages. Firstly, their system can track up to one hundred individually identifiable animals all at the same time instead of manually tracking one at a time. Secondly, the drone and its payload delivers much more data from a superior vantage point in the air compared to conventional handheld antennae methods. And finally, the base station application that Gaia Resources developed for Wildlife Drones provides on-line and off-line mapping capabilities to visualise incoming radio frequency tags in real time. This includes the ability to download imagery tiles for situations where tracking is happening outside of mobile data range.

Conventional radio tracking technology (left) and Deb demonstrating the Wildlife Drones method (right).

Deb gave us a great wrap up on how we worked together:

“Gaia Resources did a wonderful job turning all our user interface ideas into reality.  Within a relatively short period of time we went from having a general idea of what we wanted to having a very impressive, incredibly user friendly and intuitive user interface.  This has dramatically increased our ability to demonstrate our technology to anyone who is interested.  All the feedback from customers, investors and the broader community has been overwhelming positive and we are also now thoroughly enjoying using our cutting edge technology with much greater ease.” 

Following the informative morning presentation Deb gave, there were many questions ranging from hardware options to data accuracy and limitations. One, in particular, was around tracking animals whose habitat tends to be in caves and beneath rocky ledges (like the endangered Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby) – and what we found out was that the Wildlife Drones solution is able to collect useful data to triangulate positions from multiple vantage points, meaning that the remoteness and difficult terrain is no longer a logistical constraint for trackers.

From the boardroom to the outdoors, we headed out to the West Australian Model Aircraft Sports Centre to see the drone in action. Some tags were randomly distributed in the mini-airfield and surrounding bush, and Deb piloted the drone in a flight path that involved 360-degree rotations in multiple locations around the site in order to triangulate the tag locations. It was also quite windy that day with gusts over 44km/hr, but the stability of the Matrice 210 in those conditions was pretty impressive.

The demonstrations in Perth and previously in Hobart have generated a fair bit of interest in the wildlife tracking community, and we are really looking forward to continuing to work with the Wildlife Drones crew in their journey to success. If you are interested in getting a conversation going, jump on our Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn links– or drop us a line on (08) 9227 7309, or email me on chris.roach@gaiaresources.com.au.

Chris

The post Launching Wildlife Drones in WA appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Ten years – 1,873 trees planted!

Over the break we’ll be on skeleton staff in our Perth office, but the Brisbane team will be away for the whole period – stay tuned for a couple of exciting announcements around both our offices when we return in the new year, though!  If there are any support requests or issues that you have then please use our support email address – support@gaiaresources.com.au – and the team members who are in the office will get in touch with you on one of the non-public holidays.

We usually take this opportunity to reflect on the year to date, as we are halfway through our usual reporting cycle of the financial year.  It’s certainly been one of the most challenging and interesting calendar years for us, with staff changes and some of the largest projects we’ve won kicking off (which we’re still not allowed to talk about publicly, but stay tuned for those announcements in the new year as well).

Gaia Resources has changed a lot since we started almost 15 years ago, from a tiny little home office through to the team we have today, with two offices and 25 staff.  The beast has grown quite a bit bigger than even I thought it would, but these vast uncharted territories are full of excitement and opportunity – this year has been no exception.

We asked the team what their wins were for 2019, and the list is pretty nice to reflect back on:

• Working on the Public Records Office of Victoria project – a great team including a great client,
• Building the Brisbane team up into a “real” office,
• Working collaboratively with our clients to reduce their anxiety levels around the Agile process, so that they are now looking forward to starting sprints instead of being concerned about how this will all play out,
• Running the training in Archivematica with the University of Tasmania special collections team,
• Attending the FOSS4G conference in Melbourne, to be around like minded people and learn a heap of new things in the workshops,
• Getting our first full-time support engineer, and generally becoming more mature around our processes for support,
• The Wildlife Drones project, especially seeing the demonstrations that have been held in Perth the last few days to see the reaction of the clients to all the work we have been doing on it,
• Setting up new technologies, like Grafana, cross platform mobile technologies, Sparx Enterprise Architect, and better use of our existing systems like Youtrack,
• Working on our new larger projects (more on that in the new year),
• Seeing our growth this year, but sustainably – just like we do everything at Gaia Resources,
• Our rehabilitation and data project with IGO Mining, where we were able to really help that organisation to make a difference,
• Our recent focus on “telling more stories” with our blog, especially the story of the Leadbeaters Possum, which has had quite a bit of interest since we released it, and
• The general transformation that the company has had over the last year, in terms of the move to FLUX, the focus on process, the new projects coming in and the exciting opportunities for the new year.

That’s a bunch of good things to reflect on as we wind down to the end of the year – and as a few people said afterwards, that’s not even the full list, as I only asked for one!

For me, the highlight has been the team that gave me all these points above.  A company is really only as good as the people who are in it, and due to them, it’s been a great journey over the last 12 months.  As always, it’s been the roller coaster that is running a small business, but I have to say, with this team around me and with us all supporting each other, it’s been a great year.  So my own highlight is the people that work here with me in this crazy ‘family’ we’ve created that is called Gaia Resources.

I’m looking forward to the break – where as is tradition a few of us will be working on a range of things to do with the business for the new year, including preparing for our ‘usual’ new year launch event, and bunch of new and exciting announcements.  I hope that you and your family – work or otherwise – all have a safe and happy Christmas break!

Merry Christmas and see you in 2019!

Piers

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Two subsequent phases of work from late 2018 – 2019 have focused on improvements in real-time data display of the drone position and radio tags, offline base-map useability and back-end data processing.

Wildlife Drones have presented their integrated solution to conferences around Australia, and have a growing client base where our desktop app is a critical solution component contributing to important wildlife conservation efforts and research.

More information about this project and about our client Wildlife Drones can be found on our blogs.

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Maintaining our independent approach, we now have drone companies as partners, so that depending on the challenge an organisation is trying to address – whether related to agriculture, mining, conservation or planning applications for example – we can design a capture program and mobilise quickly. There’s also the question of appropriateness, and whether drone imagery is the right type of data for a particular challenge – and so we equally have the relationships with aerial and satellite providers to cater for a range of remote sensing needs (keeping to our technology-agnostic principles).

A number of clients have come to us to help them achieve better environmental outcomes through the analysis of drone captured data and development of software encompassing drone technology. In one project we worked with an environmental company to define technical processes that delivered regulatory compliance data products using open source GIS software. In fact our foray into turning this type of data into useful mapping products goes back to 2016 when my former colleague James was working up in Shark Bay with Aerial Environment to map mangroves (see this blog).

The main subject of this entry though is about some birds – the critically endangered Swift Parrot (Lathamus discolor) to be precise. One of our current clients, Wildlife Drones, spends their time radio-tracking these small migratory birds within their winter range to help shed light on their mysterious movements and improve conservation management.  This ground breaking work, featured on the ABC news recently, was conducted using drones and sophisticated signal processing algorithms which overcomes the time consuming and labour intensive process of manual radio-tracking.  Wildlife Drones’ latest radio-receiver system builds upon the outcomes from a previous research project that they recently published in Science Robotics.

The Critically Endangered Swift Parrot. Image courtesy of the Canberra Ornithologists Group and Geoffrey Dabb.

Prior to meeting the guys at Wildlife Drones, the only thing I knew about drones and birds was that in the Pilbara the Wedge Tailed Eagles were taking down mining company drones on a weekly basis. So it was refreshing to see a company was applying this technology to learn more about the movement patterns of species like the Swift Parrot –  a bird that responds to Australia’s “boom and bust” drought cycles by moving dynamically across vast areas of south eastern Australia.

Our team started working with a concept for a desktop app that could show the real-time coordinates of radio frequency tags on a base map.  We were first engaged to run a one day hackathon-like exercise internally which resulted in a proof-of-concept viewer and a choice of technology that would be suitable for a more operational solution. Imagine a small set of core requirements, simulated radio tag location data, and three Gaia Resources teams working with three different technologies, with a pitch of the pros and cons of each on the second day.

Serge and Sean breaking down the gear after an intense day of discovery hacking (above). The proof of concept Electron app displaying (simulated) real-time radio frequency tag positions.

As a result of this hackathon, we chose to work with Electron, which is a Javascript-based open-source framework allowing for the development of desktop applications using components originally developed for web applications.

The larger project to bring this desktop app to life is happening now, and it has been really exciting to be part of its development. Voon-Li, Serge and Sean have worked hard through two Agile sprints to produce a wireframe app (based on designs by Tracey) and then steadily make the designed buttons and workflows functional. We now have offline map caching and online satellite imagery services, dynamic map data display of tag frequencies and charting, export features… the list goes on. In the next sprint we are set to tackle synchronisation with cloud server storage, authentication and drone base station controls. All along we have been working collaboratively with the brains trust at Wildlife Drones to understand what will and won’t work for their on-ground activities.  A key aspect has been looking at the in-field and in-office use cases and working with an evolving ‘customer process.’   In particular is the requirement to provide an app that can function outside of mobile data range (e.g. within remote parks and reserves) but still provide full mapping and data collection capabilities, as well as synchronisation when back within mobile data coverage.

If you are interested in finding out more about what Wildlife Drones get up to, check out their website. Also feel free to reach out and start a conversation on the regular channels if you want to talk to us about drones, their suitability for your needs, and related data products. We can contacted by email, or via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Chris

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Over time, Gaia Resources has been involved in a wide variety of field data collection projects with different clients from a wide range of client bases, so I think we’re pretty well suited to be able to comment on this area.  The talk I gave is embedded below, and it might not be quite what you were expecting.

I struggled with this talk, because as my bio stated, I am a technology junkie.  While I firmly believe that mobile data capture can help fauna surveys, this will require investment from the survey practitioners to develop tools that are tailored to the different workflows that they use (and in this climate, sometimes that’s hard to justify).  This is also plagued by the expectation that we see a lot – that technology is a “magic bullet”, and this isn’t the case.

The workshop wasn’t just about technology, though.  We had talks from the regulators, from practitioners and from solution providers like ourselves; there were also some interactive elements like workshops on survey methodologies for threatened species.  For me the highlights included some direction from the Office of the Environmental Protection Authority, an update on the Western Australian Biodiversity Science Institute and the innovative technology talks on thermal cameras, acoustics and drones (spot the technology junkie again?).  It was also great to talk to a range of practitioners around our support for Quantum GIS (including our training courses, one of which is coming up soon – stay tuned), and other work that was relevant.  And, I had a very pleasant trip back down memory lane along the way.

Back in the day, I was once employed to do field surveys myself.  I am by no means an expert in anything but as a generalist I have an interest in a lot (as a few of my Facebook friends will have seen from my latest forays into fungi identification).  But I was taught some very robust techniques and what to consider in terms of survey from some very experienced biologists from Biota and the Western Australian Museum.  Along the way I learned a lot about survey techniques and what to consider – except how bad that yellow hat was.

Yep, that’s a younger version of me, disappearing into a rock pile in the Pilbara in the “good old days”

Anyway, back to technology -I use a custom mobile app that we built in-house for my own bird surveys, and I love using it.  It has been tailored for my own use; for example, the autocomplete field for species names means that my data entry is about as fast as I think you can make it on a mobile device.  The fields on the form are arranged in such a way that I can enter the name, number if they are transient (e.g. flying overhead – these are things that might not be actually using the habitat I am surveying) and then hit “Save and Continue”.  The forms take care of the time, date, location (to a defined accuracy) all automatically, and I end up with  very detailed point dataset of all of my sightings.  In addition, I flick out of the recording form regularly to view the species accumulation curves I’m getting to see if I’m starting to tail off on the curve or if I still have a way to go (something you inherently know, but this does help to make you think about it).

 Example screenshots from the internal app I use for birding

I haven’t been birding for a while now, so when I’m in this “rusty” state for field identifications, the time it takes me for data entry is a small fraction of the time I spend searching and trying to identify those Small Brown Jobs (SBJs) or that faint call I just heard.  So for me, this is a robust data entry mechanism that can keep up with me – but I’ll readily admit I can easily get out-data-entered by someone who can immediately do their identifications who is armed with a trusty notebook and pencil.  But I know I can create a species list or site map from all my digital data much quicker than they can (and usually when Dad and I go for a survey, we check those out in the car or cafe afterwards)! The back end system that you use with your field data collection can really add to the success of the field work.

This experience means that at Gaia Resources we look at the problems that clients bring to us and we look at how we can holistically help them solve their problems with technology – and sometimes the best thing we can do is to tell them to wait, or that we don’t have the magic bullet that they are looking for.  However, I’m pretty sure in the near future we’ll be rolling our new solutions for the environmental consulting industry, based off a range of things that James and I saw at the workshop.

If you want to have a chat about some of the tools that I mentioned in my talk for field data capture, or how we can help your organisation with tools like QGIS, then feel free to call (08 92277309), email me or start a conversation with us via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Piers

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