While Business Analysts are still an integral part of our teams, the IT field has changed since 2021. In line with Heraclitus’ words, “the only constant in life is change,” our world is ever evolving and tools such as Artificial Intelligence, or AI, are ever present in all areas of life. As a Business Analyst, this raises questions about how AI will change our work and impact the future of the BA role. What does the uptake and evolution of AI mean for a Business Analyst in 2023? What are the opportunities? Where are the efficiencies? What is the role of the human?

Business analysis does not occur in a vacuum. It is critical to understand and leverage relevant information at the right time. This can be a challenge given the volume of information available but the limited time frame available to gather and digest this information. Harnessing the tools at hand allows more time and energy for critical thinking, problem solving, mastery of business nuances and space for further specialisation.

It is here where the considered use of AI can prove beneficial. Employing AI in its various guises can condense and curate information at a speed that is unlikely to be matched by human analysis. If AI is considered another tool in the BA skillset, it can reduce time spent on manual tasks such as reviewing data to identify trends. 

That said, for AI to be impactful and most beneficial, it needs to be introduced at the appropriate time in the analysis process with methods to validate and cross-reference the outcomes. An understanding of what AI tools are appropriate for the task at hand is becoming essential knowledge for BAs. Further to the available tools, BAs will require the skill of effectively using the AI tools to generate desired outcomes. The job of a BA does not stop there; any output will require a close review to ensure accuracy, quality and consistency. 

Much of the above thinking is geared towards how AI can be used by a BA for the job at hand. However, we acknowledge this is only a small subset of AI. At the risk of stating the obvious, AI is an expanding field in its own right, and its uses and adaptation will grow in leaps and bounds. While change is a constant, we have a suspicion that AI and its uses will soon become a constant, too. At Gaia Resources, we are looking forward and thinking about these changes. We’re doing the review and the analysis. We are weighing the opportunities, identifying the risks and planning for a future where our Business Analysts can consider and incorporate AI to maximise their impact. We are excited for what’s next. 

If you want to know more about Business Analysts at Gaia Resources and how they can contribute to the success of your technical solutions, feel free to get in touch! Or start a conversation with us on Facebook, X or LinkedIn.

Sarah & Natalie 

The post 2023 Global Business Analysis Day: Business Analysis in the age of AI appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Together with some excellent partners and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), we will be looking at leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tools to identify fish species, counts and other measures from underwater video footage. Tailored to the research challenges that AIMS faces, we are hoping our work will continue on to develop products and insights that can streamline marine research programs and conservation efforts.  Our focus will be to support scientific understanding of critical issues and build online tools to streamline and expand the capacity and program effectiveness.

Our team is really looking forward to getting started, and I am sure we will have an update for our interested readers in a few months time. Feel free to give me a call or an email though if this type of work interests you – strike up a conversation on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. 

Chris

The post Counting fish – supporting research at the Australian Institute of Marine Science appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Looking back

To say that 2020 was not the year that anybody expected is probably an understatement.

The COVID-19 pandemic was certainly the focus of the last year, and we spent a lot of time within Gaia Resources making sure of two things – that we looked after our team (physically and mentally), and we still kept the business operating on an even keel.

Starting from way back in March, we kicked in our Coronavirus response, which was to keep our staff physically safe, and when the lockdowns began, we trialled and then implemented our Business Continuity Plan and had the whole team working from home. While this “physical health” arrangement went into practice across all three of our offices in Perth, Brisbane and Darwin, and then we doubled down on the “mental health” aspects, increasing the frequency of our planned online interactions .

We then started to work towards the way forward, keeping up our connectivity, changing up our office space (and in Brisbane’s case, moving completely), and making sure we kept to the health guidelines for each State we operated in. All this was also based on as much evidence as we could get from the team from our internal monitoring.

In looking back at the six months since then, even with our best efforts, we had staff that became isolated and run down during the virus. It feels very much like we staggered over the line to the Christmas/New Year break period, but we did make it, and we learned a lot that we are implementing into the new year (more on that later). Our internal monitoring has been fantastic to learn from as we went, and we now know what we should monitor into the future, too – but hopefully, we won’t need to do that.

Speaking of staff, we also hired a bunch of people during the year – including Billy, Rory, Sara, Gus, Tania, Tawanda, Sarah, Shushma, Marion and Jeff. We have a bit of updating to do on our “Staff” page as an early task this year!

With all these new team members, it’s no surprise that in the last year we saw some amazing milestones delivered in the very difficult circumstances we described earlier. Along with passing our annual ISO certification with flying colours, the project highlights included:

• Transforming the Queensland State Archives by implementing a new Archival Management System ecosystem
• Improving the way in which data comes into the Western Australian environmental impact assessment process through a new portal for the Index of Biodiversity Surveys for Assessment
• Updating the Essential Services Volunteer app to help support our volunteer firefighters
• Delivering the Q-Album project for Queensland State Archives
• Releasing a new fire mapping plugin for QGIS, which will assist a wide variety of organisations managing the land across the north of Australia
• Releasing Retromaps – a way to view our historical maps and to better understand the history of Perth

There are a number of other projects that we’re still working on or are yet to formally launch or announce – so there will be plenty of things to announce as we proceed with this new year.

Looking forward

Our forward plan for the new year revolves around five key points, which we are implementing through a program that stretches across the first six months of the year. This focuses on:

• Revising our corporate structures to cope with our growth,
• Focusing on improving our communication with each other,
• Continuing to improve our processes,
• Upgrading a range of our various operational technology stacks, and
• Ensuring we remain environmentally sustainable.

Gaia Resources 2019-20 carbon emissions, by type

To enlarge on the last one, a month or so ago we provided an update on our efforts to become even more environmentally sustainable and this included becoming an accredited Carbon Neutral company as well as becoming a partner with the ClimateClever team to support our team to become more environmentally sustainable at home. This is a big part of our rollout for the new year, where we will also be looking at keeping our carbon footprint as low as possible, and including some new initiatives that will include our clients as well.

2020 wasn’t the year we thought it would be, but we’ve made the best of it wherever we can, learned from it, and are ready to come back even stronger in 2021. It’s certainly going to be another “interesting” year ahead – but I for one can’t wait to see the efforts we’re putting in bear fruit.

In the meantime, stay safe, happy and healthy and get in touch if you’d like to chat about any of these initiatives via connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Piers

The post Welcome back! appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Much earlier on, YMAC had taken up a ‘data discovery and map production plug-in’ and customised it for their own environment. The tool provided an easy-to-use and time-saving interface for staff to find the mapping layers they wanted such as Statewide imagery, aboriginal sites and internal layers. It also had an excellent map production tool that automated the creation of standard YMAC-branded map outputs at various page sizes and orientations.  The change in the back-end development framework to Python 3, QT 5 and other software library upgrades meant that all those handy plug-ins we use no longer worked in QGIS 3.x versions (further info for the techies can be found on the QGIS API Documentation).

The YMAC QGIS tool (left menu bar and pop-up interface) provides a range of data loading and map configuration options. Automated map layouts (right) reflect company branding and auto map elements.

So YMAC engaged us to upgrade their tool – and my colleague Tom Lynch and I were keen to get started.

Looking back on the project, it reminds me a bit of my father’s obsession with restoring classic cars. He has a great mind for solving mechanical challenges – while playing classic blues-rock in the garage late into the night – and could see the inherent value of transforming broken-down vehicles like a ’53 Ford Truck he dubbed ‘Snoopy’ to its former glory.

My father’s prized possession – his restored 1953 Ford Truck.

For him it was as much about getting the thing running again as it was about the visual restoration, and that required a fair amount of tinkering and elbow grease.  I could never get into that hands-on mechanical work (my father found that immensely frustrating) but hey, I could still admire the perseverance and the outcomes he achieved in making these things roadworthy some 50 years after they were made.

Even though the YMAC tool upgrade was a relatively small project by comparison (and to do with software rather than gears and fan belts!), Tom and I discovered the changes ‘under the hood’ were significant. After gaining an understanding of the workflows and components to retain, it was a lot of work and testing to update the code references and verify everything worked as expected. In some cases, entire QGIS component libraries had been overhauled with new ways of creating map elements like legends and layout elements. Development took longer than expected and testing was an interesting process. With all of the work happening remotely and involving iterative test versions, the team at YMAC were very obliging in providing test data and remote connections so we could spot and iron out unexpected behaviour and glitches along the way.

In the end, we are really proud of the result and happy to see that the YMAC team have rolled out the new tool along with QGIS 3 across their business. It is a piece in the puzzle for us as consultants to help organisations like YMAC to achieve greater operational efficiencies and pursue their objective to “continue to walk together with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.”

“Well done to you both for getting YMAC tools 3 over the line! It’s been a long journey however both Marty and myself are really appreciative of your efforts and professionalism. We’re really excited that we can roll out the new version to all our staff!”
– Will Davis, YMAC GIS Coordinator.

If you’d want to know more about QGIS, our work in this space, have a look at our QGIS training pages, or please leave a comment below, connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, or email me directly via chris.roach@gaiaresources.com.au.

Chris

The post Plugging into data and map automation in QGIS 3 appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Alex recently compiled a list of references from the publications record of four of our SMEs, and it makes for interesting reading! From Mieke’s papers describing new fish parasites and subterranean pseudoscorpions, to Meg’s TED-x presentations on digital preservation in music archives. From Kehan’s taxonomic work compiling codified morphological descriptions of the grasses of the world, to Alex’s book cataloguing all of Western Australia’s vascular flora.

Blind centipedes of the genus Cormocephalus from subterranean habitats in WA see all …	Saving digital knowledge from technology obsolescence. TEDxPerth see all …
Grass Base—The online world grass flora. RBG Kew see all …	The Western Australian Flora: a descriptive catalogue see all …

Such a wealth of expertise and experience, particularly in the Archives and Collections domains, makes our enterprise robust, agile and responsive. We hope to add more staff publications regularly so that, along with our Blog and Project posts, you can see the depth of expertise across our organisation.

If you’d like to know more about Gaia Resources specialist skill sets, then please feel free leave a comment below, connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, or email me directly via alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au.

The post Our Subject Matter Experts appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Over four sessions presentations were given by researchers from Science, Agriculture, Business and Law faculties at WA’s universities as well as practitioners in the arenas of farming, catchment management, policy and conservation. Briefly, the subject topics covered included:

1. Climate change science –

• Setting the context with the latest science in a range of environmental and human health areas, and
• Specific figures on our State’s current and projected emissions with respect to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Paris Agreement.

2. Legal and policy perspectives from both carbon export and import countries –

• Case studies from Australian and Canadian exporters, and
• Chinese imports of Australian LNG: Implications for Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGe), including proposal options for an Emissions Trading Scheme and transparency and national standards required for effective monitoring, reporting and verification.

3. Opportunities for a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economy, such as –

• Livestock industries need for a combination of methane mitigation, vegetation management and offset strategies, and
• Consideration of GHGe to achieve net zero GHGe economy look likely to change the nature of Environmental Impact Assessment practice as we know it and currently practice it.

Of all the valuable information and analysis presented during this seminar, the following two graphs (Figure 1) spoke to just how big the task ahead is for us collectively in Western Australia.

Figure 1. These two graphs illustrate how WA’s GHGe’s are tracking with reference to Australia’s 2030 Paris Agreement commitments. (These figures, presented at the seminar, are taken with permission from the forthcoming Conservation Council of WA publication ‘CCWA & Clean State Report: September 2019’.)

Australia’s international commitment under the Paris Agreement requires pollution to be reduced by 26-28% from the 2005 baseline year. But current and proposed projects since 2005 are predicted to add 41.6 million tonnes of pollution per year, equivalent to a 61% increase on WA’s 2005 emissions baseline, and an 8% increase above Australia’s 2005 baseline.  WA’s energy minister has previously said the State would have an “aspirational” target of net zero emissions by 2050 and acknowledged the federal government’s 26%-28% reduction target by 2030 and would commit to “working with the commonwealth to achieve this goal”.

There’s clearly a lot of improvements to be had and we’re keen to find ways we can make a positive difference.

As an environmental technology company, Gaia Resources keeps abreast of current trends. As our mission statement says:

Gaia Resources is a consultancy that responsibly delivers
sustainable technology solutions to make the world a better place.

We work on big data projects in areas like biodiversity, health and the environment – you can see this in the scope of our project portfolio. As a good corporate citizen, Gaia Resources applies a “core values test” to all projects that are proposed to us, to see if the projects will “make the world a better place”.  Certainly, working with companies to reduce their carbon emissions has a big part to play in making that improvement!

If you’d like to give us your feedback on the issues presented here, or want to know how we can help with tracking, monitoring and reducing carbon emissions, 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 A Carbon Budget for Western Australia appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The communications and Lego exercise is not only a bit of fun, it also means I have a bunch of Lego to play with afterwards

It’s a bit of a cliche, but in my mind (and often in official diagrams) I draw our organisation chart “upside-down”. For me, the role I play as the Chief Executive Officer is all about making sure that I support the team in being able to do their work. Our strategy week is the best part of doing that – I get to hear back from the team about what is really important to them.

The strategy week includes a pretty intensive day (with Lego!) so that we can do a few things, such as:

• present on how we’ve gone as a team that year (across a whole range of different areas, such as financial performance, strategy, teamwork and the like),
• propose a range of different things (which are presented from the team themselves, as well) that we then discuss, and
• hear from the team about what they would like to see change and improve.

Of course, a strategy day needs to include some time to let our hair down (easier for some than others). So, after our strategy day we headed out to the Escape room in Fremantle where a lot of fun was had by all (as evidenced from the group shot we had afterwards!).

Yes, that’s us

But what happens as a result of the strategy day? Apart from a glorious picture of how strange we all are?

In this year’s strategy day, we ended up with a listing of over 80 things that the team would want to see change, and it ranged from things such as people taking leave, to some pretty big improvements to our systems and processes (especially pertinent since we are currently undergoing our ISO accreditations – more on that another time). These items – opportunities for improvement – were then run through the matrix of “what do we want to do, and what can we afford to do”. We’re still a small business, so we have to be pragmatic about what we can do, after all.

The end result is a listing of things that we want to get done, which are then planned out and are delivered over time. Some of these things are pretty small, so they’re done quickly. And others will take more time, and resources. In order to keep us all honest, we actually look at these every single week and how we are tracking in our weekly team meeting, where we report on them in a “Red Amber Green” quick review. So far, we’ve already got good traction on 20 of these tasks, with another 37 underway – we’re well over halfway already in the first month – but I know the long tail is coming with the harder ones to come.

I think it’s really, really important that we hold ourselves to account here, though – across all of the organisation – so that we can continue to build a better company, identify the processes we need to streamline and improve the solutions we deliver – together.

Piers

As always, you can follow or contact us via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Strategising as a team appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Why not try out this prototype phenology tool that I’ve also prepared using the ‘wandoo’ data yourself? Then leave a comment below, start a chat with me via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, or email me directly via alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au.

Alex

The post Phenological analysis of Eucalyptus wandoo for honey bee foraging appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Heres another gauntlet thrown down by Piers: assemble a GIS tiger team for fifty hours to explore ‘what can you do help people visualise readily available spatial data for a significant group of organisms in their particular area of interest AND let them download a field guide for just those taxa’.

Barbara and Jake G. tackled the spatial side of the question while Jake T. explored ways to transform the resulting data into a well-formed PDF document.  The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) was the first choice as they provide an impressive range of web services to programmatically access and harvest their aggregated data.

Here’s what the team came up with (illustrated below).

Drawing on large data sets presents its own issues, and there are some 750,000 fungi specimen and observation records available in the ALA. For query and presentation responsiveness we chose to limit the query to just one large order in Kingdom Fungi – the Agaricales.  Similarly, limits to the number of records retrieved (500) were also implemented in case the area drawn is very large.  Currently, the tool is aimed at medium-size areas, such as Bold Park, a coastal conservation reserve in Perth, as illustrated below.

The interface we developed (with one of the field guide PDF files overlaid) – click on the image or here to try it yourself.

So here’s how you use the mapping interface:

1. select your fungal family of interest, or leave it set to ‘ALL’ families. The available families in the drop-down have been generated from a query of the ALA;
2. select the drawing tool on the left to draw a polygon around your land area of interest. (note: from the layer selection icon in the top right you can choose to display a street-map or a satellite image base layer);
3. press ‘Scan’ to display the available points within your defined area;
4. click on a point to display some metadata about the record;
5. it is possible to select a different family to display and the results will be automatically displayed;
6. when you have your preferred data set, hit ‘PDF’ to generate a field guide to the area;
7. a well-formed PDF document containing a table of species ordered alphabetically by family, genus and species, as illustrated in the inset above;
8. each table row ideally contains a referenced image (so that you can follow up on the creator and usage information), scientific name and author, family, and the contributing dataset.

This project provides an informative case study for producing useful products from authoritative public datasets. It could be expanded upon and further configured to produce field guides for any major taxonomic group.

Given more time we would have liked to add to the map point clustering and record counts, and a dynamically generated drop-down list of only the families occurring in the defined area and we’d really like to do more on attributing those images properly!

We uncovered some technical issues also, such as repeated 404 timeouts with retrieving ALA data, and noted the lack of map tile services at the scale required.  Similarly, the species-level data is uneven, with a lack of representative images or descriptive text to better meet the real-world requirements of a Field Guide.  We also need to check through some of the delivered data in more detail – some of the data we receive appears to be getting truncated along the line.

Never-the-less, given the fifty person-hours available, we are quite happy with this result!

We’d like to acknowledge the ALA for its continuing commitment to aggregating the scientific resources to provide a national view of Australia’s biodiversity, and the RBG Victoria’s FungiMap project, which has contributed much of the data we have harvested for this project.

If you’d like to give us your feedback on the webmap, or know more about how we can help you with research programs, data management or spatial information systems, 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 Challenge: Dynamic Fungi Field Guide appeared first on Gaia Resources.

A wildlife corridor as an overpass across a major highway in Banff, Alberta (top), and ecosystem corridors alongside farmland in the South Coast of Western Australia (bottom).

Recently we’ve had some fun turning linear corridor assessment methods towards conservation applications. The Great Victoria Desert Biodiversity Trust (GVDBT) have embarked on an ambitious survey that will leverage hundreds of kilometres of LIght Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) data to detect mounds and assess habitat for the endangered Malleefowl (building on our previous work). We’ve been helping them to design a LIDAR survey corridor that will give them best value for money based on satellite imagery, vegetation data, accessibility constraints and previous mound sightings.

In traditional use of linear corridor assessment, engineers aim to identify the most (cost) efficient infrastructure route between A and B, and consider a range of constraints early in a project life-cycle to map out options for these corridors. Cost efficiency is more than just considering the financial components – like construction labour and materials cost multiplied by distance; limiting (negative) environmental and social impacts can represent just as much value to an organisation’s bottom line. While the term triple bottom line (economic, social and environment) is no longer a catch phrase in business, for many years organisation’s have relied on these concepts to understand the full impacts and sustainability of planning decisions. It is at the root of the linear corridor assessment process. The assessment process normally involves more than just engineers too – it requires stakeholder input from subject matter experts in environment, heritage and sustainability, and is largely driven by the Spatial Scientist.

Linear corridor assessment uses a Multi-Criteria Analysis approach within Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, and is a particularly interesting project to the spatial scientist (or at least to this one). When I’ve been involved in these projects, I’ve gained a lot of satisfaction from seeing the power of data, geography, numerical modelling, stakeholder engagement, options analysis and negotiation coming together to demonstrate business value and limit our environmental footprint. The spatial scientist plays a pivotal role in being able to turn group thinking and preferences into tangible options based on solid analysis techniques, and help stakeholders visualise the results through rich map products.

So how does it work? The short explanation:

1. It usually begins with a criteria workshop. A group of stakeholders are brought together to identify and agree on the key factors that are favourable to, are a constraint, or are a ‘No-go’ for the asset.
2. The spatial scientist sources various datasets that can represent each of the criteria, processes them in GIS software into grid-based criteria mapping layers (e.g. rasters), and shares overview maps with stakeholders. Rankings are also assigned within a particular criterion, where stakeholders want to use a classification (e.g. wetland conservation class) to categories with a range of scores, or where values can be naturally grouped into classes (e.g. slope ranges).
3. The criteria layer values are normalised to prevent bias and over-representation.
4. A second workshop for criteria weighting is held to get consensus amongst stakeholders on the relative importance of each criteria. The results are tabulated in a weighted criteria table – the more important a criteria the higher the weighting.
5. The weightings are applied to the criteria mapping layers, such that each gridded cell holds a value representing an initial score multiplied by the criteria weight.
6. Algebra is used to add up all the weighted scores for each gridded cell, to create a suitability index.

A graphical example of two raster datasets whose cell values are added together using map algebra.

         7. From there a path-distance toolset is run to create one or more corridor options between a desired source and destination. These represent least-cost paths; in other words, lines that have been calculated to have the lowest aggregate scores.

Often a review of the options can get a lot of debate going and result in a re-assessment of criteria weightings, which means running the path-distance tools again. A relaxing of a constraint here, or increasing the importance of a favourable condition there. Perhaps the introduction of a new criterion not considered before. The linear corridor assessment process can be quite simple or highly iterative and complex, depending on the number of constraints and the make-up of the stakeholder group.

Digital transformation and the Internet of Things brings new and exciting data sources to the table for the spatial scientist to consider – either to increase the coverage and accuracy of an existing criterion, or to add a new element to the study that was not previously possible. Sensor based data from mobile phones (like vehicle, cycle and people movement), rooftop solar installations and weather sensors, and a range of monitoring devices can provide a more informative and time-sensitive picture of what is going on in our world. This all plays nicely into the hands of the spatial scientist who is in that project team looking or suitable datasets to conduct analyses like linear corridor assessment.

I’d love to hear your feedback on this topic and to hear how other companies use these types of techniques, so feel free to contact me, or start a chat with us via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Chris

The post Corridor assessment appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Malleefowl in their natural habitat (top) – Photo © Nye Edwards; Jake Geddes and me in our natural habitat (bottom).

Citing Wikipedia, “the Malleefowl is a stocky ground-dwelling Australian bird about the size of a domestic chicken. They are notable for the large nesting mounds constructed by the males and lack of parental care after the chicks hatch.”

In the Western Australian  wheatbelt, populations are now considered to be highly isolated and fragmented, and continue to be threatened by habitat clearing, competition for food with introduced herbivores, predation by foxes and cats, and increased frequency of wildfires and prescribed burning (Source: Benshemesh, 2007, DPAW, 2016)  Not much is known about Malleefowl presence and habitat in the massive Great Victorian Desert; which, as the largest of Australia’s deserts, equally spans Western Australia and South Australia. Similar threats impact the Malleefowl in the Great Victoria Desert (GVD), with wildfires considered as the biggest threat in this sparsely populated part of the State.

Geographic range of Nganamara across Australia (Source: DPAW, 2016)

There are direct and indirect sightings of the bird primarily in the Southwest corner of the GVD, recorded by mining companies and consultants, with data stored in a centralised database (NatureMap) managed by the Department of Parks and Wildlife. These sites tend to centre around mines and nearby tenements. Elsewhere records are sparse and isolated across the GVD expanse. Did I mention how big the Great Victorian Desert is? The map below only shows half of it (the other half being in South Australia)!

Malleefowl locations are located primarily in the Southwest portion of the GVD (Source: Malleefowl in the GVD Report (DPAW, 2016)).

I worked with our GIS Analyst Jake Geddes to source and analyse  a set of mapping layers – including Beard’s Vegetation Complexes, Fire Scars, Landsat Satellite imagery, roads and tracks. The first challenge was to define ‘likely Malleefowl habitat’ – and through discussions and a workshop with key stakeholders in the Malleefowl conservation arena, we were able to massage the mapping layers into a suitability map book containing areas of High, Moderate and Low suitability. We started with categorising Vegetation complexes containing the right vegetation assemblages, then subtracted areas of recent wildfire burns (e.g. in the last 10 years). The resulting areas were still very broad, but Landsat imagery helped to focus in on smaller patches of dark vegetation we interpreted to be candidates for the dense Mulga stands that Malleefowl like to call home.

Our interpretation was backed up – at least in the Southwest corner of the GVD – by a strong correlation (e.g. proximity to) known Malleefowl mounds. We also brought some on-ground experience to bear, by getting the fauna consultant (Jeff Turpin) – who recorded some of those mound locations – to corroborate our findings.

Landsat 8 imagery near the Tropicana mine. The dark patches are interpreted as high likelihood Malleefowl habitat.

The second challenge was to take the thousands of candidate areas, and nominate a smaller set of potential survey locations. The GVDBT want these survey sites to be accessible and evenly distributed (geographically), including across a range of categories and land use types (e.g. parks and reserves, mining tenements, pastoral leases, native title boundaries). This is so we can learn more about the bird’s habitat across a range of environmental and land use criteria. To do this we have ignored very small patches of suitable habitat. We then identified the sealed and unsealed roads that surveyors could travel on to get to the remaining potential sites. This is where we ran into a bit of a hitch; we know there are many roads through the GVD, but little data is readily available. So we have used the best publicly available roads dataset from Geoscience Australia. Taking into account survey methods that consist of short walks from these roads, we have excluded areas that are more than a few kilometres trek from the beaten path.

Our site selection process includes 100 randomly selected and stratified sites with representation of known Malleefowl mounds, high, moderate and low (inferred) suitability. The 100 sites are spread out across the GVD so we have good geographic representation, and includes a good scattering of sites in different land use types. To choose the sites we facilitated two workshops with stakeholders – the first focused on the technical methodology for site selection, and the second was a review of the selected sites.

Example of a site selection based on a hexagonal survey area within buffer of accessible roads data, and high suitability of habitat based on Landsat imagery.

So the long and short of it is, we had our work cut out for us, but this has been a fascinating project. Our hope is that with all this data crunching and science, we can add value to the more important survey effort and through this can contribute to the collective knowledge of Malleefowl habitat in the GVD.

This was a great project that featured a range of spatial analysis, and if you’d like to find out how we can help you with similar projects, contact me directly in the Perth office on (08) 92277309, email or Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Chris

The post Fantastic Malleefowl and Where To Find Them appeared first on Gaia Resources.

During the National NRM Conference held in June in Coffs Harbour (you can read our blog about that if you’re interested), we met John Brisbin from the NGRMG. He had already started doing some interesting work in Unity 3D to model erosion in the gulf region. We continued a dialogue after the conference, and thought it could be interesting opportunity to increase the scale of this type of work to assist decision making.

As proof-of-concept, we began working with some of our initial datasets to model out parts of Western Australia to see how we could integrate data from sources like QGIS and drone photography into Unity, so we could export out a mobile app. We then leveraged Android’s VR capabilities so we could then use the app in cardboard to create VR experience.  We showed John Brisbin our work and discussed how this concept could be used to assist decision making in the Northern Gulf area.

The problem we decided to look at was how we could visualise the suitability of irrigated agriculture and water storage in the Gilbert River catchment. In this space there is debate about the viability of using the Gilbert River for water storage and irrigation, and we thought that by producing a VR product to simulate the effects, decision makers would be able to see the areas impacted, how large the irrigation zones, and the suitability of the land.

In summary, this is how we believed VR could assist decision making:

• VR can make data more understandable to a wide range of people – data tables, models and reports can be difficult to understand. VR turns this into a visual representation that can remove bias.
• VR can simulate scenarios – for example, situations like a failed wet season, large monsoons, and prolonged droughts can be simulated and applied through the VR model so it becomes possible to visualise and play out the outcomes over a large model.
• VR can make large numbers meaningful – if you can see large numbers in context (e.g. 20,000ha space, extent of suitable soil for agriculture etc.) it can enable a better understanding and perspective of land management impact.

So next up, came the elephant in the room. Having enough data to make a meaningful VR simulation to assist the decision making process.

As this was a proof-of-concept project with a limited budget, it would not be possible to model the entire Gilbert River catchment (almost 47,000 km2). To select a target area, we drew upon the research of the CSIRO, and a recent report (Petheram et al, 2013).  Within that report the CSIRO had performed a number of feasibility studies into potential dam sites, and looked at the water storage capacity of these sites. Also, a large amount of soil profile data was released to the CSIRO’s open data portal.  We then matched the irrigation requirements of crops in similar climates to identify the size of an area that the dam site could potentially water. With this information, and we modeled a likely dam location, as well as a potential irrigation site just downstream to narrow down the target areas of the VR app.

Jake was allocated the job of making all of this possible, and so over to him to describe the steps taken:

<technical>

We began with testing a few approaches to this task, as it was a fairly new set of technologies for us. There were initial discussions and tutorials floating around, but nothing concrete and sufficient enough for our needs. Many people seem to have over-complicated the process, while there were some simpler and more efficient workflows that seemed to be able to be used instead… so, our approach was to solely develop the application inside of the Unity engine, a 2D/3D game creator. Best of all….it’s free for most use cases (you can even try it out!). With its large community forum and active participation most problems we encountered could be researched and fixed in no time whatsoever.

Once we had our virtual reality framework up and running, it was time to integrate some data. To produce a real world terrain in Unity was to allow for a clean and careful methodology. The simplest approach was to set up a layout in QGIS, and export all the layers intended for Unity as images, something like the diagram below:

We took a range of layers in QGIS, exported them as images, and then brought them back together again in Unity

The terrain (a Digital Elevation Model) was imported through a script in order to produce a 3D view, while our soil and topographical datasets were overlaid as textures. Now we had our basic set-up, it was time to add interactivity.

This is not that simple – because the person using Google Cardboard only really has one button. Therefore, we broke it down to basic “on-click” functions, such as if you click somewhere on the terrain while on-ground, you would move to that destination.  But to integrate other functionality, we used a Heads Up Display (HUD) to swap layers (soil/topographical), swap positions (on-ground/overhead), swap scenes, and display legend information. Here’s a little sneak peek…

A simulated view of the 3-D setup

And if you have an Android phone, Google Cardboard and a viewer – you can download the VR file here.  To get it running, download this file, install it on an Android phone and then use the Google Cardboard app and headset to run the app.

</technical>

So in all, through this partnership with NGRMG we were able to produce a Virtual Reality model of a potential dam and irrigation site in the Gilbert River catchment. This approach seems to be able to help relevant stakeholders in the decision making process by creating a visual model of the land affected, provide an efficient method to explore suitable sites, and to help assess the viability of such land use changes.

What’s next? Well this was a proof-of-concept, and we’ve shown it is possible, and there certainly are benefits. The next step is to find look at simulating larger use cases, model new requirements and incorporate more data – stay tuned.  In the meantime, leave a comment below, drop me an email, or start a conversation with us via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Morgan

Petheram C., Watson, I. and Stone, P. (eds) (2013) Agricultural resource assessment for the Gilbert catchment. A report to the Australian Government from the CSIRO Flinders and Gilbert Agricultural Resource Assessment, part of the North Queensland Irrigated Agriculture Strategy. CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country and Sustainable Agriculture flagships, Australia.

Editors note: sorry about the featured image, Andrew

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