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

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

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

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

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

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

Piers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alex

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gill

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some thoughts on these areas follow.

System health checks

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

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

New and improved data sources

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

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

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

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

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

Monitoring and Automated Reporting

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

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

System Development

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

Data Analytics and Data Science

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

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

Chris

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

The NRM “industry” in Australia is really more like a community.  Depending on where you are in Australia, your local NRM groups will be not-for-profit companies, government agencies, community groups and all sorts of different permutations of that.  Across all these different types of corporate vehicles, you meet some really passionate and interesting people from a wide range of backgrounds – conservation, farming, business, retirees, the works. They are really what keeps the whole NRM industry running.

The crowd at the recent Rangelands NRM AGM – a broad range of people attended from a really diverse set of backgrounds.

When we first met the NRM community, their work reminded me of the community we were part of when I was growing up on a small farm in the south-west of Western Australia.  A lot of passionate people, a lot of volunteers, all getting together to make their corner of the world just a little it better, in a bunch of different ways.  That includes things like helping advise on sustainable agricultural practices, fence off areas to protect them against feral animals, undertake weeding (like our Perth office team did before Christmas), running educational events, and all sorts of other things. Through these sorts of actions they manage, improve and protect the natural resources, and are a voice for the environment.

What we also saw was a need to help out with the technology side of things.

Our first, and probably the biggest, project with the NRM community was GRID.  Originally this was seen as a way to create a new corporate spatial system for the South West Catchments Council, one that was easy to use and tailored for the various activities that the NRM group undertook.  Keen to make sure the project delivered, we invested a lot of additional time and effort into the development of GRID on top of the funding we received through State NRM, including a second round to tweak GRID further.

We have been fortunate enough to be able to provide GRID to the NRM groups across Western Australia.  We’ve developed a way to do this that starts with a small project to establish GRID with the groups, customising it and setting up the various activities that they need.  Then for the ongoing costs, we also roll in monthly data updates of all their data, an annual training course wherever they wanted in their region (plus an administrator session), and unlimited phone and email support for their staff, and any of their community groups that use it.

Chris running some GRID training with the Peel Harvey Catchment Council

Making any generic product that has to suit a wide range of people means you’re not going to make everyone happy, and we take every bit of feedback about GRID very seriously.  We’ve been developing wish lists, capturing any and all feedback, and looking at the future of GRID and how we can look at making it even better in the next version – and how we fund it.  That’s the area that we’re actively looking at right now – pulling all the requirements together to start costing what it would take for the next version, and how we make this all stack up – not easy for a small business!

Along the way with GRID we’ve also delivered a lot of other projects in the NRM area, including web sites, spatial support and mapping, development of online shops, and we’ve even been involved in the grants process itself, through last year’s GRID Grants implementation (a lighter, simpler front end to GRID for the grants process that creates a baseline spatial area for the grants).

Spatial sciences has been a bit part of our history at Gaia Resources – we did, after all, start as a spatial company.  And when the South Coast NRM group, through Project Dieback, asked if we could help them with QGIS (a freely available, open source GIS package) training, we jumped at the chance, and created our freely available online QGIS training course.  Again, we invested heavily in this, and developed a course that has been taken up all over the world.

Our current map of the people who’ve asked for our training manual and data for the freely available online course.

The NRM community has been working hard, especially over the last year or so, at creating sustainable business models.  Meanwhile we’ve been looking at the same sort of business models and how we can make our technology offerings even more appropriate and sustainable.  We’re already working on an updated QGIS training course, pulling together GRID 2.0 requirements (which you can find in our Wish List) and even offering shared spatial services across the groups.

The best part of working with the NRM community is the people.  Frank, fearless and passionate, there’s no shortage of people telling us how we can improve and make things even better for them.  We’d love to hear from any NRM groups with ideas or requests for assistance – you can reach out via email, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.  While the NRM community continues to look after the natural resources of the world, we’ll keep on supporting them for as long as they’ll let us.

I hope that’s for a while to come yet.

Piers

The post What is Natural Resource Management? appeared first on Gaia Resources.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris

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

After the warm and wise Welcome to Country by elder Gail Wynne, Cameron Crowe (Chair of the Dieback Working Group) provided a forward perspective of DWG. Key points in his talk included the confirmation that:

• there is no certainty of significant further funding for Project Dieback, but that
• the Group will continue to work closely with South Coast NRM, and that
• the Dieback Information Delivery and Management System (DIDMS) remains a crucial software platform into the future.

The DIDMS Platform, based on our GRID product, is a crucial asset in the fight against Phytophthora dieback

The keynote address by Dr Richard Walley strongly highlighted the need for inclusion of indigenous knowledge in the management of country. This message was amplified further by Tui Shortland (Director, Te Kōpū – Pacific Indigenous & Local Knowledge Centre) who presented on ‘Indigenous Wisdom: Phytophthora and Kauri Decline’ and outlined the Cultural Health Indicator Framework as a more comprehensive measure of ecosystem health.

A series of excellent speed-talks had attendees moving about the venue, including Tilo Massenbauer’s (South Coast NRM) introduction to the DIDMS. It was apparent that many workers in the field had yet to evaluate the benefits of this powerful information system. We are looking forward to adding further facility to this system in the coming year by adding methods for Risk Hazard Assessment.

Tilo explaining DIDMS in the speed session

After a busy lunch, Karen Warner (Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council) came up with a brilliant statistic to introduce her talk:

“Volunteering is worth more to Australia than mining.
Volunteering in Australia is worth $290 billion annually.”

On reflection, I found five major take-away messages from the day:

1. funding is being seriously reduced for the key agencies and alternate sources and strategies must be found,
2. the community is diverse, committed and ready to take dieback management to the next level,
3. indigenous knowledge has the potential to greatly contribute to the management and protection of our native ecosystems,
4. a single flexible data management and sharing platform is needed for all workers in this field (which sounds a lot like DIDMS!), and
5. social scientists need to research the barriers to communicating the need to care for and protect the country.

If you’d like to 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 Dieback Information Group Conference 2018 appeared first on Gaia Resources.

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

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

GRID can’t be a one size fits all

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

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

Showing is better than telling

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

“I didn’t even know I could do that”.

“That’s going to be great for ____”

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

Having time for discussions is critical

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

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

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

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

Some other learning curves for me in particular:

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

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

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

Tracey

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

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

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

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

Chris explaining how the new filtering tools work

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

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

Chris

The post GRID Refresher training appeared first on Gaia Resources.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris

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

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Apart from actually helping the several of the NRM organisations in developing their Regional Land Partnership responses, we’re supporting them with a range of additional spatial analyses for their bids, using the data that is available from the Department of Environment’s interactive maps.  

For example, we’ve recently done an evaluation of the threatened species included in the evaluation criteria, taking distributional data across the NRM regions in Western Australia to evaluate how significant each NRM region (or management unit) is to each of the listed species.  As part of this, we evaluated:

• How many of the relevant threatened species are present in each of the WA NRM regions we work with,
• What percentage of that species distribution is within the NRM region (i.e. how important are the actions of that NRM group on that species), and
• What percentage of the NRM region is covered by that species distribution (i.e. how big an area in the NRM region does that species occupy, and so what are the sorts of actions required, and scale, to support that species).

Evaluating species distribution data using QGIS

We sent this data on to the NRMs we work with, and we’re currently working through other criteria for these same NRM regions, including Threatened Ecological Communities, World Heritage Areas, Ramsar Wetlands, and a whole range of other analyses as well – which is really great fun, but also very important work!  There are a heap of other analyses we’re also looking at individually for the NRM regions we support as well (for example – did you know that the Rangelands NRM region makes up 28% of the Australian continent?).

Another of the ways we’re supporting the groups is through our ongoing spatial support and the ongoing use of GRID, our easy-to-use online GIS built for (and by) the NRM community.

Using GRID to review additional datasets and visualisations

GRID came into being when we started working with the South West Catchments Council (SWCC) on replacing a very complex spatial software stack – which was overkill for their requirements, and had a significant ongoing operational cost via licensing (along with a lot of licensed desktop software).  The higher ongoing costs were factored into how we would implement a solution for SWCC – we needed something with minimal ongoing cost – so open source libraries were used throughout our initial builds.  Once we had the system set up for SWCC we jointly decided to make it available for other NRM groups and to seek consensus and collaboration as ways forward in developing it, and we partner that with the open source QGIS package to help provide desktop tools.

Where we deliver value to the NRM community via GRID and this support is via:

• A one-off setup cost for GRID (often funded by a grant) that migrates existing data from other systems, develops the templates for the data they want to manage (such as the parameters they need to record around weed removal), sources the base data they need (such as imagery), and to provide training for the staff involved,
• A single flat annual fee for GRID that encompasses hosting, maintenance releases and email and telephone support for the use of GRID gives them certainty around their ongoing costs, and
• Providing spatial support in various ways, the most popular being in discounted pre-paid ‘blocks’ of 40 hours, to be used by the NRM however they feel the need to.  That includes preparing datasets, working on other spatial projects, or creating new maps for an upcoming event or report – and these ‘blocks’ often last NRM groups for months.

This approach means that the cost of running spatial services across an organisation on an ongoing basis can be well under $20,000 a year, which in many organisations is much less than the amount they spend on licences, let alone staff, office and other costs.  Interestingly, our experience in Western Australia with this is that it doesn’t erode the spatial positions within organisations, but frees them up to undertake more valuable spatial work.  So we see the spatial staff actually doing deeper analysis projects, and streamlining processes, rather than creating maps (which other NRM staff can now do themselves).

Our work with the NRM community has been really rewarding, and certainly trying to gain input and consensus for our GRID product has been helped by the NRM groups willingness to collaborate from day one.  The support from the state government NRM body has also been key – we’ve been able to run our ‘GRID road map’ workshops for GRID at conferences (such as last year’s one), and this alone has been a major source of encouragement.  

In these “interesting” times it certainly feels like our long-term hard work on GRID and other projects with the NRM community is really starting to deliver big benefits in the new reality of funding that they face. 

If you are interested in what GRID could do for your organisation, or how we could help you deliver a high value proposal to the Regional Land Partnerships, then get in touch with either myself or Chris Roach via email, or in our Perth office (08 92277309).

Piers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris

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

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