Identified opportunities relate to technology and while land and land use planning are traditional domains for the spatial industry, in terms of application of spatial to environmental monitoring and management, the opportunity is vast from application to bays, waterways, marine and coastal environments to air quality management and green-house gas reduction by decarbonization of the energy and transport systems for example.

• Data governance, accountabilities and a systematic approach to data management for spatial data collection, integration, storage and ongoing management across government and portfolio agencies. Currently, there is limited accountability for data management and integration from multi-agencies and the requirement to maintain high-quality datasets that lead to enabling sophisticated analyses. Data governance should be established and clearly articulate roles and responsibilities for relevant agencies.
• Long-term earth observation information: Various satellites have different temporal scales with varying levels of image resolutions. Integration of data from those satellites to create decades of information for various environmental themes with analytic applications such as machine learning will be highly useful for environmental management and decision-making processes. One example is Landsat Surface Reflectance statistics for land cover mapping developed by DEA. For example Victorian government use these statistics to map the dynamic changes in land cover through time in Victoria (from 1985 to present). They model land cover across Victoria, including native vegetation (herbaceous, woody and wetlands), intensive agriculture and recreation, forestry and the built environment, including urban areas. Time-series of spatial optical data have demonstrated high capacity for characterisation of environmental phenomena, describing trends as well as discrete change events.
• Higher accuracy positioning systems: SBAS is currently in development in Australia and New Zealand and expected to be operational in 5-10 years. SBAS can improve positioning accuracy from a meter level to a centimeter level. This has very strong implications for enhancing environmental and disaster preparedness and management and protecting life and assets – environmental and physical infrastructure – as well as for industries such as forestry and quarries where accuracy is key to ensure boundary management and species protection during operations to maintain a social license to operate.
• Measuring three-dimensional structure of Australian forests using satellite: Currently, three- dimensional mapping of forest structure has been performed by LiDAR technology using aircraft. This mapping exercise is important for forest biomass and structure monitoring, leading to enabling a solid estimation of time-series forest carbon storage from the ground. However, this is time-consuming and labor intensive. Satellites harnessed with LiDAR technology will provide a significant impact on responding to the effects of global climate change. In 2018, NASA launched two sensors into space that will play a prominent role in monitoring forest biomass and structure over the next decade: the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) now attached to the International Space Station, and the Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2).These two satellites, which in combination provide complete coverage of the planet, are equipped with LiDAR sensors that record forest structure in 3D, contributing to an ongoing wave of large-scale forest ecosystem measurements. This technology also has the potential to monitor climate impacted environments such as coastal settlements – to manage coastal inundation and erosion due to sea level rise and storms from climate change.

For the space and spatial sectors to be able to sustainably grow, innovate and deliver leading and useful research in the coming years, a diverse workforce will be needed. This will include diversity of background – starting with gender – but also diversity of thinking approaches.

Peak bodies in both the space and spatial sector are strongly advocating for this change and making progress, either individually (e.g. Australian Space Agency having reached 50/50 gender balance) or in a coordinated fashion (e.g. the Space, Spatial and Surveying Diversity Leadership Network). For those efforts to be maximised and leveraged, coordination across both sectors is paramount and would result in increased benefits.

The importance of GNSS PNT capability to the success of Australia’s future has been noted previously, for example in the Australian Civil Space Strategy, where it was identified as a high priority area for growth and investment, and the Australia Academy of Science’s (AAS) 2017: A vision for space science and technology in Australia.

Positioning data derived from GNSS is considered by ANZLIC as one of Australia’s fundamental data sets, and the AAS has commissioned a new working group for PNT. These all build on previous work started in 2012 to develop the Australian Strategic Plan For GNSS, which proposed a strategic direction for Australia’s PNT that would lead to significant benefits including ‘enhanced productivity, job creation, industry growth, the identification of new export markets, increased competitiveness, improved workplace safety, enhanced national security, strengthened international linkages and a dynamic R&D sector’.

Accordingly, the 2012 Strategic Plan set-out four strategic initiatives:

(1) Ensure leadership for the Australian GNSS community;

(2) Adopt a whole-of-nation approach to a sustainable, multi-GNSS-enabled positioning infrastructure;

(3) Mitigate vulnerabilities in existing and future GNSS infrastructure; and

(4) Capitalise on Australia’s unique geopolitical and geographic advantages.

While there has been significant progress within Australia since 2021 towards achieving these four objectives, there is still considerable opportunity from harnessing the future economic, social and environmental impacts of PNT, especially given the evolution of PNT applications, advances in GNSS constellations and their visibility across Australia, therefore it is felt that the time is right to renew the Strategic Plan.

Innovating new capabilities

• Developing a sovereign capability to monitor and assess both the state of error sources affecting GNSS (as will be realised through the Positioning Australia program) and its inherent integrity is critical not only for positioning and navigation but also for the multitude of applications requiring the timing component currently supplied by GNSS.
• Delivering novel GNSS products that further contribute to our understanding of the dynamic atmosphere for weather forecasting, climatological studies, and the behaviour of the ionosphere and space weather. These products, such as GNSS derived models of atmospheric density, could afford greater resilience to our sovereign PNT capabilities. Additionally, the dynamic impacts of atmospheric effects on PNT are also experienced by other sectors within the growth pillars (Earth Observation, Satellite Communications and Space Domain Awareness (SDA)), so clear collaborative partnerships and knowledge exchange pathways are required to ensure that findings are benefitted across all industry sectors.
• Developing products and services essential for ensuring assured GNSS information for mission-critical and safety-critical PNT applications such as automated industrial machines, robotics, driverless vehicles, aircraft and infrastructure dependent on timing. Inventing, developing and delivering Australia-specific critical PNT integrity messages especially ones pertaining to high accuracy PNT services (such as RTK and PPP), could later become an industry-leading innovation to export regionally and globally further raising Australia’s PNT reputation.

Improving infrastructure, mitigating vulnerabilities and assuring access

• Development of assured PNT capabilities for Australia – meaning one that is suitably protected and secured (with authentication and possibly encryption) – to deliver the required PNT performances under adverse conditions. Assured PNT impacts all aspects of space (both downward and outward looking), and the growing spatial sector.
• Cultivating resilience across our PNT capabilities to better protect against both unintentional and purposeful interference and spoofing across all segments, including but not limited to known incidents such as solar flares, cybersecurity breaches, erroneous almanac uploads and unlikely ‘black swan’ events.
• Design and implementation of sub-metre (and even decimetre-level) accuracy GNSS systems based on low-cost mass-market GNSS receivers, enhanced via emerging terrestrial 5G telecommunications infrastructure delivering augmentation information for enhanced accuracy and integrity. Ideally, these GNSS products would be developed locally and be fully compatible with Australian PNT information and services.
• Developing and facilitating the integration of space-borne GNSS receivers aboard Australian satellites to support more applications of small satellites for communications, earth observation and PNT, and even on missions beyond Earth orbit, for so-called space service volume navigation.
•  Augmenting the GNSS space segment, for example using select LEO satellites equipped with appropriate payloads, could provide increased availability of the more advanced PNT techniques (RTK, network RTK, SSR and PPP-RTK). Indeed the provision of sovereign PNT integrity messages (determined for Australia by Australia) transmitted by Australian space infrastructure, must be complemented by simultaneous transmission through secondary terrestrial communications as a robust delivery method.
• Collaborating across federal and state governments to incorporate PNT infrastructure (terrestrial and orbital) and generated services (corrections, integrity, interference) within the Critical Infrastructure Network as part of an ongoing Risk Assessment and Mitigation program.
• Develop real-time capability to detect, measure, geolocate and ultimately mitigate sources of interference and spoofing to GNSS across Australia and realise it as a ‘Nationwide GNSS Interference Monitoring Infrastructure’. Such an infrastructure could be hosted and coordinated between federal government and Defence, and report incidents of interference alongside ongoing integrity messages to the wider community, further facilitating the adoption and trust in PNT for Australia, by Australians.
• The successful augmentation of current GNSS with alternate (non-GNSS) PNT coming from emerging technologies promises even greater levels of resilience, robustness and trust around assured PNT for space and spatial sectors.

Australia currently relies on about 20-25 remote sensing satellites for its imagery and sensing needs from space. None of these are Australian owned. With the nascent but growing space start-up industry in Australia now comprising at least 80 companies and the Australia SME sector set for substantial growth there is the opportunity to facilitate a coordinated dual use (civilian – defence) approach to the strategic design and deployment of a constellation of satellites that are built up over the next decade to service the high priority, sovereign needs of Australia.

For example, what is the optimum combination of optical, Near- Infra red (NIR), mid infra-red (MIR) for fire detection and monitoring both now, based on current capabilities, and over the next decade? Continuous monitoring of fires, at operational resolutions, inter-jurisdictionally and nation-wide during catastrophic fire seasons has proven a challenge for Australia. Could this be addressed by a geo-stationary satellite with optical, NIR, MIR and hyperspectral capabilities, with sensor(s) of sufficient ground resolution and signal to noise ratios, coupled with next generation on-board and terrestrial analytics? This is but one of many examples that can be put forward to illustrate the opportunity before Australia of moving from an opportunistic user of the satellites that others choose to launch and operate to a nation of strategic, long term intent.

The launch market is dynamic with continual efforts to improve access to space with more reliable and cost-effective launch capability. A key target is the small satellite market where a race to develop cost effective access to space is underway including by Australian companies.

Geography is a key factor for launch sites with proximity to the equator and ability to safely launch over open water or unpopulated areas to all launch azimuths from 0 to 98 degrees while minimising overflight of neighbouring countries. Australia is among the few nations that has this capability and is a good location for launch and testing of new vehicles. Australian companies are currently developing launch sites to capitalise on these advantages.

Another emerging opportunity is space tourism and point-to-point travel. Australia is well positioned to become the space tourism hub for Asia and be involved in the development of sub-orbital point-to-point travel, first for fast package delivery and subsequently for human travel around the globe in less than 90 minutes. SpaceX is well advanced with this concept with Australia considered a key initial location and the US military is now evaluating this as means of rapid supply and potentially troop movements globally. No country will benefit more from rapid intercontinental travel than Australia.

Finally, the US plans to return to the Moon, the goal being to harvest and transport space materials as well as the desire to reposition satellites to specific orbits are driving developments of orbital transport systems to move objects to and from LEO to MEO and GEO orbits, beyond GEO, Cis-lunar, Trans-lunar, the Lagrange Points and others. This includes the ability for subsystem recovery/re-use, space vehicle servicing, orbital transfer, orbital debris collection, and replenishment of consumables and expendables on spacecraft that cannot be recovered back to Earth (e.g., spacecraft inspection/servicing, refuelling, hardware maintenance, and technology upgrades) as well as on orbit assembly and sustainment of spacecraft. Australian companies are among many that are actively involved in these developments.

Many simulation tools, such as “spacecraft digital twins” are starting to be developed by large organisations where they see value in these activities (e.g. constellations like OneWeb have developed a satellite digital twin, large satellite manufacturers have developed more sophisticated tools to aid in integration activities and NASA is performing research in the area).

Increased simulation tools to support activities such as on-ground integration and testing and on-orbit testing and the integration of the various existing simulation tools may provide value to Australia’s space sector as it grows and more satellites are manufactured here.

These simulation tools may also be useful to support other space activities.

Three opportunities for growth are identified:

• Investment in sovereign capabilities. The Commonwealth Government has kick started the process with the $1.5 billion announced for manufacturing in the October 2020 Budget, however, more detail will be required to determine how the selected industries can be made more sustainable over time.
• Better informed users, leading to increased domestic sales.
• Increased exports – the many challenges already identified, notwithstanding.

There is a significant opportunity for the space and spatial industries to work together with Australia’s strong educational and vocational training systems to develop long-term and sustainable growth in space and spatial educational and training outcomes to build and further enhance Australia’s space and spatial industry workforce. In doing so, there is a need to adopt a two-pronged approach to building the STEM education pipeline. Firstly, further grow the interest and natural connection of young people with space, by informing them of the importance of space to the Australian economy and their daily lives and the growing opportunities that exist for them, to future proof their careers. Secondly, they should work together with the education systems to identify the space and spatial skills requirements of the future and thus develop relevant academic and training programs to ensure that graduates find employment in Australia.

The understanding of space and spatial, their science and critical industries, and the fundamental role they will play in our future is critically lacking as a general capability in the civilian arms of the public sector (with some exceptions including the Australian Space Agency, GA, and the operational arms of the spatial areas in State and Territory agencies). The Thodey review recommends an ambitious transformation program that is owned by APS leaders, with measurable targets to track progress and ensure a major capability rebuild. It is crucial that space and spatial be included explicitly in this transformation program.

Australia has a large amount of space and spatial related R&D activity occurring across the publicly funded research sector and in the hundreds of Australian SME’s. This research activity is fragmented, lacks critical mass and prior to the recent development of SmartSat CRC, lacks focus against an over-arching conception of where the nation needs to be in a decade’s time and beyond.

For space and spatial innovation to lead to successful and enduring outcomes of national and international significance decadal plans need to be laid and a coordinated approach articulated and agreed to by the key contributors.

SmartSat CRC has identified a series of technologies as priorities for its collaborative research in a roadmap. Whilst this roadmap has been set up to serve the needs of the SmartSat CRC’s 100 partners and has been designed to serve both the ASA’s priorities and those of Defence, it represents only part of the national R&D requirements. Other important parts are provided by CSIRO, Defence (primarily through DST), universities, government agencies (e.g. GA) and companies. Which areas of R&D represent the highest priority for Australia? Are they sufficiently resourced at present? Candidate priority areas include quantum key distribution, PNT and its convergence with communications, digital engineering (building on BIM’s), Digital Twins, spatial knowledge infrastructure, and optical/hybrid RF communications amongst others.