The current paradigm for earth observation systems involves data collection to monitor ecological/ environment systems with data analysis informing decision makers on actions that may deliver certain outcomes. Moving to a management focused approach requires access to a wider range of data with better data governance, coupled with advanced analytics/machine learning techniques for sense-making and greater use of spatial digital twins. The key is to develop phenomena-specific systems purposely designed to respond to (societal, environmental and economic) pressures to produce the highly valuable information products that end users ideally want, rather than just creating more low value data. This will enable the introduction of prognostic/ predictive capabilities supporting better, more timely decision making and intervention. It includes identifying what technology developments and investments is required to enable this evolved approach. Critical priority issues include responding to the effects of global climate change, urbanization, population growth and building a circular economy model (including reducing system wastage).

Fundamental and essential environmental information is required for citizens and communities to make decisions. One example is monitoring beach water quality which is affected by a number of factors including storm water run-off. Monitoring the water quality of vulnerable beaches improves government and community planning and decision-making processes.

To turn environmental monitoring into environmental management and help with the decision- making process, a multidisciplinary data collaboration is needed to collect and integrate diverse types of datasets from many organisations, often where data is acquired and used in silos with respect to data collection, management, analysis and dissemination. The Victorian State of the Environment 2018 Report, which is an environmental report card that measures the health of Victoria’s environment, has identified a similar trend. The Report has recommended that the Victorian government develops their spatial information capability and database to inform decision-making across the environment portfolio. Similarly, in the Australian Space Agency report on the role of space-based earth observations to support planning, response and recovery from bushfires, they have also identified the need for an easy-to-use directory of satellite imagery for use by all stakeholders including emergency management for better use of earth observation data.

Systemic integration of spatial datasets from various jurisdictions and fields will provide insights that can lead to smarter decisions and the construction of more comprehensive strategies. Advanced computing power, cloud computing and big data analytics such as artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies can demonstrate how faster and better, decision making can be done Australian Energy Market Operator CEO, Audrey Zibelman reflected on ‘‘What I have learned in Australia is how important advanced computing and the application of artificial intelligence (AI)and machine learning is to our industry to navigate to greater electrification of the economy and a diverse, decarbonised power system.’’ (AFR 1/10/20)

Climate change is the great challenge our time. In Australia it is causing devasting fires on a scale never before seen with predictions of much worse to come. Other natural disasters are expected to increase in frequency and intensity including droughts, cyclones, extreme storms and massive coastal inundation putting lives, livelihoods, ecosystems and critical infrastructure at grave risk over the coming century. These are occurring over increasingly greater areas. The role of space and spatial systems in providing monitoring capabilities and supporting forecasting, planning, and recovery operations will be vital.

So what more can be done, that has not already been identified to deploy space and spatial capabilities to greater effect in the effort to deal with disasters?

SMEs face three fundamental and enduring problems:

1. 1. Access to markets to warrant expansion;
   2. Access to capital to fund expansion;
   3.  Time, typically of founders and CEOs, to develop new markets, to make connections with companies with which collaboration would be to mutual benefit, and to develop compelling responses to tender invitations and grant opportunities.

An additional issue is the difficulty in winning contracts, especially from governments, which tend to favour larger companies that have a much stronger chance of being in business in five and ten years’ time than do many SMEs.

SMEs are critically dependent on cash flow for their month-on-month survival. They need certainty around repeat business in order to be able to plan, invest and grow. SMEs value highly purchase orders from government. A purchase order indicates a degree of confidence by government in the product or service on offer as well as in the company itself.

Almost all of the larger companies (Primes) that operate in Australia in the space and spatial sectors are subsidiaries of global corporations with their headquarters offshore. The focus of the Australian subsidiaries is sales and sales support. Local boards and CEOs have limited discretion and major decisions are routinely referred to the offshore parent for decision. The principal task of these companies is to win major Government contracts (including in the Defence domain) to both supply new platforms and systems and then to sustain them. These companies employ many Australians directly and others through sub-contract arrangements.

Some Primes report difficulties in recruiting suitable staff locally. Some, perhaps many, Australian SMEs struggle to meet the exacting standards for induction into the supply chain programs of the Primes.

Many SMEs do not have a good understanding of the quality and other standards that they must meet and sustain to sell directly to governments or to become integral to the supply chains of the Primes. Others understand but are deterred by the time and dollar costs associated with overcoming these barriers.

The principal difficulty faced by any large company operating in Australia is the small size of the Australian market which engenders intense competition in the local market

Spatial Digital Twins are an advanced spatially accurate digital representation of the real world and are emerging as a powerful tool to help people improve their understanding of our physical environment, make better-informed decisions, build predictive capability, and offer just-in-time analytics and products which should lead to improved outcomes and benefits. Digital Twins assume that the value of data is vastly improved when it is aggregated and then distributed and shared for decision making. Conceptually digital twins can mean a model of an object, a physical asset, a process or a complex environment such as a city, but in this section we are referring to the built and natural environments.

Today Spatial Digital Twins are operating at various levels of maturity and complexity from individual built structure both above and below ground, through to the development of an accurately positioned city model across most major sectors of the economy. However Spatial Digital Twins are recognised as being at a relatively early stage of maturity right now, with much more potential value to be unlocked as their use cases mature. The challenge is in understanding the complexity of applications across industry sectors, the level of maturity of the digital twins in terms of quality and value, and the frameworks which enable data sharing and governance.

The drivers for Spatial Digital Twins include, aging infrastructure, resource distribution, connected and autonomous transport, mandatory digitalisation of cadastral information, and a critical need to address urban risks such as changing climate and rising inequality.

To drive a consistent approach to digital twins in the built environment, ANZLIC has developed the Principles for Spatially Enabled Digital Twins of the Built and Natural Environment in Australia which describe high-level principles, benefits and use cases for spatially enabled digital twins in the Australian context. The principles also outline the vision of a federated ecosystem of securely shared spatial digital twins and their value for the Australian economy.

It is timely to consider redefining and expanding the existing list of Foundation Spatial Data Framework themes and the systems that support their creation and use to ensure they are optimised for three and four dimensional needs for a future sensor and information powered world. Migration of thought from the more traditional spatial data infrastructure concepts of data storage and access, to more advanced capabilities including automatically creating, sharing, curating, delivering, and using knowledge (not just data or information) in support of the emerging digital economy and the rise of spatially-aware and equipped citizens must occur. It advances the thinking from information product generation to the production of insights. It also embodies the provisioning of predictive analytics capacity in real-time for any user in any location whilst mobile.

ANZLIC defines Foundation Spatial Data as the authoritative geographic information that underpins, or can add significant value to, any other information; and supports evidence-based decisions across government, industry and the community. These data can be described as base spatial layers required by most users and are generally not derived from other spatial layers. They are authoritative, accurate, and easily discoverable and accessible. Traditionally these data are held and maintained by Government although this is changing. In Australia these tend to be maintained by state governments and aggregated to a national level through the foundation spatial data framework (FSDF) which provides a common reference for the assembly and maintenance of these data to serve the widest possible variety of users. The FSDF aims to deliver a national coverage of the best available, most current, authoritative source of foundation spatial data which is standardised and quality controlled. The data themes are: Address, Administrative Boundaries, Positioning, Place Names, Property, Imagery, Transport, Elevation and Depth, and Land Cover and Land Use.

Australia possesses many significant data stores within government agencies and research organisations (eg GA’s DEA, the National Computational Infrastructure, jurisdictional agency systems, and NCRIS facilities to name a few) which have been created fit for a specific purpose. These have been or are in the process of being migrated to cloud environments, mostly owned and operated by multi-national private sector providers, some of which are located off-shore.The use of cloud infrastructures has increased exposure in terms of sovereignty, security, fragmentation, non-optimised critical mass, duplication, barriers to access, data currency, and the role of the private sector in public-private partnership. Optimising data storage and prioritising the custodianship and physical location offers the opportunity for improvement. It is timely to examine the risks to national spatial data stores, infrastructure, systems and analytics, including the physical location of the systems on-shore and off-shore.

Another key issue is to inventory data stores related to Critical infrastructure, ie. determine which of Australia’s data stores need to be afforded special protection status, with increased governance and security, and overseen by formal data policy (including access protocols etc).

There is also an opportunity, once defined, to look at icon examples to build and use other nationally enabling infrastructure. A good example is DEA, which has increasing government and private use within Australia, and is also well regarded globally as a leading example of open data cubes. There are other examples of coordinated data collections and data stores, such as the square kilometre array, which is a next-generation radio telescope and will yield data volumes of approximately 300 PB per telescope per year during full science operations, and the data will be produced at a rate of approximately 0.5–1TB per second.

And what of the potential to create and manage datastores on-board in space? Is this considered a priority?

What is the potential benefits of a new class of service that provides low volume data connectivity at low cost (cost of terminal or cost of service, including IoT)?

For decades Australia has pioneered the application of bandwidth and power efficient communications towards advanced satellite communications system. Historically this leading research has resulted in commercialisation by other nations.

Space is on the cusp of a new approach to delivery of satellite communications services with a shift away from television broadcast from geo-stationary satellites towards the provision of high-speed internet services from large constellations of smaller satellites in low earth orbit.
This shift from “GEO” to “LEO” will change the dynamics of the satellite communications business and result in ubiquitous and low-cost connectivity.

Technology is also being developed to provide commodity connectivity (i.e. pervasive and low cost) for a range of new application built on the paradigm of Internet of Things.

Australian companies (both based here and listed here) are among the global leaders in this new class of service that could see the cost of short packet-based communication from anywhere in the world to centralised cloud infrastructure approach $0 dollars per message. This dramatic decline in price will fundamentally change the nature of global satellite communications away broadcast and fixed service as the main growth markets.

Virtually all of Australia’s EO capabilities are supplied by other nations or international companies. Australia’s dependence on these satellites, the data they provide and the services that they support is growing rapidly and covers a very broad range of needs, both civilian and defence. Australia has developed a world class satellite imagery analytics and applications capability but has only nascent capability in the upstream supply chain areas of satellite and sensor design, build, launch, task and control. Australia is therefore highly dependent on the rest of the world to provide for its immediate and long-term needs.

Spacecraft launched to space require remote operation by their very nature. Simulation tools have been developed widely across the world over the past 50 years. These simulation tools can vary greatly and can present a computer aided design (CAD) of the spacecraft, simulated satellite models used for thermal and structural analyses through to operations simulation tools. Many different tools are also used to monitor and operate spacecraft on a daily basis, including simulation tools where manoeuvres and other events can be simulated prior to performing these activities on the assets themselves. Many of these simulation tools are very well developed and suitable for specific applications, however many are not well integrated (although some may not benefit from such an integration).

Australia is currently producing a small number of satellites, typically CubeSats, which are bespoke. Developing sophisticated and/or integrated simulation tools for a small number of bespoke satellites, where typical contract values are small (in comparison to the global sector) and customers do not yet see the value, is difficult.

Australia’s past educational space and spatial outcomes have been strong. Its industries, however have not been large enough to fully utilise those skills and consequently Australia has experienced a ‘brain-drain’ in this area. The current global disruption of the space and spatial industries has resulted in new skill requirements for these industries. Concurrently, in recent years, there has been a dramatic reduction in student interest in STEM academic and training programs. This is likely to result in significant workforce skill gaps in the space and spatial industries and is now the case in mid-experience level (5+ years) resources with space experience particularly for Defence projects requiring security clearances.