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.

The Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements found that better national coordination in response to natural hazards is needed. A series of recommendations supporting better decision making involve data management as applied to spatial data.

“Australian, state and territory governments should explore the feasibility and practicalities of developing and maintaining nationally consistent assessments and projections of the frequency, intensity and spatial distribution of natural hazards in Australia.”

The source of much of this data is earth observation satellites owned and operated by non-Australian entities . Submissions from every state and territory as well as the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO and Emergency Management Australia stated that improved data capabilities from sensors, including satellite-based sensors, was required [page 116 of report].

The report noted that recommendations for nationally consistent data for disaster information has been a recurring theme in reviews and enquiries since at least 2002.

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.

By virtue of its geographic span from coast to coast and southern hemisphere location, Australia is uniquely placed to make valuable contributions to global efforts to better characterise objects in space (operational satellites as well as inactive satellites and space debris).

The establishment of a network of ground-based systems including optical (narrow field of view and wide field of view) sensors and radar (active and passive) systems which are tasked by a mission control system would be of real value. The observations would be stored in a unified data lake where they would be available for object characterisation, orbit determination and conjunction analysis.

This Space Domain Awareness (SDA) system would provide situational awareness for Australian space objects, allowing operators to manoeuvre satellites to avoid collisions with other resident space objects such as uncontrolled space debris. The network of sensors could form a dual use system which would meet Australian Defence and civil space requirements (thus addressing Australian space agency goals for SDA). Australia would also be able to contribute observations to international partners to assist with global efforts to improve SDA and contribute to efforts to better manage space debris.