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 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 could strengthen and expand its national capabilities and capacity in areas that lead to increased resilience of critical infrastructure and national systems of importance. This growth could lead to greater development and exploitation of national intellectual property and contribute to national security outcomes.

Australia could also make stronger contributions (financial and in-kind) to selected international programs to guarantee access and create opportunities for local industry.

• Spatial Digital Twins are an essential component of the overall digital transformation agenda across government and industry, which is advancing rapidly
• Spatially-enabled Digital Twins can be designed to better plan, manage, and maintain resources in urban environments.
• Place based or spatially accurate digital twins are driving the need for better access to high quality data to allow advanced visualisation and analytics.
• As data availability increases, along with compute power and cloud infrastructures this will enable the development of models or digital twins and the increasingly complex simulations of the built environment, whether it be city models or transport networks, or fine element method (FEM) based process models or designs.
• In 2009, the number of people living in urban areas (3.42 billion) surpassed the number living in rural areas (3.41 billion), and since then the world has become more urban than rural.
• Currently the UN Sustainable Development Goal #11 for sustainable cities and communities cannot be achieved without significantly transforming the way we build and manage our urban spaces
• The key opportunity is that while data frameworks are in their infancy (relatively speaking) and offer potential to integrate, current and future data streams to bring together different models we are a long way from the vision of Spatial Digital Twins are available as open data and simulations using open standards at all levels of governments

• Future proofing the FSDF data themes by expanding them to account for a future with operating digital twins and applications which will be built on emerging technologies such as edge computing.
• Expanding the FSDF to be able to operate in real or near real time and service digital twins and related priority applications. This will include improving processes which automate the collection, distribution and display of data. This also includes factoring in the development of analytics onboard satellites to optimise near-real time processing and availability
• Flexible governance frameworks and IT infrastructures which authenticate private and community data providers. Government will need to be inclusive of trusted private data providers, such as utilities.
• Building community awareness to further enable FSDF like data sets currently locked up and not being used, to enhance utility of current data sets.
  Ensuring that ML/AI, and other new technology developments are optimally used in the creation of FSDF.

Perhaps one recent and highly relevant example which illustrates a number of the issues outlined above is in the use of information in relation to preparing and responding to bushfires. The National Natural Disaster Arrangements Royal Commission (Bushfires Royal Commission) made the following recommendations in their report, primarily within the chapter on supporting better decisions:

• Rec 4.1: Australian, state and territory governments should prioritise the implementation of harmonised data governance and national data standards.
• Rec 4.4: The National Disaster Risk Information Services Capability should include tools and systems to support operational and strategic decision making, including integrated climate and disaster risk scenarios tailored to the various needs of relevant industry sectors and end users.
• Whilst not a recommendation, the reports states that “Australian, state and territory governments should explore the feasibility and practicalities of developing and maintaining nationally consistent:
  
  • Assessments of frequency, intensity and spatial distribution of natural hazards in Australia, and
  • Projections of the frequency, intensity and spatial distribution of natural hazards in Australia.”
• The report also makes reference to GA’s Australian Exposure Information Platform (AEIP) as a tool to support decision makers understand state based exposure to natural hazards but notes that this tools does not currently provide information through a geospatial mapping layer. This tools and the underlying database, the National Exposure Information System (NEXIS), “.. should be maintained and improved”.
• Rec 4.7: Australian, state and territory governments should continue to develop a greater capacity to collect and share standardised and comprehensive natural disaster impact data.

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.

Australian expertise in reliable, power and bandwidth efficient satellite communication is contributing to new thinking about this legacy search and rescue system. The intent is to develop a new satellite communications protocols for a third-generation system featuring increased capacity, greater service reliability, two-way connectivity and improved location estimation.

There are opportunities to explore utilisation of emerging Australian technology through existing Cospas-Sarsat infrastructure and extension to new satellite developments and safety of life for space exploration, in partnership with the Australian Space Agency and NASA.

For example, it was recently announced that Australian research into advanced search and rescue technologies would contribute to the NASA Artemis LunaNet architecture .
Future phases of the SmartSat CRC collaboration could support exploration initiatives like the Artemis missions, which will return humans to the Moon for the first time since Apollo. NASA will equip Artemis astronauts with second-generation beacons for use if needed for egress from capsule after splashdown or a launch abort scenario. The Search and Rescue team is working to extend beacon services to the lunar surface with the LunaNet communications and navigation architecture.

Developing a contemporary implementation of a safety of life personal device that can be mass produced at low cost and with high reliability will create scope for Australian industry to lead international production and supply regional countries with personal beacons. Increased capacity in the overall system will enable new applications for emergency services and remote workforce. The ability to integrate contemporary consumer devices could allow Australian developers to generate new business models and identify new markets/customers.

New market opportunities potentially exist in traditionally non-space sectors – e.g. agriculture, mining and mineral exploration, water management, energy markets, environmental management, emergency response amongst others.

The market potential for embedded low data connectivity could be speculated to approach the market volumes for embedded PNT devices. If this speculation is accurate then it is critical that this value be captured, where-ever possible, by Australian manufacturers and that Australia develop entrepreneurial and engineering skill in the downstream application of satellite IoT connectivity.