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.

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.

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.

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.

An agile, risk-loving and ground-breaking private sector is what drives the productivity and innovation that creates economic growth.

The process of developing, testing and scaling innovation to support a trajectory of sustainable and productive economic growth cannot be undertaken by a start-up in isolation. It requires the support of a wide range of actors across the value chain and start-up ecosystem. It is the dynamic interactions and collaboration between innovation stakeholders that underpins the constant feedback within start-up ecosystems that drives innovation to fuel the long-term cycle of productivity gains and the creation of high-value adding employment.

In the long run, the process of innovation relies on the flow of new scientific ideas, inventions and innovations. Experimentation, research and development activities are a small proportion of the broader information/knowledge economy, but they are at the heart of the complex process of innovation: