Australian Natural Resources Information 2002
National Land and Water Resources Audit, 2002
ISBN: 0 642 37131 8
Community access to information
The Audit has developed information products to meet a broad suite of requirements:
- assessment reports providing national summaries of natural resource issues;
- summaries of the assessment reports outlining key findings;
- compact discs with map data, technical reports and documentation;
- paper maps; and
- online information services—Australian Natural Resources Atlas and Data Library—that provide access to national and regional scale information products and data.
Some of the detailed information products from the Audit are only available through the Internet because of the large amount of data and information involved. As the data are being continually updated, the Internet allows direct access to the most up to date information.
Cutting through the red tape—a landmark national agreement for free access to data
It has long been recognised by all governments and the community that access to natural resource information needs to be improved.
The Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment signed by all jurisdictions in 1992 (Commonwealth of Australia 1992) agreed to develop mechanisms to make data more accessible. Mechanisms developed included the development of:
- standards for the description and exchange of all geographic information; and
- development of a national directory of geographic data.
In 1999, in order to streamline access to natural resources data, the Audit signed protocols with each State and Territory and key Commonwealth agencies for access to natural resources data, largely at the cost of transfer. These protocols took 18 months to negotiate reflecting the range of data access mechanisms and policies across and within jurisdictions. The delay in negotiating through these inconsistent arrangements is a costly impediment to the efficient business of government and industry.
In 2001, the Audit, and ANZLIC - the Spatial Information Council, supported by data custodians in State, Territory and Commonwealth agencies, signed the single Data Access and Management Agreement. The agreement streamlines access to:
- natural resource data and information products developed by the Audit; and
- data that are required to update natural resource information products and undertake natural resource assessments by Commonwealth, State and Territory natural resource management agencies.
The landmark agreement specifies access, ownership, custodianship, archiving and updating arrangements for the data collected, developed for and used in the assessments undertaken by the Audit.
Data Access and Management Agreement
- A schedule sets out the data that are included under the agreement. The schedule will be expanded as the Audit completes its work program.
- The data are available through the Australian Natural Resources Data Library free of charge except for Internet charges incurred by the users downloading the data.
- Registration and distribution processes are largely automated and require little manual intervention.
- Data are made available using a standard licence agreement that protects the rights of owners and enables value adding by users.
- 'Community access' data licencing provides for use by the public. The agreement provides a royalty-free licence to use, reproduce, make new information products from and print data and combine it with other data held by the user.
- With written permission of the custodians, data under this agreement may be commercialised. The data licencing conditions encourage and enable the development of new information products.
In September 2001, the Commonwealth Government announced the new Spatial Data Access and Pricing policy for access to Commonwealth spatial data (Commonwealth of Australia 2001a). Key aspects of the policy are:
- fundamental spatial data will be provided free of charge over the Internet and at no more than the marginal cost of transfer for packaged products and full cost of transfer for customised services;
- there are no restrictions on commercial value-adding to the listed fundamental spatial data, although each transaction will be subject to a licence setting out the conditions of the transfer;
- an Internet-based public access system will be developed within the framework of the Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure—the Australian Natural Resources Atlas and Data Library provide a model of such a system; and
- the Commonwealth will negotiate a multilateral agreement with States and Territories for access to spatial data required for Commonwealth purposes. The Audit agreement with ANZLIC - the Spatial Information Council, supported by the Commonwealth and all States and Territories provides a model for the proposed multi-lateral agreement.
These two developments—the National Land and Water Resources Audit - ANZLIC - the Spatial Information Council agreement; and the new Commonwealth policy—provide a strong foundation for significantly improving accessibility of spatial data in general, and natural resource data in particular.
Australian Natural Resources Atlas—www.environment.gov.au/atlas
Governments and the Australian public are now able to access a comprehensive range of information about Australia's natural resources through the Australian Natural Resources Atlas.
The Australian Natural Resources Atlas provides an Internet-based interface to the data and information prepared by the Audit and its partners. Accessibility has been maximised by investing in user-friendly Internet technology. The Australian Natural Resources Atlas serves several important functions by:
- providing ready access to information about the status and trends in Australia's natural resources;
- linking and integrating data and information by geography and topics—users of the Australian Natural Resources Atlas can navigate through the Audit's data and information by selecting a topic (e.g. surface water quantity) and geography (e.g. river basin);
- providing a dynamic query and mapping facility for the preparation of user-constructed report and map-based products; and
- linking to data and information services available from other sources to ensure that users have easy access to the most up-to-date information.
Australian Natural Resources Atlas information products
- Regional profiles provide national, State or regional reports integrated with key statistics, maps, text, tables and graphics. Expert explanation from the assessments undertaken by the Audit is provided to assist users interpret the information. These profiles are linked where possible to other detailed information available over the Internet from State and Territory agencies.
- The Map Maker allows users to construct a map for a region of interest, and view a wide range of natural resource, environmental, social and economic information. For example, users can create a map of salinity risk or water quality in a river basin and overlay a map of land use, agricultural productivity or estuarine health.
- A suite of tools has been developed to assist natural resource decision makers. Tools include a broad range of applications such as OzEstuaries which is designed to assist estuary management.
Quickly find the information required
By typing in a location (a town or city) into the Australian Natural Resources Atlas Navigator users can quickly move to relevant national, State or regional profiles, or go straight to the place of interest in the Australian Natural Resources Atlas Map Maker. Over 100 reports—from Australia-wide to regional—are available for each location.
Figures 18 and 19 demonstrate how a catchment manager may use the Australian Natural Resources Atlas to obtain information about the Condamine region and explore some of the new information products now available from Audit assessments.
Links to more detailed information
Consistent with the development of the Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure and avoiding duplication of data, the Australian Natural Resources Atlas is linked to other data services to help guide users to the most up-to-date and relevant information.
- 1. Features on the maps are linked to reports maintained by other groups.
For example in the Australian Natural Resources Atlas Map Maker a user can select a wetland on a map and link to a report maintained by another group.
- 2. Users are directed to other sites for more detailed information about the region or about the data.
Users can follow links from the Australian Natural Resources Atlas Map Maker or Navigator to other more detailed natural resource atlases maintained by State and Territory agencies.
The data layers used in the Australian Natural Resources Atlas Map Maker are linked to further information available through the Australian Spatial Data Directory.
- 3. Integrating maps sourced from many sites over the Internet.
International standards and guidelines such as the Web Map Server Interfaces Implementation Specification are being developed that allow data to be sourced from different sites in the Internet and presented to the user.
The Australian Natural Resources Atlas mapping tool has implemented the Web Map Server Interfaces Implementation Specification. This allows maps from the Australian Natural Resources Atlas to be integrated with other map services available over the Internet.
As well as linking to data and information maintained by other agencies, the Australian Natural Resources Atlas is designed with standard Internet addresses so that other groups can easily link to regional information of interest. These are discussed in detail in the Australian Natural Resources Information 2001 Operational Manual (NLWRA 2001f).
Future development of the Australian Natural Resources Atlas
Environment Australia will develop and maintain the Australian Natural Resources Atlas service after the completion of the Audit. Future activities will include:
Enhanced reporting tools to support regional managers
- Many users wish to generate new information products based on regions such as catchment management authority regions, local government areas, postcodes, or user-defined areas that are not currently included in the Australian Natural Resources Atlas. The Australian Natural Resources Atlas Map Maker is being extended to include data analysis and reporting tools to allow generation of reports and statistics for any user-defined area. These tools will be available by June 2002.
Reporting tools will derive new information products and reports from continuous data such as land use, native vegetation, soil properties, estuaries, and land tenure mapping.
New maps and regional profiles
- The Australian Natural Resources Atlas will become the national node of the Australian Coastal Atlas in early 2002.
- National data for mapping will continue to be added to the Australian Natural Resources Atlas Map Maker. Some summary regional profiles of environmental indicators from Australian State of the Environment Report 2001 will be available by June 2002.
Involving partners
- Environment Australia will convene regular workshops with data management staff in Commonwealth, State and Territory agencies to review the ongoing development of natural resource Internet atlases.
ANZLIC - the Spatial Information Council is developing a common architecture for a spatial data infrastructure distribution network. When all jurisdictions implement this architecture and publish their maps using the Web Map Server Interfaces Implementation Specification, then a national portal, or entry-point, could be developed to automatically create Australia-wide maps from data held at other sites.
Widespread implementation of the specification is at an early stage in Australia. As of November 2001, only New South Wales and some Commonwealth agencies had implemented online mapping services that are compliant with the specification. It may be some years until all jurisdictions are able to implement these standards in their existing online mapping systems.
Australian Natural Resources Data Library—adl.brs.gov.au
Audit assessments are underpinned by national and regional data, many of which have been brought together for the first time.
Data custodians are encouraged to make the data from Audit assessments available free of charge over the Internet. Where custodians do not have these facilities, data products are available through the Australian Natural Resources Data Library. The Australian Natural Resources Data Library is a node of the Australian Spatial Data Directory (see page 12).
The Australian Natural Resources Data Library includes a large collection of natural resources data and information collected through Audit projects, integrated with its documentation, data distribution services and tools to manage the data and distribution services. Interfaces to the library provide functionality to securely load, manage and distribute this data. The data in the library are an extension of that portrayed in the Australian Natural Resources Atlas, often providing additional detailed technical information.
The data in the library can be used in geographic information systems and spatial modelling tools.
Public access to data
The Australian Natural Resources Data Library provides free and direct access to data from Audit projects, allowing users to:
- find Audit data and information products;
- find out detailed technical information about Audit data and information products; and
- download Audit data for use on their own systems where allowed by owners/custodians of the data.
Data available through the Australian Natural Resources Data Library can also be accessed through links from the Australian Spatial Data Directory, or through the Australian Natural Resources Atlas.
The Australian Natural Resources Data Library is underpinned by a single licence agreement, endorsed by ANZLIC - the Spatial Information Council and supported by State, Territory and Commonwealth agencies.
By using the Internet to provide direct access to the map data from Audit projects, the marginal cost of transfer is effectively zero.
After only three months of operation, over 150 sets of data per month were being obtained from the Australian Natural Resources Data Library. The majority of data are packaged so that they can easily be downloaded over Internet connections. For example, the continental soil erodibility data layer is 2.3 MB in size, which is smaller than most of the millions of music and video clips—typically 3 to 20 MB—that are downloaded over telephone lines each day.
Future development of the Australian Natural Resources Data Library
Further development and ongoing management of the Australian Natural Resources Data Library is expected to continue through two stages.
The short-term objective, is to maintain the current system and expand its content and coverage with data from Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - Australia and other agencies. The aim is to supplement the Australian Natural Resources Data Library with documentation and data from projects including the National Forest Inventory and the Agricultural Land Cover Change program. This will increase the value of the Australian Natural Resources Data Library to a wider range of users and Australia-wide collaborative programs such as the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality.
Research and development corporations will also be providing data from research projects for the Australian Natural Resources Data Library and contributing information to add to the Australian Natural Resources Atlas (AFFA 2001).
The longer-term, objective of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - Australia is to develop an expanded data warehouse to service its responsibilities for delivery of data and information. This will be undertaken following a comprehensive needs analysis. The enhanced Australian Natural Resources Data Library/data warehouse will link data discovery, data download and web mapping facilities.
Supporting custodians to make their data available
When data are updated, a centralised information service becomes out of date. If data custodians make their data and information available online using nationally agreed protocols, it is more cost-effective and efficient for groups such as the Audit to link directly to that information instead of maintaining and duplicating it centrally.
The agreement between the Audit and ANZLIC - the Spatial Information Council encourages custodians of data to make their data available for download through their node of the Australian Spatial Data Directory. For example, data from Audit projects are also available through data libraries maintained by custodians including Geoscience Australia and Environment Australia.
The Audit in partnership with coordinators of the Australian Spatial Data Directory will identify how the Australian Spatial Data Directory can be enhanced to allow State and Territory custodians to make their data available directly for public access.
Recommendations
Providing community access to information
To further develop a network of community information services that can support natural resource management and reporting applications it is recommended that:
- the Natural Heritage Ministerial Board, through the Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council, evaluate the application of the Australian Natural Resources Atlas and Data Library, and equivalent services at all levels of government, to provide a network of information products used to support regional, national and international reporting obligations such as state of the environment reporting; Montreal Process criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management; and indicators for sustainable agriculture;
- the Natural Heritage Ministerial Board support Environment Australia to maintain, deliver and further develop the Australian Natural Resources Atlas to be compliant with evolving standards for the Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure; and
- the Natural Heritage Ministerial Board support Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - Australia to maintain, deliver and further develop the Australian Natural Resources Data Library to be compliant with evolving standards for the Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure.