update
Over the past year the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRCSI) has developed a strategy for the further development of the Australian spatial information industry called ‘Spatially Enabling Australia’. It has done this in collaboration with about 100 organisations in the public, private and research sectors, principally in Australia and New Zealand, but also with input from organisations in Europe, Canada and Asia. The strategy looks out over the better part of the next decade.The primary purpose of this strategy is to facilitate collaboration amongst all lead elements of Australia’s spatial information industry (and increasingly New Zealand’s) to accelerate the use and value adding of information products and services that utilise spatial information. The collaboration is set to tackle those research challenges that are so large that they can only be adequately addressed when all three sectors come together (research, government and private sector).
Our strategy comprises three fundamental research programs and an integrated applications program. Research Program 1, ‘Positioning’, underpins a full framework of continuous operating reference stations (CORS) to ultimately enable all of continental Australia to be capable of real-time precise positioning services based on global navigation satellite systems. Research Program 2 ‘Automated Spatial Information Generation’ addresses complex processing of multiple remote sensing sources that satellite-based, airborne and ground-based. Research Program 3, ‘Spatial Infrastructures’ helps form the foundation for development of an Australian Spatial Marketplace that will make accessible vast amounts of government data under a new licensing and access regime which supports user-generated content from the mass market.
Those three core programs are integrated with Program 4, ‘Applications’, to support users from the Health, Defence and Security, Energy and Utilities, Urban Development, and Agriculture-Natural Resources-Climate Change sectors. Program 4 drives outputs from the three core research programs in sector specific deployments for high impact. There are considerable research and development challenges that must be met in order to achieve the strategic outcomes.
The new CRCSI (CRCSI-2) will start on 1 January 2010. On inception it will comprise over 100 partners. These will be made up of:
* over 70 SMEs in the 43pl consortium
* several energy corporations
* up to a dozen universities and research institutes (local and overseas)
* approximately 20 government departments including the Australian Government, the New Zealand Government and New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia.
The peak bodies for the spatial information industry in the government sector, the private sector, and the professional sector have all entered into arrangements with the CRCSI to ensure industry wide benefits through structured programs on business development, innovation management, and education and capacity building.