Position 71

June/July 2014 – No. 71

The Australasian magazine of surveying, mapping & geo-information

FACILITIES MANAGEMENT

MADE EASY

Official publication of

inside Easy fieldwork Asset inspection in real time

Automate it Manual tasks waste time

Where’s MH370?

The search for the missing aircraft

contents

June/July 2014 No.71

24

page

page

36

features 14 Cover Story: Facilities management made easy Underground, structural and aerial imagery combine for accurate asset and property management.

28

page

30 Doing away with the manual City of Melbourne’s answer to the demand for more regular spatial data updates was to automate as many workflows as possible.

34 Scanning offshore drilling platforms 3D laser scanning an object as large and intricate as an offshore drilling platform can be a tricky task without the right equipment.

18 Get Wyndham moving Modern mapping technology is decreasing traffic congestion in Victoria’s fastest growing municipality.

36 Satellites and the MH370 mystery The disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 has illuminated the limitations of satellite remote sensing and its ability to capture dynamic events.

20 GIS helping asset management in councils The City of Ballarat is benefitting from real-time information moving to and from the field during asset inspections.

22 Managing Mornington

40 Technology in the search for MH370 A look at the many different types of technology that are used to track and locate aircraft – and why they aren’t helping locate MH370.

A web-based asset inspection workflow has decreased input errors, data duplicates, and turnaround time on data updates at Mornington Peninsula Shire.

24 A cloud in the Pacific The Australian and Vanuatu governments have worked together to deliver a cloud-based product that spreads awareness of the effects of climate change.

28 Mapping for conservation A paper map distributed to locals is helping to protect the endangered Matschie’s tree kangaroo in north-eastern Papua New Guinea.

regulars 4 7 8 12 45 46

Upfront, calendar Editorial News Company News New Products SSSI www.spatialsource.com.au 3

upfront

Upcoming Events 23 May-20 July 2014: ‘Spaceship Earth’ Exhibition; Sydney, NSW. www. sydneycustomshouse.com.au/whatsOn. 16-21 June 2014: XXV FIG International Congress; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. www.fig.net/fig2014.

25-27 June 2014: Digital Rural Futures Conference; Toowoomba, Qld. www.usq.edu.au/digital-crn/drfconference.

1-4 July 2014: GI_Forum 2014: Salzburg, Austria. www.gi-forum.org.

13-15 August 2014: AIMS National Conference: Sydney, NSW. www. aimsbrighton2014.com.

18-20 August 2014: NZ Esri User Conference: Auckland, NZ. www.eagle. co.nz/nzeuc.

15-16 September 2014: VANZIbuildingSMART Australasia Conference: Sydney, NSW. http:// abcevents.net.au/vanzi.

19 September 2014: WA Surveying and Spatial Sciences Conference: Bentley, WA. walis@walis.wa.gov.au.

Lake Eyre from above False colouring of satellite images highlights electromagnetic wavelength information that is normally invisible – and it’s creating potentials for several exciting new 21st century genres of art.

This Landsat-8 image of flooding along the north shore of Lake Eyre in central Australia was acquired in July 2013 and processed by Geoscience Australia. It highlights water moving through sand dunes into Lake Eyre, with different shades of blue indicating water depth and qualities such as muddiness and salinity.

Streaky features in yellow to deep orange and red are sand dunes. Some areas have a green tinge, indicating that surrounding vegetation is responding to moisture.

The image is part of an exhibition currently running at Sydney’s Customs House. The exhibition, entitled Spaceship Earth: Observing Our Planet From Satellites, is being curated by an Australian founder of the International Society for Digital Earth’s (ISDE) digital cities working party, Davina Jackson.

“One of my favourite stills from the Spaceship Earth show is Lake Eyre – showing scattered pools of evaporating water across the central Australian

4 position June/July 2014

desert,” said Davina. “I saw this view from my aeroplane seat coming back from Europe a couple of weeks ago – and today a friend emailed me news that Australian groundwater has become so extensive, with recent flooding, that we are now one of the world’s most effective on-land carbon sinks. This sparks imaginative ideas about the global environmental potentials of Australia’s socalled ‘barren’ desert zones. Hey, perhaps they could become sites for analogue space experiments to pre-test ways people might live on Mars?”

The exhibition takes its title from Buckminister Fuller’s 1968 call for ‘an operating manual for Spaceship Earth’ – which relates Earth to a spaceship flying through space, with only a finite amount of resources that cannot be resupplied.

Aerospatial technologies, including Earth observation satellites, are key to an emerging goal among climate scientists to convert Fuller’s ‘operating manual’ idea (logically a paper document in his day) to a networked computer ‘system of systems’ that could globally ‘auto-pilot’ solutions for managing our planet’s environmental challenges.

1-3 October 2014: Ozri: Adelaide, SA. http://esriaustralia.com.au/ozri.

9-11 November 2014: FIG 3D Cadastre Workshop: Dubai, UAE. www. gdmc.nl/3DCadastres/workshop2014.

11-13 November 2014: 3D GeoInfo Conference: Dubai, UAE. http://3dgeoinfo2014.org.

14-15 November 2014: NSW Regional Surveying & Spatial Conference.

Bowral, NSW. http://bit.ly/1hTBTcX. 25-27 November 2014: Pacific Islands GIS\RS Conference 2014. Suva, Fiji Islands. http://picgisrs.appspot.com.

8-10 December 2014: European LiDAR Mapping Forum. Amsterdam, The Netherlands. www.sparpointgroup. com/Europe.

InSphere:

TrAnSFOrMInG The WAY YOU WOrK When you need a central place for everything, the Trimble® InSphere™ geospatial information management system is here for you and your organisation. Developed by the experts in geospatial solutions, InSphere is designed to put you firmly in control.

On a single, simple and easy-to-use web platform, InSphere provides access to multiple applications, including Data Manager, Equipment Manager, TerraFlex™ software and Trimble Access™ Services.

InSphere allows geospatial organisations, including surveying and mapping users, to manage everything in one place, accessible anytime and virtually anywhere.

One platform. Centrally managed. Multiple applications. You’re in control.

Find out more at: www.trimbleinsphere.com

www.hlgs.com.au

www.upgsolutions.com

© 2014, Trimble Navigation Limited. All rights reserved. Trimble and the Globe & Triangle logo are trademarks of Trimble Navigation Limited, registered in the United States and in other countries. Access, InSphere, and TerraFlex are trademarks of Trimble Navigation Limited. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

GEO-021A (05/14)

The Australasian magazine of surveying, mapping & geo-information

Publisher Simon Cooper Editor Charles Pauka charles@intermedia.com.au Journalist Simon Chester Graphic Designer Alyssa Coundouris National Advertising Manager Troy Hale thale@intermedia.com.au Circulation/Subscriptions Chris Blacklock Production Jacqui Cooper www.spatialsource.com.au Position is published six times a year, in February, April, June, August, October and December by Interpoint Events Pty Ltd. ABN: 9810 451 2469 Address: 41 Bridge Road, Glebe NSW 2037 Ph: +61 2 9660 2113 Fax: +61 2 9660 4419 Editorial inquiries should be sent to: charles@intermedia.com.au Advertising inquiries should be sent to: thale@intermedia.com.au Ph: +61 2 8586 6103 Designed and produced by The Intermedia Group, 41 Bridge Road, Glebe NSW 2037 Position is available via subscription only. To subscribe visit www.intermedia. com.au, phone 1 800 651 422 or email: subscriptions@intermedia.com.au.

Subscription rates and information can be found on page 51.

Reprints from Position are permitted only with the permission of the publisher. In all cases, reprints must be acknowledged as follows: ‘Reprinted with permission from Position Magazine’, and must include the author’s byline.

from the editor T

he ongoing search for Malaysian Airlines MH370 continues to fascinate the general public, while governments – principally the Australian Federal Government – continue to plough millions of dollars into the – seemingly – futile exploration of thousands of kilometres of ocean surface and, these days, ocean floor.

I have heard figures of $20 million plus as the reported cost of the searches to date, and as the unfortunate people on board have no doubt perished by now, I cannot help wondering all the more beneficial purposes that money could have been, could be used. The importance of closure to men and women (and governments) seems to outweigh all other considerations, an interesting feature of human psychology.

Even more interesting to those interested in spatial affairs, however, is the technology employed – with no result to date – in the search for the lost airliner. Trying to make use of the technology on board the aircraft, which appears to have been tampered with, together with external infrastructure such as satellites, is a technically fascinating process.

You can read not one but two in-depth articles on the subject in this issue of Position magazine, by two of our regular and knowledgeable contributors, Position magazine founding editor Jon Fairall and technical writer Paul Grad. Their dissection of the processes and technologies used to date in the process of the search for MH370 definitely makes for absorbing reading.

In the field of facilities management, which is the subject of our cover story beginning on page 14 and others following that, there have been many new and advanced developments, enabling the trade to become much more streamlined and exact, reducing complexity and the labour involved.

We also travel to Vanuatu to report on action being taken to predict the likely effects on climate change on Pacific nations, and to Papua New Guinea, to witness mapping efforts in progress to help prevent the extinction of one of the world’s most adorable animals, Matschie’s tree kangaroo.

I do hope you will enjoy reading through this issue of Position magazine, and feel free to contact me with your opinion at the email address below.

Charles Pauka Editor charles@intermedia.com.au

June/July 2014 – No. 71

The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publisher.

The Australasian magazine of surveying, mapping & geo-information

Supported by

FACILITIES MANAGEMENT

MADE EASY

inside Automate it Manual tasks waste time

August/September 2014 Mining and mining automation – Remote sensing technologies – Intelligent Transport Systems –Surveying and GIS software directory.

October/November 2014 GIS in the mainstream – GIS and governments – Open data.

On the cover

Official publication of

Easy fieldwork Asset inspection in real time

Coming soon

Where’s MH370?

The search for the missing aircraft

Facilities management made easy How new technology allows underground, structural and aerial imagery to be combined for accurate asset and property management. www.spatialsource.com.au 7

news QUT’s inaugural SIBA chairman in spatial information

This Envisat MERIS image, taken in August 2004, is centred on mainland Cape York Peninsula. Source: ESA

Exhibition: Spaceship Earth - observing our planet from satellites Three floors of the City of Sydney’s Customs House information venue at Circular Quay will display extraordinary earth observation (EO) imagery from international space agencies and satellite operators, in a three-level exhibition from 23 May to 20 July 2014.

It will coincide with the first half of Sydney’s annual Vivid light festival and the second half of this year’s Biennale of Sydney.

Called Spaceship Earth: Observing Our Planet from Satellites, the exhibition is be-

ing curated by an Australian founder of the International Society for Digital Earth’s (ISDE) digital cities working party, Davina Jackson.

Chairing both the ISDE cities working party and this exhibition’s international advisory panel is the Queensland CEO of the Spatial Industries Business Association (SIBA), Richard Simpson.

The Spaceship Earth show will promote both the Digital Earth vision and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) project,

which is being co-ordinated by the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO) in Geneva.

The show will include videos and high-resolution stills from GEO, the European Space Agency, NASA, NOAA, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, Geoscience Australia, NSW Land and Property Information, leading university research centres, international digital artists, and commercial providers Digital Globe and EOVision.

QUT has appointed world-renowned environmental scientist Dr Tim Foresman as its inaugural SIBA Chairman in Spatial Information, a position co-funded by the university and the Spatial Industries Business Association (SIBA).

Dr Foresman’s leadership of NASA’s Digital Earth Initiative helped pave the way for Google Earth.

As the SIBA Chairman at QUT, Dr Foresman will focus on driving the spatial revolution in the business and government domains, showing them how cuttingedge spatial information research can be applied to existing and new decisionmaking tools.

The unique industryendowed position is designed to increase the academic focus to real and imminent challenges facing our society and build the key business relationships to build the economy.

VANZI-buildingSMART Australasia Conference 2014

The VANZI-buildingSMART Australasia Conference 2014 is about the strategies we must employ to reap the benefits, mitigate the risks, and overcome the challenges involved in making the vision

8 position June/July 2014

of an ‘integrated virtual world’ a reality. It will be held on 15-16 September 2014 at the Australian Technology Park in Sydney.

All digital modelling technologies are evolving at an

astounding rate, allowing us to create full 3D representations of both new and existing urban structures (inside and out, above and below ground) that are embedded with information about their appearance, function and performance – challenging the way that we design, build and manage the real world.

This conference brings together leading industry associations, their members and clients who are using these technologies to drive change across the Australian

and New Zealand built environment.

Importantly, it provides an opportunity to learn about specific initiatives being undertaken locally and internationally.

The event is being jointly promoted by buildingSMART Australasia (bSA) and the Virtual Australia and New Zealand Initiative (VANZI), with the Spatial Industries Business Association (SIBA) a major supporter. For more information visit http:// abcevents.net.au/vanzi.

SIBA comments on the Federal Budget Chairman of the Spatial Industries Business Association (SIBA) Gary Nairn has said the Federal Budget’s emphasis on accelerating infrastructure should be welcomed by its members.

“Our members are involved in every aspect of infrastructure, from initial planning right through to the

delivery of the project, so the additional spending across Australia highlighted by Treasurer Joe Hockey is good news,” Gary Nairn said.

“Much of the initial investment in infrastructure will be the acquisition of spatial information from aerial photography, LiDAR, or ground based technologies,

so our SIBA members will be at the forefront of this investment. For example, the big spending on roads will particularly see our mapping and surveying companies increase their activity.

“Many SIBA members will also benefit from the 1.5% reduction in company tax, and will be particularly pleased

with the announcement of $1 billion to address red tape reduction,” he said.

“Using spatial information to work smarter is a catchcry of our industry, and SIBA encourages the Federal Government to do likewise as it rolls out its infrastructure investment over the coming year,” Gary Nairn said.

Cadastre 2034 - invitation to comment The Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM) has released its draft strategy Cadastre 2034: Powering Land and Real Property. Launched at Locate 14, the strategy provides a national response to how our cadastral systems must evolve to meet changing societal demands, rapidly evolving technologies and environmental challenges.

The draft strategy advocates a federated national cadastre that represents the

of the strategy. Submissions can be made via the ICSM website at www.icsm.gov.au/cadastre2034/feedback or via email to icsm@ga.gov.au. Written submissions can be sent to ICSM Chair, GPO Box 378, Canberra, ACT 2601 Australia. Submissions close on 31 July 2014.

Copies of the draft strategy can be obtained through the ICSM website www.icsm. gov.au/cadastre2034 or by contacting the ICSM Executive Officer at icsm@ga.gov.au.

real world, being three-dimensional, dynamic, and surveyaccurate. Recognising the fundamental nature of cadastre, the strategy places strong emphasis on ease of community access, in particular providing an integrated view of legal and social interests in land in the cadastral context.

ICSM is seeking your views on this nationally significant consultation document to help them make informed decisions on the final direction and form

AIMS National Conference 2014 This year’s AIMS National Conference will be held on 13-15 August at the Hotel Novotel Sydney Brighton Beach – only 20 minutes from central Sydney and 5 minutes from Sydney Airport.

AIMS has been fortunate to attract a variety of technical papers, which will both inform and challenge

the delegates. Among the highlights will be the keynote speaker Darren Flanagan, explosives expert and one of the heroes of the Beaconsfield mine rescue.

For the first time, the conference Platinum Sponsor CR Kennedy will host two workshops on the Wednesday afternoon prior to the main

conference opening. Here, the delegates can see the latest technology and have any tricky questions answered.

Additionally, delegates will have the option of a UNSW Surveying Tour on the same Wednesday afternoon.

A dozen organisations will be exhibiting their products and services

throughout the event. The two conference dinners have been formatted to help attendees better network and make new connections throughout the evenings.

More information, including details of the speakers’ presentations and registration, are available at www.aimsbrighton2014.com.

SSSI comments on the Federal Budget Professor John Trinder, president of the Surveying and Spatial Science Institute has said the following: “The SSSI applauds the decision of the Federal Government to develop infrastructure in Australia. Members of SSSI play an essential role in planning, location and construction of infrastructure.

“The SSSI also applauds the government’s decision to expand access to higher education in providing more courses,

greater diversity, and more skills for our workforce. Members of SSSI depend on graduates from higher education as employees to provide the mapping data that is the basis of all infrastructure development, to support the development of the infrastructure, as well as to ensure the integrity of the land titling system.

“The SSSI expresses its serious concerns that this expansion in courses will divert students away from surveying and

spatial science courses. This will impact on the number of graduates in surveying and spatial sciences, and threaten the ability of the profession to support future the infrastructure developments.

“Current studies reveal that even without an expansion in infrastructure, there will be insufficient graduates in surveying and spatial sciences this decade, thus putting at risk billions of dollars of infrastructure and housing development. The

expansion of infrastructure will cause an even greater crisis in the availability of surveying and spatial science professionals.

“The Institute urges the government to place special emphasis on recruitment of students into higher education courses in surveying and spatial sciences, so that adequate numbers of graduates will be available at the height of the government’s infrastructure development later this decade.” www.spatialsource.com.au 9

news FIND hits beta, to replace ASDD in August The Australian Spatial Data Directory (ASDD) is being switched off in August 2014.

According to Office of Spatial Policy (now part of the Dept. of Communications), the ageing infrastructure that the ASDD is currently working on is being retired and not replaced.

The replacement catalogue,

FIND, is built on a GeoNetwork platform and has just been released by Geoscience Australia and data.gov.au as a beta for testing and public comment.

Previous nodes of the ASDD are not being automatically transferred to the new platform, but managers are being approached to be added

back to this catalogue as the beta test progresses.

If you were a node manager previously but have not yet been approached, OSP urges you to contact Margie Smith at spatial@communications.gov.au.

The replacement for ASDD, FIND, provides better access to a network of open government

data. The catalogue allows search and download of a wide range of spatially-referenced datasets created by both the Australian and State and Territory Governments. The catalogue will be expanded as new partners come online.

You can access FIND at http://find.ga.gov.au.

NASA and CNES collaborate on global water and ocean surface mission NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, left, and CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall sign an agreement to move from feasibility studies to implementation of the SWOT mission at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) have agreed to jointly build, launch, and operate

a spacecraft to conduct the first-ever global survey of Earth’s surface water and to map ocean surface height with unprecedented detail.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden and CNES president Jean-Yves Le Gall signed an agreement earlier this month at NASA Headquarters in Washington to move from feasibility studies to implementation of the Surface Water and Ocean

Topography (SWOT) mission.

The two agencies began initial joint studies on the mission in 2009, and plan to complete preliminary design activities in 2016, with launch planned in 2020.

SWOT is one of the NASA missions recommended in the National Research Council’s 2007 decadal survey of Earth science priorities. The satellite will survey 90 per cent of the globe, studying Earth’s lakes, rivers, reservoirs and ocean with 10 times the resolution of current technologies.

OSP restructured into Dept. of Communications Resulting from a recent machinery of government change, the Office of Spatial Policy (OSP) has now been officially transferred to the Department of Communications.

The title of ‘Office of Spatial Policy’ will no longer exist and instead its functions will be delivered by the Data Policy Branch within the department. Ms Helen Owens

continues to lead spatial policy and delivery functions within this branch.

According to a release from the office, “the transfer of the spatial policy functions

to the Department of Communications means that the close links between spatial policy, big data, open data and the broader digital economy agenda can be fully realised.”

Call for papers: NSW Regional Conference 2014 SSSI NSW along with the Southern Group of ISNSW and the Central Western Group of ISNSW will be holding the NSW Regional Conference 2014: Cloud enabled technology in the Surveying & Spatial World on Friday, 14th November to Saturday, 15th November 2014 at Peppers Craigieburn, Bowral, NSW. SSSI NSW / SIBA NSW Awards Dinner to be held on the Friday, 14th November.

The theme of this year’s

10 position June/July 2014

conference, ‘Cloud enabled technology in the Surveying & Spatial World,’ will focus on how surveying and spatial science professionals use the cloud in their professions.

An invitation is extended to those wishing to present at this year’s conference. Submission of Abstracts will close on Friday 20th June 2014.

For more information, visit: http://bit.ly/1o2j9h8 or contact Kelly Rischmiller, NSW ROM on (02) 8005 0972 or rom.nsw@sssi.org.au.

Image CCBY 2.0 Flickr user macowell.

Better. Faster. Stronger.

MapInfo Professional Next Generation GIS for the Spatial Professional

MapInfo as you’ve never seen it before!

With hundreds of thousands of users all around the world, MapInfo Professional is one of the most popular GIS solutions on the market. With the increase in big data sets and advances in hardware, more demands are being placed on GIS professionals than ever before.

Pitney Bowes has risen to the challenge to empower the professional. This year will see the emergence of a new generation of MapInfo Professional, the likes of which has never been seen. MapInfo Professional will be a true 64-bit desktop GIS solution that can handle huge data sets, process faster and is easier to use.

New layout designer • Multi-threading • Faster object processing • True WYSIWYG • Fully redesigned user interface for an improved user experience.

Register now for a sneak peek at the next generation MapInfo Professional.

Visit pitneybowes.com.au/MIPro.

company news Nokia and HERE appoint new presidents and CEO After the sale of its devices and services business to Microsoft on April 25, 2014, Nokia has announced a new strategy and leadership team to build on its networks, location, and technologies business.

Effective May 1, Rajeev Suri will take over as the new president and CEO of Nokia Corporation. Timo Ihamuotila has been appointed as the executive vice president and

group chief financial officer, and Michael Halbherr as CEO of the location business HERE. Nokia has stated that through its HERE business, it will invest to “further develop its location cloud to make it the leading source of location intelligence and experiences across many different operating systems, platforms and screens.” The company will target its investment in

Incoming Nokia president and CEO Rajeev Suri.

three areas: 1) technology for smart, connected cars; 2) cloud-based services for personal mobility and location intelligence, including for the

growing segment of wearables and special purpose devices; and 3) location-based analytics for better business decisions.

“Our view is that only one other company has location services that come close to the depth and breadth of those from HERE – and HERE has the advantage of being independent from any operating system or single business model,” said Rajeev Suri.

Australian tech receives Geospatial World Award A major upgrade to the Bureau of Meteorology’s forecast and warning system has received a prestigious international award at the Geospatial World Awards 2014, in Geneva.

Geospatial Media and Communications honoured the best of the industry by conferring 14 excellence awards, ten leadership awards, five policy awards and eight innovation awards. The Next Generation Forecast and Warning System (NexGenFWS) was named the recipient of a ‘Geospatial Technology Innovation Award’ at the awards ceremony held in May.

The project enabled a leap forward in the delivery of weather forecast services: seven day forecasts are now available for 650 locations in Australia, a level of service previously only available in capital cities, and a webbased viewer allows people to generate a forecast for any specified location.

NexGenFWS and MetEye have been recognised with a number of industry awards since the project began, including the 2013 Asia-Pacific Spatial Excellence Award for Technical Excellence, presented at Locate14 in Canberra in April.

with this process.

Spruill has announced the decision following a ten-year career with the company, during which he played a key leadership role in transforming DigitalGlobe from a small, privately-held satellite imagery provider with $60 million in

revenue into an NYSE-listed company with $613 million in revenue in 2013.

Spruill joined DigitalGlobe in 2004 after a career as an investment banker and as a manufacturing engineer, and has served as the company’s CFO during his entire tenure.

DigitalGlobe CFO steps down DigitalGlobe’s chief financial officer Yancey L. Spruill has announced that he will step down as CFO on 1 October 2014. DigitalGlobe has commenced a search for a new CFO, and has retained Heidrick & Struggles, an executive search firm, to assist

DigitalGlobe CFO Yancey L. Spruill.

Google acquires UAV maker Titan Aerospace Google has acquired Mexicobased drone maker Titan Aerospace for an undisclosed amount, announcing the purchase on the Titan Aerospace website.

Google is likely interested in Titan Aerospace as its solarpowered drones can fly continuously for five years, which makes them ideal to bring wireless internet to remote

12 position June/July 2014

destinations, such as Africa.

Facebook was previously looking to buy Titan Aerospace, and, according to media reports, Google offered to beat any offer made by Facebook.

Facebook later ended up opting to purchase Ascenta, a UK-based aerospace company, which has also been working on solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles, for US$20 million.

cover story

Facilities management made easy GINA VELDE

M

aintenance of a building over its lifetime is reported to cost more than the building’s original construction. Knowing where underground services and building assets accurately sit is a challenge that can add time and cost to any work carried out. Old plans, many of which are original paper designs or mud maps, can often prove unreliable as more often than not, assets are repositioned during the building process. Reliable facilities management data that includes

14 position June/July 2014

accurate location information can help facilities managers better plan their maintenance actions and reduce costs.

The older the structure, the greater the challenge and the less accurate original plans are likely to be, if indeed they even exist or are still available. In expanding and frequently changing environments such as schools and colleges, where new facilities need to be added or existing structures modernised, the property manager faces added complexity.

Integrated expertise GIS consultancy firm OMNILINK provides asset management services for more than 85 schools and colleges in Australia and New Zealand. By combining data from existing plans and its own data collection, OMNILINK delivers an integrated package to property managers with location information of underground, building and room assets via its well proven AssetWhere software.

In a ground-breaking pilot project, OMNILINK is working alongside positioning technology experts Position Partners to transform the way assets are identified and managed for buildings and services in educational institutes in particular.

“Our aim is to make asset and property management easier and more accurate for property managers,” explained OMNILINK executive chairman Edward Garvin. “School properties are large and complex, where there are a number of structures of varying age on a single site and a lot of missing information.

“With the help of Position Partners, we aim to prove that through a combination of new technologies we can deliver a more accurate and comprehensive result and significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to survey the site.” he added.

Position Partners CEO Martin Nix explained the increasing demand for Building

Combining Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), laser scanning and Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) technology to deliver underground, structural and aerial imagery for accurate asset and property management.

Information Modelling (BIM) services that do not rely on potentially outdated plans.

“We have been following the BIM trend both internationally and in Australasia, so when the opportunity arose to work with OMNILINK, we explored the ways they currently collate asset data for schools and the potential for new technology to automate this process,” he said.

At Sydney’s Saint Ignatius College (Riverview) in Lane Cove, Position Partners provided a combination of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to locate underground and subsurface assets, 3D laser scanners to detail internal rooms and façades, and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) to provide aerial photography and 3D models of the site.

“We wanted to understand the impact and cost/benefit of using a combination of these technologies to collect a thorough data set that incorporates underground, structural and aerial perspectives,” Mr Nix added.

“The benefits of having live data showing where assets really are, rather than where they should be according to a plan, are enormous.”

For the Riverview school project, Position Partners undertook a number of sample scans in areas of the college where accurate asset location information is lacking.

3D laser scanning

Above: Ryan Kent conducting interior building scans with the FARO Focus3D X330.

A Faro Focus3D X330 laser scanner was used to capture data in part of the heritage-listed main school building. Ryan Kent, Position Partners NSW survey and GPS sales consultant, was responsible for this part of the project.

“I took 10 scans throughout 26 rooms of the main school building, as well as the façade of the front of the building and some of the archways and courtyard area behind it,” he said.

“The Faro scanner has collected information about the overall building and room structure including room sizes, doorways, ceiling heights and so on, as well as all of the internal assets such as light fixtures, sprinklers, heaters and skirting boards.

All of the heritage-listed detail, including the finials, archways and ceilings, was also captured, along with all existing artwork and antique furniture in the rooms.

“The Faro scanner is ideally suited to BIM applications because, unlike survey grade scanners that capture data in sections, it completes a 360-degree scan at up to 976,000 points per second, to distances up to 330 metres away,” Mr Kent added.

“It captures the floor, roof, walls and everything in-between, so that you can stitch together numerous scans and create a walk-through of entire buildings.” www.spatialsource.com.au 15

cover story Mr Kent explained there is a 1:1 ratio of time in the field collecting data, and time in the office cleaning it and post processing it. “Four hours in the field will mean around four hours of cleaning the data and preparing it for output into other applications, such as OMNILINK’s AssetWhere,” he said.

Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) US Radar’s Seeker SPR was used to scan a footpath corridor, small field and parking apron at the school, where underground assets were unknown.

“Currently, the school has no plans of the underground services in these areas,” explained Position Partners GPR Specialist Justin Coe. “The GPR system records underground assets, such as pipes made of concrete, plastic or metal up to 4.7m deep, with a +/- 15mm resolution.

“Although we didn’t do so it for this sample survey, the Seeker can be modified for different structures, to detect assets behind walls or in the ground, to depths of 30 metres. It all depends on the terrain and the application,” he added.

Position Partners attached a Topcon GR-5 GNSS receiver to the Seeker SPR unit to provide accurate X/Y coordinates for all of the underground services detected, in addition to their depth.

Mr Coe completed 20 runs over the three areas in 45 minutes. He explained a major differentiator of the Seeker series is the ability to store and process data for use in BIM applications.

“Most GPR systems are spot locators that do not store the data, they just show up any anomalies when you are out on

Justin Coe maps underground services with GPR technology.

16 position June/July 2014

site,” he said. “With the Seeker series, you get the benefit of both: you can see the data on screen as you walk the run, but you can also bring it back to the office and stitch together a number of runs to a single file, for use in BIM work.”

Mr Coe believes the use of GPR will increase rapidly in the coming years.

“Underground mapping is the final frontier,” he said. “There is extremely limited information about underground services, and the mud maps that are currently used are often inaccurate or don’t even exist.”

Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) For the aerial mapping stage of the project, Position Partners used the Falcon 8 rotary-based UAS by Ascending Technologies to complete a small survey of an oval on the grounds.

“We chose to use a copter UAV because we are only surveying a small area of the school and the Falcon 8 delivers the perfect mix of portability, precision and ultimate GPS position hold,” explained Position Partners’ UAS manager Gavin Docherty.

Mr Docherty flew the Falcon 8 at a height of 80 metres, with 60% photographic overlap. “This will give us a pixel size of around 1.5cm, with a vertical accuracy of 45mm and horizontal accuracy of around 30mm,” he added.

Setup and flight time totalled no more than 20 minutes and covered an area of around 20 acres.

“Most of the flight planning was done on-site, where I could do a reconnaissance of the area and assess wind speed and direction, potential hazards and so forth,” Mr Docherty said. “The flight took about 10 minutes and I just packed up the UAV into its custom backpack and headed back to the office for post-processing.”

Gavin Docherty flying the Falcon 8 UAV.

Although only a small sample survey was taken at the time of writing, Mr Docherty explained that soon he would undertake a comprehensive aerial survey and model of the entire college, including fences, solar panels and other roof assets, tree coverage and topographic information.

Mr Garvin added that it was the potential to combine the three technologies and their various data outputs into a single homogenous package in OMNILINK’s AssetWhere software that would really deliver results for OMNILINK customers.

“The combination of these technologies can provide more detailed and accurate information for property managers than ever before,” Mr Garvin said. “With more detail, captured faster and more efficiently, the property manager has all the information at his or her fingertips. This enables them to ensure minimal service disruptions when work is being carried out, get accurate building quotations, better plan for new facilities, landscaping and so on, to name just a few examples.”

Gina Velde is Position Partners’ marketing communications manager.

For more information call 1300 867 266 or visit www.positionpartners.com.au. ■

Complete the picture with print + online solutions

June/July 2014 – No. 71

The Australasian magazine of surveying, mapping & geo-information

The publishers of POSITION magazine also produce a FREE weekly email newsletter, plus comprehensive website focusing on the geo spatial industry.

To subscribe to the FREE email newsletter simply register at www.spatialsource.com.au

FACILITIES MANAGEMENT

MADE EASY

For advertising enquiries: Troy Hale on (02) 8586 6128 or thale@intermedia.com.au

Official publication of

inside Easy fieldwork Asset inspection in real time

Automate it Manual tasks waste time

Where’s MH370?

The search for the missing aircraft

feature

Get Wyndham moving DR ADAM MOWLAM

W

yndham, in both number and percentage terms, is the fastest growing municipality in Victoria. This strong population growth presents many opportunities and challenges. With such a fast-growing population, the ability of residents of Wyndham to access transport to attend employment, education, health, shopping and social activities, is vital. For this reason, the need to enhance Wyndham’s liveability is a key strategic objective of the council and one actively being addressed through modern technology.

In preparation for the City Plan (2013-2017), the council undertook some market research entitled “Tell Us Your Top 4” and received a very strong message from the community that traffic and transport congestion was the number one priority needing to be addressed. Due to that feedback, council adopted a budget and city plan that made a commitment to undertake a congestion campaign over the next two years to tackle traffic congestion and transport issues in a bid to ‘Get Wyndham Moving’ (www. getwyndhammoving.com.au).

As part of Wyndham City’s traffic and transport congestion campaign Get Wyndham Moving, residents, business people and community leaders competed in a race to the city. At 7.30am on Wednesday, April 2, 15 people from three different suburbs across Wyndham took cars, bikes or public transport in a battle to see who will beat the traffic and arrive at Federation Square first.

A requirement of the project was to provide live tracking of each competitor throughout the race and to allow processing and analysis of bottlenecks along the various journeys. Staff from the System Development and Analysis Team, which includes software developers and spatial professionals, divided the project requirements into two major parts: the real-time logging of competitor locations and the spatial display of locations.

Real-time location mapping There were two key factors influencing the decision – minimal budget and

18 position June/July 2014

Figure 1.

Small iOS utility and front end display.

minimal time. The entire project was to be completed within 48 hours and could only use existing resources. The decision making and development process was therefore heavily governed by these two factors.

Since Wyndham City has an active fleet of Apple iPhone and iPad devices, coupled with the ability to undertake mobile device management via AirWatch, an iOS application was the most logical solution.

The application needed to be very simple to use, provide real-time transmission for GPS locations and not drain battery life.

One significant advantage of providing the hardware (iOS devices) in-house, was the consistency of operating systems and device settings. From a developer perspective, whilst earlier iOS Core Location frameworks do have some location services, these are only activated when a ‘significant’ change in the user’s location occurs. With iOS 7, the device background services mode allows locations to be reported back to the server for accurate locations at a desired time interval.

To get the location of the device, CLLocationManager was used. CLLocationManager’s startUpdatingLocation method initialises the device to report the location

and notifies the didUpdateLocations method of any changes in the location and the accuracy range. These locations are filtered, based on the accuracy range of 100 meters and then checked with last transmission of data to the server. After the race was completed, stopUpdatingLocation method was triggered by the users to stop the device from reporting their locations. The data was then sent to a standard SQL database located on the web server. The mobile data was stored in two tables. The main table recorded the device id, GPS location, speed and battery level. A second table consisted of a user list containing friendly device names such as ‘Point Cook – Public Transport’, linked by the device id.

Figure 1. shows the simple interface of the iOS app which can be used to register the device, start the race (i.e.

GPS logging) and also a string display of the device id. The ‘Start Race’ button toggles to ‘End Race’ upon being pressed.

The ‘Register Device’ button simply logs once-off metric data to the server. Basic testing of the application revealed power consumption being 10% every hour – sufficient for this project. Figure 1. shows the front end display, developed using Bootstrap - a powerful mobile first frontend framework for faster and easier web development. It is compatible with all major web browsers and involves simply adding the Bootstrap stylesheet and a link in the HTML file. The front-end display automatically refreshed every 15 seconds on 2 April during the race.

Figure 2. Council staff keeping the media @ Federation Square informed.

Top: Figure 3.

Screenshot of HeatMap for the Tarneit vehicle.

Below: Figure 4.

Competitor locations during race.

Figure 4. shows the location of most participants during the race. The dispersion of competitors between Wyndham and the CBD is evident. The use of CSS3 pop-ups for displaying competitor details and timestamps were critical for easy interpretation. In terms of the actual race, the combination of cycling to the nearest train station and then taking the train won, completing the journey in approximately 60 minutes.

In last position were the cars, which took almost 90 minutes. The results of this study emphasise the West’s reliance on the Westgate Bridge. The fastest methods of transport (cycling and then public transport) were not without their downfalls with overcrowding, delays and gaps in infrastructure.

Lessons learned and future direction Prior to the race, the fleet of iPads and iPhones were distributed to race participants by the organisers. Not all participants were given a device due to availability, and one device could not activate due to an administrative error.

Just prior to starting the race, each participant started the application.

The event was attended by a large contingent of media, who were kept informed of the current placing and timings via the mobile-friendly website.

Additionally, many council staff and members of the public were able to simply and conveniently follow the progress of the race live. Figure 2. shows campaign leader Bill Forrest comparing notes with Prue Bentley, the roaming reporter for the ABC Radio, on the state of the race.

Spatial display of locations The spatial display of a competitor’s race position was in two forms: firstly, an overall display of all competitors at a particular epoch of time, and secondly, individual displays of users’ path showing progress and journey bottlenecks/flow.

Having previously developed many mobile applications using location-based

services, the team noted spatial accuracy of smartphone devices can be dubious, particularly when devices are kept in backpacks and/or obstructed by nearby multipath sources. Basic testing indicated that the level of positional accuracy would not be a detriment to this project.

While numerous mobile mapping options exist, such as Google Maps, GIS Cloud, MapBox and OpenStreetMap, the decision was made to use Leaflet (http:// leafletjs.com). Leaflet is a modern, opensource JavaScript library for mobilefriendly interactive maps. Leaflet works efficiently across all major desktop and mobile platforms, taking advantage of HTML5 and CSS3 on modern browsers.

Leaflet has been extended with many plug-ins. The one used for this project was a tile-based, heatmap javascript library that uses a quadtree index to store location data. Due to the constant transmission of GPS locations (at fifteen second intervals), the simple, graphical heatmaps beautifully represented journey times, including travel bottlenecks and waiting times. Figure 3. shows a screenshot of the heatmap for the Tarneit vehicle.

Both the mobile application and mapping solution used for the Race to the City were deemed to be an outstanding success. However, like most projects there are always possible improvements and further uses. Some of the areas where improvement could have been made were: • The lack of time synchronisation meant that the live map was slightly misleading, particularly when comparing transport modes like a moving train and gridlocked cars.

• Since all routes were pre-defined, a better approach would have been to map the actual route and determine progress distance and percentage completed to better monitor race position.

• The use of icons would also have improved the cartographic representation.

The application will now be used by other council officers for alternate purposes. For example, ushers and event staff will use the application at festivals, expos and concerts to aid the crowd with support services.

Dr Adam Mowlam is the coordinator, system development & analysis at Wyndham City Council. For more information email adam.mowlam@ wyndham.vic.gov.au. ■ www.spatialsource.com.au 19

feature

GIS helping asset management in councils STACEY GRANT

T

he drive to explore our world is a thirst that modern man could never quench. It has led to the need for us to track the world for what it truly is. It’s here that effective Geospatial Information System (GIS) technologies are not only productive, but necessary.

So why has the need for GIS mobile reporting specifically increased over the last few years? The empirical answer is of course human need. Manual mapmaking and traditional geographical analysis may have sufficed years ago, but today, population growth, urban sprawl, and community development have called for more intuitive and mobile asset management solutions.

Top: Aerial photo of Ballarat. Image © City of Ballarat.

Even the smallest things matter with big data

Right: Ballarat, Lake Wendouree.

Image © City of Ballarat.

We shorten the life cycle between sensing change and taking action. Geospatial 2014 solves your big data problem using analytics through the cloud, delivered to mobile.

Learn more at www.hexagongeospatial.com

Need help? Contact us at au-sales@hexagongeospatial.com

© 2014 Intergraph Corporation. All rights reserved.

Intergraph is part of Hexagon. Intergraph and the Intergraph logo are registered trademarks of Intergraph Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and in other countries.

20 position June/July 2014

The City of Ballarat is one of Australia’s fastest growing inland cities, with a projected population growth to 128,190 people by 2026. Privy to these projections, the Ballarat City Council has since adopted ConfirmConnect as its mobile asset and maintenance management system, which allows the user to engage with both field workforce and the asset.

First deployed on smart tablet devices for council’s Arborist team, the technology empowers the user to proactively manage inspections, surveys, and day-to-day maintenance. Coordinator of asset management for City of Ballarat Ben Howell said: “We have been so pleased with the implementation and enthusiasm from the Arbour Department that we are looking to roll it out to the recreation, road

operations and maintenance crews.” Howell continues.

“In the past 12 months, 700 external utility defects and over 6,150 council-related defects have been recorded by inspectors who have been able to hold utility providers accountable for work that has taken place.”

This asset management is all done with the benefit of real-time information flow. The power of these two small words – real time – is that the information the field worker is sending and receiving is always current and up-to-date.

The power of this collaborative tool is the ability to always see the bigger picture by linking the user to other workers and providing all of them with the latest information.

General manager of City Infrastructure at the City of Ballarat Eric Braslis said: “The implementation of ConfirmConnect has been a success, allowing us to see significant efficiencies in field operation processes and job completion.

“Field staff can now seamlessly coordinate jobs in the field as they come through the system. Then they can immediately update asset records, add photos and track defects, which was a big step for us.”

Mapping capabilities such as GPS equips rural communities like Ballarat with the mobile technology necessary to keep up with a continually changing landscape.

“The intuitive nature of the system allows the user to visualise the tasks being allocated to them and record the location of issues and work in the field,” Ben Howell said.

“It enables them to quickly understand the benefits of adopting the mobile solution.”

A field worker is able to interactively move objects and update the mapping data live. It’s auditable, which means reporting when a defective asset was last inspected, maintained or worked on, is also achievable.

The solution tracks assets, mobilises growth and controls environmental factors end-to-end.

Today, convenience is often slotted into slogans such as ‘out of the box’. Though the need for technology to be intuitive and easy to maintain still exists, the solution is customisable and agile enough to integrate with other systems, allowing contractors and external organisations to seamlessly access council information. The mobile asset management solution has enabled integration with a range of core corporate systems including GIS, Financial and Customer Request Management systems.

So what does this all mean for the City of Ballarat and for local governments around Australia, who are experiencing population growth, an increase in residential construction, and private business development? Most importantly, what does this mean for their residents?

Councils’ asset portfolio provides the necessary infrastructure for the delivery of important services to the community. An objective of most workplaces is to work smarter, not harder, to achieve more with less. By utilising technologies such as mobile asset and maintenance management, the field workers of City of Ballarat are able to reduce the amount of transactional and administrative work, allowing them to focus on their job at hand. By empowering field workers with ConfirmConnect, the council can implement more efficient work practices, closely monitor expenditure and work quality, and proactively manage its works scheduling.

This all leads to council delivering better services and facilities to its local community through improved efficiency and better use of limited budgets.

Stacey Grant is the product marketer, location intelligence at Pitney Bowes. ■ www.spatialsource.com.au 21

feature Cape Schanck, the southernmost point of Mornington Peninsula. (CC BYSA 3.0 VirtualSteve at en.wikipedia.)

Managing Mornington SIMON CHESTER

L

ocated near Melbourne, Victoria, the Mornington Peninsula is a 720 square kilometre promontory separating the bays of Port Phillip and Western Port. Boasting coastal boundaries of more than 190 kilometres, it makes up approximately 10 per cent of Victoria’s coastline, and supports a combination of urban areas, resort towns, tourist development, and rural land.

Mornington Peninsula Shire is responsible for managing 1.6 billion dollars’ worth of infrastructure assets across the peninsula. The shire relies on staff and contracted service providers to undertake its field work, and both require access to asset and other spatial information in the field for planning and updates.

Up until 2013, the council was using a very manual method for asset inspection and data collection.

“We use KMS (by JRA) as our asset management system, and our GIS is GeoMedia (from Hexagon Geospatial, formerly Intergraph), but we used ArcPad to collect asset information from the field,” said Davey Smith, project manager for asset renewal planning at Mornington Peninsula Shire. “To get the info from GeoMedia and make it usable in ArcPad, we had to export the data to a shapefile and load it onto the ArcPad devices.

“Then, once field workers finished and returned to the office, they had to save the file onto the system. The Asset Management Team then had to convert it back, and use GeoMedia to find the changes in the data – with ten different users with ten different files, this was a very time consuming task.”

Despite the inefficiencies in this workflow, the system did do its job.

However, in April 2012, the preparation of the shire’s long term maintenance

22 position June/July 2014

contracts commenced, which included new requirements that increased the amount and types of data to be collected.

“We did some analysis surrounding what these data requirements would mean for the asset management team, and we found that we would have to process up to 700 times the amount of data that we previously did,” said Davey. “The asset management team would literally not be able to cope – it simply wasn’t going to happen with the process that we had.”

With this knowledge in hand, the team examined the issues inherent in the current data collection process, as well as reconsidered its key objectives and aims.

This resulted in a list of requirements that any new system would have to fulfil: • Provide one central database that holds and displays asset information for all departments to view within the shire.

• Make this data securely available for any department or contractor with appropriate permissions to view or update in real time.

• Enable mobile access, editing, and updates for staff and service providers, with both online and offline accessibility.

• Eliminate data redundancies by enabling real-time updates that are reflected to internal and external staff alike.

• Create simple, easy-to-use, error-proof workflows for the non-GIS personnel, including service providers.

• Automate as much as possible.

Extensive research to find a suitable product was then undertaken, but the idea of using a Hexagon product to complement their existing Hexagon GIS came when a staff member heard about GeoMedia SmartClient at a conference.

GeoMedia SmartClient is a webbased editing and workflow optimisation

solution that enables rapid workflow configuration and implementation, and provides non-technical users the ability to be guided step by step through geospatial tasks and processes – using any javacompatible web-browser.

Its semi-automated data collection forms with built-in validation aid in consistent and accurate data collection, and minimise any training requirements. Further to this, the product would work exceptionally well with the organisation’s existing GIS. “After hearing about SmartClient, and given that our existing GIS is Hexagon GeoMedia, we thought it could be a good fit,” said Davey. “So we got some Hexagon representatives to come down to the shire to tell us about it, and it looked like it ticked all our boxes.”

In view of this, an extensive business case was then created that made sure that the new system would align with council’s ‘DRIP’ values (Driving Responsiveness, Innovation, and Productivity), which are set at the highest level at the shire.

“We were seeking the most innovative solution that would drive productivity and provide the best responsiveness for the community,” said Davey. “We got great support from management because of the thorough business case put forward, which reflected these values.”

A new way to collect data The move to a new field data system began in January 2013 when Mornington Peninsula Shire purchased and started developing GeoMedia SmartClient Professional.

“SmartClient Professional isn’t really an out-of-the box solution – you develop your own forms and process to suit your needs, and create different projects for different activities,” said Davey.

“This process was driven by extensive stakeholder consultation. Users, including service providers, needed to be on board from day one. Thankfully, it’s really simple to use – it’s all drop-down menus – so training was a breeze.”

So far, the shire has developed asset data collection applications for buildings, drainage, and furniture and signs, but also in the pipeline for development are applications for parks, and roadside assets such as significant trees, garden beds, etc. These applications allow field crew to edit relevant attribute information and geometry, and an image-capture function can even attach related photographs to their respective assets.

The new applications have eliminated the need for data translation and loading onto devices, and also eradicated paperbased recording of inspections, which would require the inspector to manually type the recorded information into a database back at the office.

“Since moving to SmartClient, there’s no more ‘double-handling’ of data,” said Davey. “Service providers use it on Windows-based tablets in the field to remotely access and update the asset management system. All new data is consistent, as information is entered via drop-down forms.

The validation is run at the point of collection, rather than back at the office.

“The built-in sync mechanism updates the database in the office in real time

Morninton Peninsula Shire, as viewed inside GeoMedia Smartclient web viewer.

over a mobile connection. If no mobile connection is available, it works in offline mode, and then syncs the data as soon as the user logs back into the network.

“From our perspective, SmartClient has really opened the door to the most updated source of information. You may have three different teams working on say, footpaths, and previously they may all have had a different copy of the information, creating inconsistencies and errors.”

These near real-time database updates have meant that the SmartClient database has become the organisation’s ‘single source of truth’ for most operations. This data is further validated before being synced to the KMS asset register on a weekly basis.

The ‘Building Inspection’ SmartClient application puts only relevant controls in front of the user.

Like the ‘Building Inspection’ tool, the ‘Cleansing & Drainage’ app gives users only what they need to do their job.

More than asset management While the current SmartClient applications are all based around asset management, it’s also possible to create projects for other field work.

“It’s easy to develop new projects for new situations – just develop a workflow and forms, load up some existing or new layers, and off you go,” said Davey.

“It can be used as a live contractmanagement tool to see exactly when a condition inspection has been successfully undertaken. For instance, on a bushland management project, a contract manager can use SmartClient to draw a rectangle around an area that needs to be weeded. At the end of the day, the field worker can draw another poly within that area to show what they’ve achieved, and include any relevant supplementary information.”

In addition to improvements in productivity and data quality, the shire has also reduced its licensing costs.

“SmartMedia comes with an unlimited user license – both internally and externally with service providers. This is a huge cost benefit for council, especially as the previous software needed one license per user.”

It’s not just a cost benefit, though, as asset management data is now freely available to any of the 1,000+ members of the organisation, which is creating an organisation-wide approach to asset management.

“Previously, any changes would have had to go via the asset management team,” said Davey. “Now, however, minor adjustments can be done by, say, the traffic team who may just need a sign moved 20m down the road.”

Since moving to SmartClient, Mornington Peninsula Shire now adheres to the five core values of asset management data: accuracy, completeness, compliance, consistency, and timeliness.

“That’s the ultimate goal of asset management,” said Davey, “having really good data.” ■ www.spatialsource.com.au 23

feature

A cloud in the Pacific SIMON CHESTER

T

here are few communities more at risk from the effects of climate change than those living on islands.

Surrounded by water, and with little land on which to migrate, the rising sea levels and storm surges will not only swallow villages and farmland, but will increase the risk of diseases like dengue fever as more water pools on the land.

With these risks in mind, and with scientific warnings that the future effects of climate change will be even greater than originally estimated, governments of island nations are actively creating strategies to deal with the inevitable rising waters and increase in extreme weather events.

Such planning requires information, and spatial information not only provides the necessary information to planners and ministry staff, but is also the perfect way to display this information to nontechnical community members.

As part of the Australian Government’s Pacific-Australia Climate Change Science and Adaptation Planning (PACCSAP) program, a project was designed at the request of national governments that responded to the need for accurate elevation data to underpin analysis of sea level rise impacts.

Specifically, the project aimed to enhance the capacity of Pacific Islands to undertake assessments of sea-level inundation risk to key settlements and infrastructure, through the provision of critical baseline data, improved GIS capacity, and implementation of simple coastal inundation modelling.

24 position June/July 2014

Key to fulfilling this aim would be the delivery of: 1. High-resolution topographic, bathymetric and aerial imagery data for coastal inundation modelling; 2. Enhanced institutional GIS capacity to support the long-term use and management of elevation data and derived products, including the capacity to undertake coastal inundation modelling and risk assessment in a GIS environment; 3. Simple coastal inundation modelling and preliminary risk assessment for priority areas; 4. Opportunities to implement more complex and integrated coastal modelling for more detailed risk assessment to influence coastal planning.

Since 2011, such projects have been completed on Tonga, Samoa, and Papua New Guinea. Vanuatu is the latest to receive attention from the program, and has benefitted from the insight gained by working on the other island nations.

“We learnt from each country as the project progressed,” said Dr Nathan Quadros, business development manager at the CRC for Spatial Information, which managed the project on behalf of the Australian Department of the Environment. “Before Vanuatu, we mainly dealt with GIS users within government. In Vanuatu, we wanted to increase the distribution and usage of the data, and thereby the benefits to the community.”

“A focus for the Vanuatu program was on awareness, use, and distribution of the information,” said Nathan Eaton, principal GIS consultant at NGIS Australia, which was brought in for the GIS capacity building and training. “The recent internet fibre cable connected from Fiji to Vanuatu made the use of cloud services possible, and this focus along with it.

“As an intuitive cloud-based application built from Google Earth, Google Maps Engine (GME) removes the barriers of entry to spatial information, and puts accurate mapping information in the hands of the decision makers,” said Mr Eaton. “Additionally, Google manages all of the infrastructure and software – which is designed to provide high performance and high availability – allowing Vanuatu to focus on the dissemination and use of the data and inundation models.”

For this reason, it was decided to develop a distributable, cloud-based product to showcase the inundation data, based on GME, to be known as Vanuatu Globe.

“Google is an ideal platform to provide greater access to the data for the community. It means people without a GIS background, such as high-level managers and ministers, can also use the data,” said Dr Quadros.

However, as any spatial user knows, the limitations to making data freely available and accessible aren’t purely technical – they’re philosophical.

Left: As part of capacity building, NGIS held a course for teachers to help increase climate change awareness in schools.

Below: Nathan Eaton (left) and Nathan Quadros (right) with the former Vanuatu Prime Minister Moana Carcasses Kalosil (middle).

“During the Vanuatu planning mission, we worked with the Vanuatu government to get buy-in and support for the concept,” said Mr Eaton. “The concept of making this extremely valuable data free, highly available and highly accessible is relatively new in the Pacific and a different way of approaching climate change awareness.”

Ultimately, the Vanuatu government saw the benefit in freeing up the data, and agreed to the distributable cloudbased solution and web services. In this particular case, Google also provided

free storage and processing time to the project, as part of its outreach program.

Starting work The Coastal Risk Assessment Project was conducted in two phases: Phase 1 involved the collection of highresolution topographic and bathymetric data through LiDAR technology and aerial imagery for the priority areas of Efate, Malekula and Espiritu Santo.

“CRCSI worked with the Vanuatu government to select the priority areas for survey,” said Dr Quadros. “We also designed the LiDAR survey specifications before passing them onto Geoscience Australia, who managed the contract and quality assurance.”

Phase 2 involved a training program for Vanuatu Government agencies on how to use the data captured, particularly for modelling of sea-level rise impacts on assets at risk.

“The CRCSI designed the training and capacity building program, which was submitted to our partners for tender,” said Dr Quadros. “Based on the responses, NGIS was selected to complete the training and capacity building.”

THOUSANDS OF

SURVEYORS IN

OVER 100 COUNTRIES Designed and developed by LISTECH, an Take your office Australian company, LISCAD is a complete field‑to‑finish system used by thousands of into the field customers in over 100 countries.

LISCAD interfaces with all popular surveying, engineering and CAD systems. New users find LISCAD intuitive, easy to use and quick to learn, with comprehensive tutorials and fast technical support.

FREE evaluation licences allow real-world use before purchasing. The modular design WITH means you only purchase the functionality you require, keeping costs down.

LISCAD is a portfolio of integrated Land Surveying and Civil Engineering software modules. Features include rigorous geodetic computations, unlimited model size, traverse and least squares network adjustment, 2D/3D transformations, volume computations, geo-referenced background images, 3D Visualisation, profiles, impressive engineering design capability for easy generation of virtually any design, Survey Live for real-time surveying and set-out with Total Stations or GNSS equipment, and Point Cloud for importing, viewing, editing and digitisation of point cloud data.

3 Versatile 3 User Friendly 3 ComprehensiVe 3 Great serViCe & sUpport

designed for surveyors

CALL 1300 650 332 NOW www.listech.com

© LISTECH 8272E

RELY ON LISCAD

feature Phase 1 – LiDAR and imagery acquisition In the first phase of the PACCSAP project, AAM captured high-resolution topographic and bathymetric data using airborne LiDAR and coincident high-resolution aerial imagery. Due to weather restrictions, Vanuatu was gathered in two stages: the islands of Efate and Malekula were completed in October 2012, while Espiritu Santo was completed in May 2013.

Phase 2 – capacity building and training As part of the capacity building, NGIS trained Vanuatu Ministry staff in how to develop the necessary inundation models from the LiDAR data.

“Using the captured LiDAR data, we derived 1m digital elevation and digital surface models, 20cm aerial photography and resulting inundation models for highest astronomical tide, and 1-in-10year and 1-in-100-year storm events for 2030, 2055 and 2090 modelled sea-level rise,” said Mr Eaton.

In addition to this training, NGIS loaded the models and aerial imagery into the Vanuatu Globe, designed the styling and access configuration, and set up the services coming out of it for other GIS applications to plug into.

But it wasn’t just Ministry spatial staff that NGIS trained – other staff members and key community members were also shown how to access the data in Vanuatu Globe.

“During the capacity building phase for Vanuatu, we provided training for the Vanuatu Globe to ministry staff, and delivered a targeted course for Vanuatu teachers called ‘Climate Change mapping for teachers’, which used Google Earth and the Vanuatu Globe to help teachers increase climate change awareness in schools,” said Mr Eaton. “Their reaction to it was incredible.”

Indeed, reaction to the whole project has been positive, with recognition coming from governmental figures the world over.

“The sheer amount of highlights attached to this project were beyond the CRCSI’s expectations at the project’s commencement,” said Dr Quadros.

“One of the biggest external highlights was having the Vanuatu Google Globe presented by Google at the White House Climate Data Initiative Announcement.”

Nathan Eaton agrees: “The Whitehouse Climate Data Initiative is focused on using technology, data, and the cloud, for climate change awareness and modelling.

The Vanuatu Globe was showcased as a leading example for increasing climate change awareness.”

26 position June/July 2014

Closer to home, the Vanuatu training program received additional news coverage when the Vanuatu Prime Minister at the time, Moana Carcasses Kalosil, visited the GIS training room during the second training tranche. “He was greatly impressed by the promotion of the project at the White House,” said Dr Quadros. “He showed a prior knowledge of the program, and was grateful for the update on the training provided by Nathan Eaton from NGIS.” The program also received significant support when Australia’s Governor General Quentin Bryce delivered the LiDAR and aerial imagery data of Papua New Guinea to Prime Minister Peter O’Neill on behalf of the Australian Government.

Planning for the future The creation of the Vanuatu Globe and the datasets it contains has been invaluable for the island nation as it prepares for the coming decades.

“Since the GIS training and capacity building, a coastal risk assessment report has been prepared with input from the partner country’s training participants,” said Dr Quadros. “The report serves as an initial coastal risk assessment for highlevel planning, and can be used to direct a more detailed study.

Top: The Vanuatu Globe showing modelled inundation. The darker blue shows present-day inundation of the Efate lagoon during highest astronomical tide, and the lighter blue shows predicted inundation in 2090 due to sea level rise.

Bottom: The Vanuatu Globe also shows detailed coastal bathymetry.

“The risk assessment reports contain coastal inundation modelling maps, initial risk assessment to infrastructure and settlements, key recommendations, and limitations of the data and analysis.”

“For Vanuatu, more ministry staff have access to software and accurate data than ever before,” said Mr Eaton.

“The use of mapping to increase climate change awareness has been tremendously successful, particularly to illustrate the effects on villages.

“People understand maps – showing inundation models gives communities a tangible understanding of the challenges they face.”

Representatives from The Dept. of the Environment, CRC for Spatial Information, Google, and the Vanuatu Government will be presenting facets of the project at the Understanding Risk Forum run by the World Bank in London at the end of June. ■

MapInfo Forum 2014

Connecting the MapInfo community Maps are redefining how we do business in the public and commercial sector. Join peers, experts and the Pitney Bowes team for this annual event to share knowledge and experiences, learn and grow your skills and discover what’s new from Pitney Bowes.

During the Forum, you will see, hear and experience: •

Exclusive previews and demos of MapInfo Professional 12.5 – the first true 64-bit version

•

Updates on our Location Intelligence roadmap and strategy

•

Great customer stories from your peers

•

Tips and tricks from the experts

•

And of course exclusive event-only special offers including MapInfo Training vouchers, Upgrade offers – and more!

To view the Agenda, Speaker line-up and read more about what’s coming in the world of MapInfo, please visit the website at: www.mapinfo.com/mapinfo-forum.

All attendees will be eligible to receive 3 SSSI CPD points for attending (per event).

CITIES AND DATES Back again by popular demand and coming to your city soon!

• Sydney: 19th August 2014 (Afternoon) • Melbourne: 20th August 2014 (Afternoon) • Brisbane: 21st August 2014 (Afternoon) For the full listing of dates and cities visit the website.

Interested in hosting a Forum in your city? Contact us: pbsoftware.australia@pb.com FEEDBACK FROM THE 2013 EVENT:

our story and hear from others, SOUTH SURVEYshare as well as seeing the future of MapInfo.”

“It was a great opportunity to be able to

Barlow Jess, GIS & Data Officer at Coles.

“Fantastic networking for the MapInfo community. It was great to see the vision of MapInfo Professional.”

Laszlo Tamas, Senior GIS Analyst at Queensland Translink.

To find out more, please visit www.mapinfo.com/mapinfo-forum.

Join the conversation online @mapinfo #MapInfoForum.

feature Matschie’s treekangaroo at the Bronx Zoo.

Mapping for conservation ALISTAIR HART

I

n late 2012, the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program contacted Atherton Tablelands GIS with a vague idea for a map to assist in efforts to protect Matschie’s tree kangaroo in northeastern Papua New Guinea. What followed was extensive international collaboration, leading to the YUS Landscape Plan, an award-winning project.

The Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program (TKCP) is an international conservation organisation that aims to conserve wildlife and habitat, with a particular interest in protecting and managing Matschie’s tree kangaroo.

Matschie’s tree kangaroo, Dendrolagus matschei, is an endangered species with a bear-like head, monkey’s tail and a marsupial’s pouch.

Matschie’s tree kangaroo is on display at the Woodlands Park Zoo in Seattle, USA. From its roots as a research project looking for ways to conserve this species, the TKCP has involved the Woodlands Park Zoo as a major supporter in the conservation efforts for the tree

28 position June/July 2014

kangaroo’s native habitat. Several other international organisations were also involved in various aspects of producing the YUS Landscape Plan.

The YUS Landscape Use Plan is a joint effort between Atherton Tablelands GIS, Australian Tropical Forest Institute, Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program, YUS Conservation Organisation, KFW Entwicklungsbank (the German equivalent of AusAid), the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation & Nuclear Safety, Woodland Park Zoo, and Conservation International.

The funding for the project came from a combination of sources, including the KFW Entwicklungsbank, Woodland Park Zoo and a trust fund, with over USD2million, donated by individuals, philanthropists, private and public organisations. The funds support TKCP’s ongoing project work into the future, including reassessing the YUS Landscape Planning zones, and reproduction of the YUS Landscape Plan in 2015, and at fiveyearly intervals thereafter.

The TKCP has spent over fifteen years working on the ground with people in the Huon Peninsula as part of their conservation effort. The conservation area covers the catchments of the Yopno, Uruwa and Som Rivers, a total area of 76,000 hectares from the northern coast of the Huon Peninsula to the interior mountains of Papua New Guinea.

This area, named the YUS Landscape after its main rivers, has significant conservation value as it is home to 13 endangered or threatened species. The rugged landscape is characterised by a low human population density, around 6.2 people/km, and a large unbroken tract of rainforest. Since no roads currently dissect or enter the YUS landscape, the rainforest that occupies 70% of the land area has been afforded some historical protection from large-scale development and resource extraction that is a national threat to biodiversity in Papua New Guinea. The rainforest extends beyond the core conservation area, covering the surrounding mountains, from sea level to over 4,000m elevation.

The field work and ground research was conducted in conjunction with community consultation and participation in the villages. Staff based in Lae, Papua New Guinea, collated this data, which identified eight different conservation classifications for varying protections for Matschie’s tree kangaroo. This data formed the basis for Atherton Tablelands GIS to develop the YUS Landscape Plan.

TKCP sought a means to communicate the conservation areas to the 10,000 people who live in villages throughout the conservation area. Many of these people have poor literacy skills, and the communication links beyond each village can be limited and unreliable, however, the integrity of the plan depended on everyone abiding by the conservation zoning. To ensure this outcome, a printed product based on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park zoning maps was produced, with some design changes to better suit TKCP’s specific needs.

The map was made with consideration to cartographic standards, with zoning colours chosen to reflect the use restrictions and create an aesthetically pleasing map. The map elements were kept to a minimum to ensure clear design. Early suggestions indicated that coordinate grids may be useful, but with a low uptake of GPS and similar technology locally, it was more useful for locals to be able to visualise the described zoning extents, based on their familiarity with the hills and drainage junctions in the landscape.

The product is highly visual, with a large map occupying most of one side, and the reverse side in Tok Pisin (the dominant local pidgin dialect) featuring grouped text in poster style. This format was selected to make the product more accessible and engaging for the low-literacy audience.

The YUS Landscape Plan poster was delivered as a hard copy product, printed on responsibly sourced Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified printing stock. A varnish coating gives a smooth finish, which adds a premium feel to the product, whilst also reducing thickness. It has the same weight and

durability as uncoated paper, but the reduced thickness means it is easier to store and transport the map, which is an important consideration for distribution and storage in the villages. Soy-based inks were used to ensure that the when the product is disposed of, it would break down without leaving a toxic legacy.

While the end product is not hightech, it is appropriate technology for the intended audience. A folded paper map, rather than a digital solution, keeps costs low and enables greater penetration into the remote villages.

The YUS Landscape Plan is the first conservation zoning map prepared for use in Papua New Guinea. It has been well received by the villagers and the Papua New Guinea government, and presents a viable template for expanding spatiallybased conservation communications between the Papua New Guinea government and the public.

The innovation of this product lies in the application of the cartographic principles established for marine conservation (through the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority zoning

maps). The cartographic principles of the marine zone maps were adapted to meet the requirements of an effective terrestrial conservation zone map. The design that Atherton Tablelands GIS adopted allows end users in the YUS Landscape to relate the conservation zones to local landmarks. For these people, GPS coordinates and map grids are foreign concepts, but the surrounding hills and watercourse junctions are familiar.

The YUS Landscape Plan was publicly released in June 2013. It is the most comprehensive protected area management plan of its kind in Papua New Guinea. The YUS Landscape plan won 2013 Queensland Spatial Excellence awards in both Export and Environment & Sustainability categories.

Consequently, the YUS Landscape Plan is a finalist in the Asia-Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards, to be presented in Canberra on 8 April 2014.

Alistair Hart GISP-AP is the GIS coordinator at Atherton Tablelands Geographic Information Services, part of Tablelands Regional Council. ■

SmartNetAus

National GNSS Network RTK Solutions

SmartNet Aus expands coverage in New South Wales We are excited and honoured to now also work with CORSnet in NSW to further extend our coverage and services.

With the addition of the CORSnet sites, we will be approaching 500 CORS nationally.

Combining our existing coverage with all CORSnet sites to provide a Premium Service to NSW and National clients.

Our combination of excellent coverage and flexible SmartNet Aus products suit the various markets that we service, such as surveying, construction, GIS mapping and agriculture. And, with national coverage, we can offer products to work across state boundaries with a single license.

www.smartnetaus.com

Please refer to our web site www.smartnetaus.com for further details of our services and current coverage maps.

Applications • LAND SURVEYING • GIS • CONSTRUCTION • AGRICULTURE.

CRK26483POS

www.spatialsource.com.au 29

feature

Doing away with the manual SIMON CHESTER

T

he last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the number of consumers of spatial information.

From Google Maps to the near-ubiquitous presence of local council web maps, citizens are using spatial technologies to plan routes, research services, and view cities both local and foreign.

This increase in spatial information consumption has coincided with an increase in expectations: the map should always reflect the reality, errors and omissions are unacceptable. The fact that data input can be a time-consuming task isn’t a concern for Joe and Jessie Public, especially when they’re trying to find their way around a new land development.

These expectations are also felt within organisations, as the number of departments and business-critical tasks relying on spatial information has increased multi-fold.

This has put pressure on spatial data custodians to provide timely, accurate, and regular updates to their spatial information – and the only way to meet these expectations is to automate the workflows that capture, update, and publish spatial information.

The GIS Team in Property Services at the City of Melbourne is aware of these growing expectations, but was previously at the mercy of a very manual update process.

“The process of updating property data was done every 4-6 to months because it was so time consuming,” said Rudy Vogt, spatial analyst/developer in the GIS Team.

“Since the move to our GIS web browser, the users in the organisation have wanted more regular updates to the property data.”

This wasn’t limited to just property boundary data: updating the Address Points dataset, for example, would take four hours to process and upload to arcSDE, as it was only about 80% automated.

“The manual part was loading the Autocad address point .dwg,” said Rudy. “This took about four hours and involved exporting it to a coverage, and then importing that into arcSDE while checking for duplicates – which ran overnight. If any duplicates were found, we had to fix them, then go through the four-hour process again.

30 position June/July 2014

Outdoor café permit information is generated with FME Server by joining the property with the licensing system.

The Python program created by City of Melbourne that controls the Address Point update task on FME Server.

“The upload to ArcSDE was done every four weeks, and if we missed the upgrade cycle, it would have to wait another four weeks.”

These cumbersome, time-consuming tasks could be markedly improved by fully automating the workflow. Those tasks that were already partly automated were done so using Safe Software’s FME Desktop.

“We would use FME Desktop to perform AGD-66 to MGA94 transformations; mosaic aerial photography and extract polygonal areas from certain parts; load Autocad source data into the arcSDE GIS database; extract spatial data from the maintenance database and transform it to go into our public-facing web-map;

generate ‘Sketchup’ models from our 3D model; geo-code address points; and update/upload asset-related features into our presentation spatial database by combining asset management, property info, images, and spatial features, for use in our internal web (map) browser.”

While there were many automated processes, they couldn’t always run when needed, as all the FME Desktop licenses would often be consumed by other users or processes.

“Around the end of 2010, and after much frustration with licence locks, I started to investigate if Safe offered a server-based product,” said Rudy. “The Safe website gave me enough info to know that it was a good way to go, and the 2011 FME World Tour in Melbourne further showcased the capabilities of FME Server. It confirmed that we are on the right track, so we arranged with the reseller (then Lagen Spatial, now known as 1Spatial) for a demo.

“We received approval of our business case for the new software requirement in May 2011, with final approval to purchase in October 2011. It took five months to get the physical hardware approved and in place, and Lagen Spatial (now 1Spatial) helped us with the FME server installation and setup, integrating it with Microsoft Active Directory, and setting up an email notification system.

“We designed and created all the workflows ourselves – we wrote little programs in Python that a user can run from the desktop to run or schedule jobs on FME server.

feature Address Point creation as it appears in FME Workbench.

“These scripts also control other tasks in the process, such ArcGIS scripts, and or SSIS (SQL server Integration Services), running T-SQL queries etc. These can draw in non-spatial data – for example, from the property system or asset management, even CAD, Excel spreadsheets, or an Access database – and then ‘spatialise’ it, input it into arcSDE, and put that on the internal or external map browser at maps.melbourne.vic.gov.au.”

Spatial data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) tasks are still designed on the desktop in FME Workbench, but are now sent to FME Server for processing. By offloading the heavy spatial tasks to a server, it not only prevents licences from being unnecessarily ‘locked-up’ while tasks complete, but the better hardware and more efficient design of the server achieves the same tasks in less time, while simultaneously keeping the desktop machine free for other day-to-day work.

“We currently have licenses for three engines in FME Server, so we can run three jobs at once. If all three are taken, you can have it run automatically when one finishes, or schedule it for a chosen time. The user then receives an email notification and log file when the job has completed.”

“We can also run the engine on different servers – it’s very easy to move, so if there is a complex task, they can offload it to a different server to free up the resources. We have both 32 bit and 64 bit versions – ArcGIS (also installed on the server) requires 32 bit, but some extra performance can be realised with the 64bit version if ArcGIS isn’t needed for the job.

Property Information generated by FME server, as it appears in the City of Melbourne’`s internal map browser.

FME Server can generate ‘Sketchup’ models from the citiy’s 3D model.

Either way, the processing is much faster than on the desktop machines.”

Using the updating of the Address Points database as an example, the process that used to take four hours now completes in less than three minutes. It runs on a regular, scheduled basis, but can be run on-demand if there is a need to push out an important change.

“Without FME Desktop or Server, we would probably still be running the 4-hour/4-week cycle,” said Rudy.

The list of improvements to data currency, thanks to automating workflows, is extensive.

“Property data was updated every three or four months, as the manual process took a lot of time,” said Rudy. “Now it’s done every two weeks, because it’s fully automated. Similarly, address points were

32 position June/July 2014

once run fortnightly, but now it’s nightly.

“Things that took about eight hours to run now take ten minutes. Tasks can now run parallel, so we can run Sequel Server and FME at the same time. We can also now do incremental updates – the workflow figures out what has changed, and uploads only those parts, saving further time.”

However, it’s not just time-saving measures that an automated workflow helps realise - it also helps with quality assurance (QA).

“We now run automated quality control reports. There’s two ways we do this: there’s nightly scheduled jobs, and there’s others that run updates every 15 minutes. The scripts are written so that errors never make their way to the presentation database.

The benefits of automation at City of Melbourne are twofold: data currency has improved, as it’s now published more often; as has data quality, as scheduled QA checks make sure that errors never make it to production.

“Automation has reduced out-of-date data, as there is no longer the need to wait for somebody to manually undertake a maintenance task. Further, the FME Server scripts are designed and tested to meet our business objectives, resulting in the same expected output every day.

“Tasks we did previously are now so much faster and are 100% current, plus now we can do things we couldn’t even imagine attempting before.” ■

Get Connected

Spectra Precision SP80 GNSS Receiver The Most Connected GNSS Receiver Have you always dreamed about complete connectivity, advanced communications, total security and increased productivity? Then, the SP80 GNSS receiver is your answer.

Features n n n n n n n n

New 240-channel 6G ASIC Z-Blade GNSS-centric 3.5G cellular modem Internal TRx UHF radio Built-in WiFi communication SMS and e-mail alerts Anti-theft protection Hot-swappable batteries

The Spectra Precision SP80 is the most connected GNSS receiver in the industry. It is the first to offer a unique combination of integrated 3.5G cellular, Wi-Fi and UHF communications with SMS, email and anti-theft features. SP80 provides the next generation 6G chipset which tracks signals from all available GNSS systems and is empowered with cutting-edge Z-Blade GNSS-centric technology. The ultra-rugged and ergonomic design and unlimited operating time with hot-swappable batteries make the SP80 an extremely versatile, turnkey solution.

Powerful and innovative, the SP80 is a particularly well equipped and complete GNSS solution for professional surveyors.

SP80: Simply Powerful

AMERICAS

EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

ASIA-PACIFIC

Spectra Precision Division 10368 Westmoor Drive Westminster, CO 80021, USA

Spectra Precision Division Rue Thomas Edison ZAC de la Fleuriaye - CS 60433 44474 Carquefou (Nantes), France

Spectra Precision Division 80 Marine Parade Road #22-06, Parkway Parade Singapore 449269, Singapore

+33 (0)2 28 09 38 00 Phone

+65-6348-2212 Phone

+1-720-587-4700 Phone 888-477-7516 (Toll Free in USA) www.spectraprecision.com

Š2014, Trimble Navigation Limited. All rights reserved. Trimble, the Globe & Triangle logo and Spectra Precision are trademarks of Trimble Navigation Limited, registered in the United States Patent and Trademark office and in other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

feature

Scanning offshore drilling platforms JAMES SANDERSON

I

n late 2013 and early 2014, Land Surveys was engaged by an Australian engineering and services company specialising in offshore operations, to provide a 3D ‘AsBuilt’ model of a MODU (mobile offshore drilling unit) stationed in Singapore.

The scope of works was to provide a complete point-cloud dataset and 3D CAD model, to an accuracy of better than +/5mm to assist in refurbishment and design of interface equipment fabrication and equipment location planning on the MODU. Intricate components and hard-toaccess areas of the MODU, such as the moonpool substructure, drill floor and the derrick needed to be captured in great detail. The end result was a working 3D CAD model of these areas, enabling the client to position equipment, rotate and translate individual elements and provide clash detection, all from within a desktop CAD environment.

Careful planning was required in order to carry out the fieldwork, as the MODU was only scheduled to be docked for refurbishment and maintenance for a period of six days. A project of this scale and level of detail could normally be expected to take in the order of 7-10 days, so execution of fieldwork tasks needed to be perfect to remain on the projects critical path. A three-man survey crew, comprising two HDS scanning units and the Leica MS50 Multi-station, were mobilised from the Land Surveys Perth Headquarters to Singapore, where the MODU was at dock.

On with the job

The derrick from the helideck.

34 position June/July 2014

From there it was straight to work for the surveyors, undertaking a thorough HSE induction and survey reconnaissance of the work area and liaising with MODU staff and the barge master. Extensive fabrication and refurbishment operations were being undertaken at the time of the project, with the deck cranes constantly lifting equipment onto and off the main deck areas. Precision planning and communication with all stakeholders was needed to ensure access to all areas was available for the survey to be completed.

It was essential that this was achieved with minimal disruption to the refurbishment operations of the MODU.

The rig rendered.

Environmental conditions inherent to a floating structure presented unique challenges to the survey team. The constant movement of the floating structure due to waves, wind and tides introduced a range of instrument stability issues where normal survey procedure could not be implemented. Each instrument setup was effectively on its own XYZ coordinate system and the work plane perpendicular to the superstructure, rather the earth’s plumbline. Placement and geometry of dimensional control to enable accurate registration of scan data was therefore critical. A minimum of five points were required to be common between sequential setup and scan areas. It was not only the continuous rolling of the structure with the ocean that caused challenges for our surveyors, they also had to contend with the constant and harmonic vibration of the huge diesel generators powering the MODU and resonating through the platform and the instruments.

These vibrations made sighting accurately to control targets through the telescope nearly impossible. So by using the Leica MS50 Multi-station’s telescope camera, surveyors were able to pinpoint the control targets through the live imaging display, and the zoom and autofocus made it possible to average out the vibrations and accurately read to the control targets.

Surveyors on the project found the ability to link photographs to specific control points added a layer of useful and essential documentation when processing and adjusting large volumes of control data. The processing team found this functionality particularly helpful during the registration process.

The client’s requirement to capture the 65m-high derrick and drill floor structures posed a number of issues to the team. Due to the continuous operation of MODU, access to certain

areas was given to the surveyors in piecemeal fashion and within tight windows of opportunity to complete the required scans. With these limitations in mind, the team needed to be clear, concise and targeted in its approach to each area, and needed to be able to scan different components, at different levels of detail, and verify the completeness of each scan after each setup.

The MS50’s functionality allowed different areas and components of interest to be defined and windowed on the controller screen, and by selecting the appropriate scan mode, the resolution of the data was able to be controlled at different distances from the Multi-station setup. For example, the top of the derrick at a longer distance versus the drill floor deck at a closer distance, were able to be scanned at the appropriate resolution to reduce noise and improve the integrity of the point cloud.

Two Leica MS50 Multi-station scans of the MODU.

With only one chance to acquire the data, it was a constant race against the clock to complete each scan. Based on known setup routines in the MS50 Multistation (common to conventional total station instrumentation), the point clouds produced in each scan were able to be automatically referenced to the MODU coordinate system. Completed scans were then able to be viewed and verified onscreen for completeness in the field and prior to moving to the next scan station.

This functionality and visualisation was vital to be able to capture data critical to the project within tight time frames, and eliminated the risk of costly re-visits.

Over the course of the six-day project, over 150 scans were completed using the HDS units and Multi-station. Registration of the scans delivered a complete homogeneous 3D point cloud, which subsequently allowed low, medium and high-level modelling of componentry as required. In addition, the 3D Tru-View panoramic visualisation provided by the data will continue to be a valuable tool for the MODU operator in managing inspection, maintenance, repair and upgrading of the MODU into the future.

Having a Multi-station at its disposal allowed the team to provide unquestionable efficiency to the workflow, and the ability to establish control and scan critical areas in the same operation.

Under some of the most challenging conditions, by utilising the equipment to its full extent, the team was able to deliver a project of the highest quality within a timeframe that would not have been possible using a conventional total station and scanning equipment.

James Sanderson is the Victorian branch manager of Land Surveys. ■ www.spatialsource.com.au 35

feature

Satellites and the MH370 mystery JON FAIRALL

T

he disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 has illuminated the limitations of satellite remote sensing and its ability to capture dynamic events. It has also drawn attention to the hostility to the deep oceans of human beings and their concerns. It’s a pity the results have not been better, but not surprising.

Briefly to recap: the Malaysian airlines flight took off from Kuala Lumpur International at 41 minutes past midnight Malaysian Standard Time on 8 March 2014. At 01:19, KL Radar sent a routine command to the aircraft to hand control of the flight to air traffic controllers in Vietnam. Someone on the flight deck responded, but no one ever reset the radio to contact Ho Chi Minh control.

Instead, the plane turned sharply left and headed west across Peninsula Malaysia, descending at the same time, which made radar contact more difficult.

Even so, military radars in Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam tracked at least part of the plane’s journey out into the Andaman Sea. So far, no one has been able to shed light on what happened on the flight deck, either then or later.

MH370 was equipped with a number of electronic systems that should have made tracking it easy. It had a transponder, a device that works with the air traffic control surveillance radar to send identifying information about the plane back to the ground.

The aircraft was also equipped with an Automatic Dependent SurveillanceBroadcast system. ADS-B broadcasts the aircraft’s position to other aircraft as an anti-collision measure.

Both the transponder and the ADS-B were switched off at 01:22, moments after the plane began to deviate from its planned route.

The Malaysians began organising a response that day around the area in the Gulf of Thailand where transponder contact was lost.

The Chinese State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence reported that satellites had found debris in the sea in the Gulf of Thailand on 9 March.

36 position June/July 2014

A constellation of satellites They were by no means the only player in the game. NASA also reported that its Terra satellite had seen oil and debris in the Gulf on 9 March.

On 10 March DigitalGlobe, a commercial operator of satellites in the US, confirmed that two of its satellites had taken images of the Gulf of Thailand during the preceding two days, and invited members of the public to check the imagery via its Tomnod Crowd Sourcing project.

Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, reported that it had used its Resurs-P1 and Canopus-1 spacecraft to search in both the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, with no results .

Skybox Imaging in the US also tasked its new Skybox-1 video satellite to look for wreckage.

The exercise confirmed that there is a lot of junk floating in the Gulf of Thailand; it did not find any trace of the aircraft however.

Malaysian search authorities were evidently not informed that day, or the next, that evidence existed that the plane had remained in the air long after controllers lost the transponder signal.

Perhaps sensing the way matters were heading, the next day, China invoked the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters. This is an international agreement under which member states supply images from their satellites to disaster organisations without fees or security restrictions .

The move resulted in most of the world’s space-faring nations using their satellites to search the ocean.

Shortcomings of satellites Unfortunately, satellite imaging is not an ideal tool for this type of work. For a start, satellites are locked into their orbits. They can’t be shifted to look at a particular point on the surface of the Earth whenever it’s convenient. However, the orbit is usually arranged so that the satellite visits every part of the globe over a certain time frame, called the revisit time.

The WorldView-2 satellite has a revisit time of 1.1 days . But this is exceptional.

Most others revisit perhaps once every few weeks.

A second problem is interpreting the images. This is a task that lends itself to automation, provided one can specify clear parameters for the target. If one wants to identify rooftops, for instance, it’s a relatively straightforward proposition.

If you don’t know what you are looking for until you see it, as is the case when looking for the wreckage of an aircraft, each image requires human intervention.

Another problem with remote sensing satellites in general is that they are switched off most of the time. The satellite requires electrical power to

operate its camera, store the image and send it back to the ground. This power is provided by a battery, which is charged by a solar panel. The solar panels are only in sunlight for half of an orbit and they have to be built to be as small and light as possible.

Thus, the power requirements of the satellite have to be balanced against the desirability of the image. Few people have an interest in endless shots of the world’s oceans, so mostly, when satellites are over the sea, their cameras are shut down. To acquire imagery over the oceans, operators need to be told where to look.

A week after the plane hit the sea, that bit of information was still not available.

The best guess as to the fate of the plane came from the other side of the globe. In London, Inmarsat engineers had been looking at the problem.

Whilst aircraft normally converse with air traffic control using voice communications on VHF radio, the

range of reliable communications is limited. Also, in parts of the world where the air lanes are busy, voice communications can be too slow.

To solve these problems, pilots resort to a text messaging system called the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System. ACARS can be carried over VHF, but it is more normal to use Inmarsat satellite links, which have worldwide reach.

9M-MRO, the Boeing 777 that operated the flight that night, was equipped with a stripped down version of ACARS, which only fed information to the manufacturers of its Rolls Royce Trent jet engines. The ACARS signal was carried by an Inmarsat Classic Aero device that was bolted to the fuselage of the aircraft during manufacture. On the trip over the Gulf of Thailand, the Classic Aero signal was routed to the UK via Inmarsat 3F1, a geostationary satellite located at 64.5 East.

The Inmarsat system is arranged so that every hour a short message, or ping,

is generated to test the data path. In the normal course of events, after the ping, any queued ACARS message is also sent.

Rolls Royce received two valid messages from MRO before 01:19. Some time after that, the ACARS system became nonoperational. We know that because no further messages were sent from the engines.

However, Inmarsat continued to receive pings from the Classic Aero box until 08:11. Sometime after that, it stopped working. It was the first unambiguous indication that the aircraft had not gone down in the Gulf of Thailand.

Meanwhile, Inmarsat confirmed that it had been reworking the pings it received from its box on the plane. According to a report in the Washington Post, the British company had started work on 9 March, but it was only ready to communicate that information to Malaysian authorities on 12 March.

A ping is just a short sine wave burst that is received on board the aircraft, turned around, and sent back. The time it

Operators aboard ADF Ocean Shield move U.S. Navy’s Bluefin-21 into position for deployment, April 14. Using side-scan sonar, the Bluefin will descend to a depth of between 4,000 and 4,500 meters, approximately 35 meters above the ocean floor. It will spend up to 16 hours at this depth collecting data, before potentially moving to other likely search areas. Joint Task Force 658 is currently supporting Operation Southern Indian Ocean, searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. US Navy photo via Wikimedia.

www.spatialsource.com.au 37

feature File photo of the missing Boeing 777 aircraft, 9M-MRO. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia.

takes for the burst to be processed and sent back is used to measure the performance of the system. It’s a traditional method of testing that a communications channel is working to specification.

The insight at Inmarsat was to realise that, if one already knows how the system is performing, one can use the time delay to measure the distance the signal has to travel.

Inmarsat engineers were able to exploit the fact that they already had two pings from the jet when its position was known.

By comparing later pings with those earlier ones, they were able to make a stab at its later position.

This involves some heroic engineering.

The electromagnetic signals between the satellite and the aircraft travel at the speed of light; roughly speaking, it takes about 120 milliseconds to make the trip, but that is mostly made up of the time taken to travel the 36,000km from the Earth’s surface to the satellite, not the distance from the zenith point to the location of the aircraft.

In fact, elementary trigonometry shows that increasing the distance by a kilometre across the Earth’s surface increases the travel time by about 4 parts in ten thousand.

Nevertheless, using this technique, Inmarsat was able to put the aircraft somewhere on the circumference of a circle. Combining this information with some idea about how fast the aircraft was going and how long its fuel would last led to two search areas. One was around the village of Lugovoy, where the borders of Kazakhstan, Krygyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan jostle.

Although this possibility entertained the media for a while, the idea that a big jet

38 position June/July 2014

could enter such contested airspace without being noticed was never taken seriously.

That left the other alternative: somewhere around 45 South, 90 East. The closest land: Kerguelen, a wind-blasted French research station in the middle of the southern Indian Ocean. The closest practical search facility was RAAF Pearce, 2,500 km to the north east.

This information was later revised some 1,000 km northward. It was still 1,500 km from the Western Australian coastline.

On the 25 March, Inmarsat confirmed that a refined analysis using Doppler shifts in the frequency of the signal returns from the aircraft, as well as comparison of the signal from MH370 with the signal from other aircraft in the area, showed it had indeed been heading south, not north.

A shift of attention With some credible evidence on the location of the wreck site, attention shifted to the capability of satellites to detect possible wreckage.

China operates the world’s largest satellite fleet. Nevertheless, only four Chinese satellites are known that could detect parts of an airliner floating in the ocean. Gaofen-1 has a camera with metre ground resolution. There are at least three military satellites in the Yaogan military class with optical sensors that might do better than this. The Chinese also possess several radar satellites.

DigitalGlobe in Colorado has six satellites in orbit, all of which have resolution as good as Gaofen-1. However, only one of these, Worldview-2m was in the right

place during the right time interval to detect debris in the search area.

On 23 March, the French reported that a radar satellite had detected debris some 500 km north of the search area. Although unconfirmed by French sources, this was probably a reference to either TerraSAR-X or Tandem-X. Both satellites are known to be able to detect objects as small as a metre across. They are operated by a French-German consortium.

Both Thai and Japanese satellites also joined the hunt. The GeoInformation and Space Technology Development Agency in Bangkok reported that its Theos-1 satellite had found a debris field close to the search area.

The Cabinet Satellite Intelligence Centre in Japan released images of a separate debris field detected by an unnamed military satellite. Although Japan was an early user of Earth imaging satellites, following the North Korean missile tests in 1998, it has concentrated on a series of military satellites. The latest, Information Gathering Satellite-5, is believed to carry an optical sensor that can see objects that are less than half a metre across. The Japanese also have access to IGS-4, which carries a radar that can spot objects one metre across.

The Australian Maritime Safety Agency, which had overall control of the search, said it had obtained imagery from the Australian Geo-spatial Intelligence Organisation. Presumably this is imagery from US military satellites, some of which have a resolution close to the Raleigh criterion, the theoretical maximum limit set by the physics of its optical system.

For a spacecraft in low Earth orbit, with an optical system about the same as that of the Hubble Space Telescope, this is about 10 cm. However, none of this classified imagery appears to have motivated the changing search patterns.

By the beginning of April, satellite evidence was starting to become irrelevant to the search, as indeed were aerial operations. The satellite search was motivated by a desire to find wreckage and then, by making allowance for wind and tide, to backtrack from a piece of wreckage Here to a crash There.

But the Southern Indian Ocean does not work like that. The currents are a chaos in motion. An analysis by Eric van Sebile, an oceanographer at University of New South Wales who has studied the chaotic nature of currents in the search

area, suggests the debris will be spread widely. After a month, the uncertainty would be hundreds of kilometres. His analysis suggests that in a year, the wreckage could be anywhere between Sumatra and New Zealand.

That is by no means the end of the matter, however. In 1960, a Fokker F-27 operating Trans Australia Airlines flight 538 crashed on approach to Mackay. The commission of enquiry could find no cause for the crash, and recommended that all passenger aircraft be fitted with Flight Data Recorders. FDR were mandated on Australian aircraft soon afterward. Other countries followed suit.

FDR had been developed three years before by David Warren at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation in Adelaide. They track the state of the aircraft prior to a crash.

In modern aircraft, the FDR is fitted with an acoustic pinger, which transmits a signal at 37.5kHz. In theory, it should be a simple matter to locate the aircraft remains under the water. Most naval vessels are fitted with a sonar that can pick up its transmissions.

In practice, matters are not that simple. The most obvious limitation is that the FDR is powered by a battery that lasts 30 but no longer than 40 days. Speed is of the essence.

The second problem is that sound, like all forms of radiation, will only travel in a straight line if it travels through an homogeneous medium. Insert changes in density, temperature, salinity or pressure, not to mention the irregular topography

of the sea floor, and determining the location of an acoustic signal becomes highly problematic. It can be inaudible a few kilometres away. Equally, the sound can bounce between two refracting layers of sea water and travel hundreds of miles.

Both these factors conspired against the searchers. The search area is remote from sea lanes where ships normally travel, so it took a fortnight for ships to reach the region. When they did, they spent days fruitlessly searching an area thousands of kilometres away from the real search area.

Eventually, on 5 April, the Chinese ship Hai Xun 01, registered a signal. On 5, 6 and 8 April a RAN auxiliary vessel, Ocean Shield, heard four more pings, but 600km to the north. Then, presumably somewhere on the bottom, below 4.5 kilometres of water, the tired batteries gave out.

There was only silence from the deep.

And so the searchers have fallen back on the worst of all possible options: the slow and tedious search of the seabed with high-resolution sonar. Modern sideband sonar can penetrate four kilometres of water and even generate a reasonably accurate measure of depth, but it cannot do it with any great resolution.

To achieve enough resolution to detect aircraft wreckage, the only practical method is to get the sonar system down to a few hundred metres above the sea floor.

The RAN has already had a go with the BlueFin-21, an autonomous underwater vehicle on loan from the Americans.

It’s clearly the wrong solution. Robin Robertson, an oceanographer at the Australian Defence Force Academy, notes

that it cannot go deep enough – it needs to get to within 30 metres of the ocean bottom to work properly, she says. The search team is not entirely to blame for using inappropriate technology. She notes that the surface of Mars is better mapped than Earth’s ocean floor.

Hand over to specialists Geoscience Australia provides a series of maps of the ocean floor at 50 metre centres, but this coverage only extends to 108 East (about 600 km from the coastline). The Australian Bathymetry and Topography grid is a 2009 dataset with 250 metre centres that extends to 92 East.

Both fall short of the search area.

The final state of the search is to give it over to specialists. The nearest analogue we have to the problem now faced by investigators is Air France flight AF 447, which crashed into the Atlantic on 1 July 2009. It took two years for researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in the US to find the plane They used a Remus autonomous underwater vehicle, operating side-scan sonar, to find the debris field in 4,000 metres of water.

Remus can reportedly operate at a depth of 6,000 metres.

The search for MH370 will be more difficult than that for AF 447. The uncertainty over the position it entered the water is greater. The weather is worse.

But the fate of MH 370 is an enigma wrapped up inside a mystery. The will to find it is very strong.

Jon Fairall was the founding editor of Position magazine. ■

digital aerial photography LiDAR laser scanning orthophoto and imagery imagery and data sales topographic mapping GIS services

133 Abbotsford Street PO Box 369 North Melbourne 3051 Victoria, Australia Phone +61 3 9328 3444 Fax +61 3 9326 6476 ps@photomapping.com.au

advanced LiDAR Laser Mapping Technology

www.photomapping.com.au www.spatialsource.com.au 39

feature

Technology in the search for MH370 PAUL GRAD

The Malaysian Airlines’ Boeing 777200 ER that operated the fateful MH370 flight, pictured at an earlier take-off.

40 position June/July 2014

T

he disappearance of a Boeing 777 aircraft from Malaysian Airlines – flight MH370 – with 227 passengers and 12 crew, is all the more baffling and disturbing in the light of the technology available to keep track of aircraft and to communicate with it.

The aircraft was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It last made contact with air traffic control on 8 March.

Shortly afterwards, according to available data, it veered completely off course, turning southwest, toward the southern Indian Ocean, almost opposite to its initial destination.

A huge international effort, unparalleled in aviation history, has been underway, to find the aircraft, or what remains of it. It includes Australian Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft, the Australian HMAS Success, a US Navy Boeing P-8 Poseidon, a Norwegian

merchant ship, two Chinese Ilyushin Il-76, and two Japanese P-3J Orions, and ships from the Royal Thai Navy.

Countries participating in the search also include Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, France, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and Vietnam.

From the information available, it now seems the wreckage may eventually be found in an area about 2,000km southwest of Perth, at a depth of 4,500m.

The countries involved in the search dispatched more than 34 aircraft and 40 ships to the area. Australia has agreed to lead the search, which is now coordinated by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA).

Like all modern airliners, the aircraft – a Boeing 777-200ER (ER stands for extended range) – had two communications systems on board, a transponder (short for transmitter-responder) to communicate with air traffic control via ground radars, and an ACARS (aircraft communications addressing and reporting system). It was also equipped with automatic dependent surveillance – broadcast (ADS-B) technology. Today, about 60% of all passenger aircraft (70% in Europe, 30% in the US) are equipped with an ADS-B transponder, including most Boeing 777 aircraft.

Mysteries on the flight One of the greatest mysteries of MH370 is the fact that all those communications systems – the transponder, the ACARS, and the ADS-B – were switched off, at or shortly after the time of last contact.

This immediately led to the suspicion that the aircraft’s disappearance was a deliberate act, either by the pilots, or hijackers on board.

Also baffling is that the aircraft seems to have evaded all radar in the region, since it was within range of many land-based radars for some time after veering off course. It could avoid radar detection, either by flying in the shadow of another aircraft, or by flying at very low altitude.

Airline crews on flights over the oceans or over remote land areas, report their position using either high-frequency radio or by means of satellite communications.

Their position is quite accurately (within about 10m) determined by satellite navigation and onboard inertial navigation systems (INS).

The transponder, developed during World War 2, is an electronic device that produces a response when it receives a radio-frequency interrogation. It uses secondary surveillance radar (beacon radar).

Primary radar works by passively reflecting a radio signal off an aircraft.

It determines a target’s range and bearing but it cannot determine a target’s elevation reliably. Secondary surveillance radar uses an active transponder (beacon) to transmit a response to an interrogation.

The cockpit instruments of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777.

Ground ACARS units are usually government agencies, such as the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), airline headquarters, or a third party subscription service. The ACARS equipment of the aircraft is linked to that on the ground by the datalink service provider.

The ACARS system on the aircraft sends manual or automated text messages from the aircraft back to base, via the Inmarsat geostationary satellites. It is used to send information about the

“The search for MH370 has also been aided by NASA. Sensors aboard NASA’s Earth orbiting satellites and other sensors on the International Space Station have been looking for signs of the missing jetliner.

Data from NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites have been made available to help find the aircraft.”

Since it relies on ground-based radar, the transponder is useful only within signal range – about 100km distance. It responds to a radar signal, transmitting a message with the aircraft’s identification and location.

A much more sophisticated system is ACARS, which was widely adopted by airlines in the 1980s. The ACARS system was designed by Arinc (Aeronautical Radio, Inc, headquartered in Annapolis, Maryland, US, and now part of Rockwell Collins). It is a digital datalink system for transmission of short messages between aircraft and ground stations via airband radio or satellite.

Before the introduction of datalink in aviation, all communication between an aircraft and ground personnel was performed by the flight crew using voice communication, either VHF or HF voice radios.

ACARS includes a network of radio transceivers on the ground managed by a central site computer, which processes and routes messages.

conditions of various aircraft systems and sensors in real time. ACARS message can be manually initiated by the pilots or ground base, but the system can also send out timed ‘handshakes’ automatically to the satellites. Automated ping messages are used to test an aircraft’s connection with a communications station. If an aircraft ACARS unit has been silent for longer than a preset time interval, for example an hour, the ground station can ping the aircraft (directly or via satellite).

A ping response indicates a healthy ACARS communication.

ACARS on MH370 That’s why people investigating the disappearance of the Malaysian airliner know when the last ACARS ping occurred, but not the exact time when it was switched off.

Perhaps the main contribution to establishing the aircraft’s route after it turned southwest came from Inmarsat.

Inmarsat reported that routine automatic

communications between an Inmarsat satellite and MH370 could be used to determine the aircraft’s possible flight paths. Inmarsat presented its findings to the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) on 24 March, indicating the southern corridor as the most probable flight path.

Inmarsat said a ground station log had recorded six complete handshakes after ACARS stopped sending messages.

Normally it is possible to calculate the range of an aircraft from a satellite, and the time it took for the signal to be sent and received, to trace two arcs of possible positions – a northern and a southern corridor. Inmarsat developed a second technique based on the Doppler Effect, taking into account the speed of the aircraft relative to the satellite and the resulting change in signal frequency.

To double-check its calculations, Inmarsat compared them with data from six other Boeing 777 aircraft flying on the same day in various directions, which resulted in a good match.

The calculations clearly indicated the southern corridor, and it was possible to estimate the position at the time when the last complete handshake occurred.

In the meantime, it transpired that flight MH370 lacked a simple and inexpensive computer system upgrade called Swift, which would have continued to send flight data by satellite even after all aircraft communications systems – transponder, ACARS, and ADS-B – had been switched off.

A similar computer upgrade helped find an Air France airliner, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009. Data provided by the upgrade allowed investigators to quickly narrow their search area.

Still another question being asked is why there were apparently no calls by passengers on cell phones.

As far as investigators were able to determine, there were no phone calls, Twitter or Weibo postings, or any other communication from anyone on board the aircraft once it diverted. www.spatialsource.com.au 41

feature Apart from the transponder for communication with secondary surveillance radars and ACARS, the most modern communication system on the aircraft was the automatic dependent surveillance – broadcast (ADS-B) system. This is a cooperative surveillance technology for tracking aircraft.

The aircraft determines its own position via GNSS – either GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, or multilateration – and periodically broadcasts this via a radio frequency.

Multilateration is a navigation technique based on measuring the difference in distance to two stations at known locations that broadcast signals at known times. The possible locations are plotted, forming a hyperbolic curve. Multilateration relies on multiple measurements.

Subsequent measurements provide a diminishing number of possible locations.

ADS-B is one of the technologies selected by the US’ FAA as part of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) and the European CASCADE program.

It relies on two avionics components: a high-integrity GPS navigation source and a datalink (ADS-B unit). The most common datalink operates at 1090MHz, or at 978MHz.

Part Time Casual Teacher Surveying / Spatial Information Services Location: Sydney Institute $75.05 per hour Job Reference No: 00002VIF Applications are invited from suitably qualified and experienced persons who wish to be considered for placement on a suitability list to teach in the above areas within TAFE NSW – Sydney Institute.

To find detailed advert, apply and submit your application, please register and apply at: www.jobs.nsw.gov.au.

Enquiries: Paul Swan, A/Head Teacher Surveying and Spatial Information Services, (02) 9217 5161 or email paul.swan@tafensw.edu.au Closing Date: 25 July 2014

42 position June/July 2014

How ADS-B works.

Below: A Bluefin autonomous submarine.

By 2020, nearly all aircraft operating in US airspace will be required to carry equipment that produces an ADS-B broadcast.

The system will make radar-based air traffic control (ATC) obsolete, moving air navigation to a satellite-based aircraft location system. This will make ADS-B the backbone of the NextGen ATC system coming online in 2020.

Australia is the first country with full, continental ADS-B coverage, though only above 10,000m. There are 57 ground stations.

The search for MH370 has also been aided by NASA. Sensors aboard NASA’s Earth orbiting satellites and other sensors on the International Space Station have been looking for signs of the missing jetliner. Data from NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites have been made available to help find the aircraft.

MH370 has already caused aviation authorities everywhere to undertake to improve the existing technologies for tracking and communicating with aircraft. The fact that all communications aboard the aircraft were switched off has prompted many people involved in aviation to look into the development of systems that cannot be switched off by anybody on board.

The search now is for the wreckage at the bottom of the southern Indian Ocean. The Australian HMAS Ocean Shield launched an underwater vehicle, the Bluefin 21 autonomous submarine, from the US’ Bluefin Robotics Corporation, of Quincy, Massachusetts. The Bluefin can create a sonar threedimensional map of the sea floor to chart any debris there. If it maps out a debris field, the ship’s crew will replace the sonar with a camera to photograph any wreckage found.

A few days ago (as at the time of writing) the Ocean Shield had detected sounds underwater that were consistent with an aircraft’s ‘black boxes’ – the flight data and cockpit voice recorders. The submerged black boxes generate ultrasonic signals at 37.5kHz. Their batteries, however, last only 30 days, and now it is necessary for the Bluefin to actually ‘stumble’ upon the black boxes in the still large search area.

The Bluefin takes about two hours to descend to the depths where the wreckage is expected to be found, and two hours to return. After its return to the surface, it takes about four hours to retrieve and analyse its data. Its operating cycle is about 24 hours.

It will therefore take weeks or even months – if ever – before we finally know the fate of MH370 and the people on board.

Paul Grad is a freelance journalist and regular contributor to Position magazine. ■

SPATIAL JOBS Find your next role at jobs.spatialsource.com.au

Powered by

Sign up to our jobmail to receive weekly job updateS

Position magazine, www.spatialsource.com.au and www.jobla.com.au are published by The Intermedia Group

www.spatialsource.com.au

Australia and New Zealand’s premier news website for the geospatial, surveying, GIS and mapping community.

Official publication of

Sign up now to receive free news updates

new products Aerial imaging drone

The senseFly eBee Ag UAV, designed for precision agriculture applications, features a range of camera options to suit different applications, from biomass estimation to yield monitoring and leaf area indexing.

It is supplied with a customised Canon S110 NIR, however, customers can also choose a customised S110 RE (red edge) version, a S110 RGB, or the Airinov multiSPEC 4C (offering four distinct bands with no spectral overlap).

The eBee Ag is a fully autonomous drone: users simply select the area they want to map (using the supplied eMotion 2 software), launch the drone by throwing it into the air, and the eBee flies, acquires images, and lands all by itself.

The eBee Ag is supplied with eMotion 2 for flight planning and control, and Postflight Terra 3D

Inertial navigation system

photogrammetry software for post-flight image processing and analysis. Postflight Terra 3D can be used to produce false-colour orthomosaics and 3D models, and allows users to select a band, calculate NDVI, or input custom formulae, in order to create the exact maps they require.

With its maximum flight time of 45 minutes, the UAV is claimed to be able to photograph areas of up to 1,000 ha in a single flight. Its default 12MP NIR camera is capable of shooting aerial imagery at down to 2cm/pixel.

These images, when transformed into false-colour orthomosaics, maintain an accuracy of down to 3cm.

The eBee Ag is now available to order via senseFly’s network of approved resellers see www.senseFly. com/about/where-to-buy.html.

Data collection tablet The Leica Zeno CS25 plus and CS25 GNSS plus are durable 7� tablet computers for GIS data collection.

The CS25 plus weighs 1.3 kilograms and has a 7-inch widescreen touch display. It is said to be of excellent visibility in outdoor conditions, even in direct sunlight. It also meets MIL-STD 810G military standards for withstanding humidity, vibrations, drops and extreme temperatures and, with an IP65 rating, keeps dust and water out as well.

The upgraded 5 megapixel camera offers better image resolution for added asset images. The new Leica Zeno CS25 plus tablet keeps the durable look and ease of the previous device, but is claimed to have become a much more powerful device.

The CS25 plus and CS25 GNSS plus are available now from all authorised Leica Geosystems representatives.

Further information is available at www.leica-geosystems.com/zeno.

Advanced Navigation has released the second-generation hardware of its Spatial FOG GPS aided inertial navigation system.

The update includes a major packaging change that more tightly integrates the fibre optic gyroscopes with the GNSS and INS. This is claimed to provide a significant reduction in power consumption and heat generation, as well as requiring only a single connector.

The update also incorporates a new GNSS receiver, which adds support for L5 GPS signals as well as the Chinese BeiDou B1 and B2 satellite signals.

Together with the updated hardware, version 2.0 of the Spatial FOG firmware has been released, which features significant enhancements to the north-seeking algorithm. This allows Spatial FOG to accurately align under conditions that may not have been possible previously.

The updated version 2.0 hardware remains fully backwards compatible with version 1.0, featuring the same mounting footprint, electrical connections and protocol. For existing customers, Spatial FOG version 1.0 will remain available until 2019.

For more information contact Vito Guarrera at Advanced Navigation on +61 2 9099 3800 or email vito.guarrera@advancednavigation.com.au, or visit www.advancednavigation.com.au. www.spatialsource.com.au 45

sssi news

CEO Report – Roger Buckley SSSI Board of Directors 2013-2014 President – John Trinder Treasurer – Jonathan Saxon Director – Bernard O’Sullivan Director – Gypsy Bhalla Director – Chis McAlister Director – Danielle Beaudreau Company Secretary – James Curnow Company Secretary/CEO – Roger Buckley Consultative Council for 2013-2014 President – John Trinder Treasurer – Jonathan Saxon NT Rep – Renee Bartolo QLD Rep – Chris McAlister WA Rep – Kerry Smyth

A

s the end of the financial years approaches, we can reflect on everything that has happened over the course of the year within SSSI and look to the future.

The SSSI National Headquarters is pleased to announce the introduction of the new Online CPD Module ‘eCPD’ that can be found on the SSSI website.

This system will assist you in gaining your required CPD points via watching online videos and completing a series of questions. It is my belief that this new program will allow all members to keep up with their CPD requirements, as well gain insightful information from seminars and workshops that you as a member may be unable to physically attend. The benefit of this program will enable you as a member to be able to watch and re-watch content on demand. Over the coming months, content from SSSI events will be continually added for all members to access. If you have any suggestions for content, please don’t hesitate to contact a SSSI staff member to discuss.

NSW Rep – Greg Goodman NZ Rep – Chris Weir VIC Rep – Zaffar Mohamed-Ghouse SA Rep – Gary Maguire TAS Rep – Darren Llewellyn ACT Rep – Greg Ledwidge RS&P Rep – Craig Smith HC Rep – Simon Ironside SIC Rep – Penny Baldock LS Rep – Phil Pozzi EMS Rep – Bernard O’Sullivan YP Reps – Danielle Beaudreau and Matthew Fry Company Secretary – James Curnow CEO/Company Secretary – Roger Buckley

46 position June/July 2014

Top Left: Roger Buckley (SSSI CEO), John Trinder (SSSI President), Hon. Malcom Turnbull (Minister of Communications), Hon. Maurice Williamson (New Zealand Minister for Land Information), Maurits Van Der Vlug (Vice Chairman of SIBA), Kellie Ireland (SIBA General Manager).

Additionally, over the coming months we will be launching the ‘Benefits Collective’ program that will enable members to gain a discounts at a range of leisure, food, travel and professional service outlets.

This program will be available with your 2014/2015 membership, in which you will be sent both a SSSI Membership Card and Benefits Collective website login that will allow you to access discounts on the site.

In April, we had the inaugural Locate14 Conference that was an amalgamation of the Spatial@Gov, and SSSC National Conferences. This year’s interim conference was a build-up to the fully scoped Locate15 for next year that will be held in Brisbane from 10-13 March 2015.

Locate14 was a huge success with a sell-out of exhibitors demonstrating the advancements within the spatial fields.

The conference had over 450 attendees that included many SSSI members and other spatial professionals. There were numerous informative seminars and streams that ranged from Surveying Bands with State and Territory Surveyor Generals to Spatial Data for the non-Spatial. As well as

SSSI sustaining partners

Above: Van Der Vlug ( Vice Chairman of SIBA), Helen Owens (General Manager, Office of Spatial Policy, Department of Industry), John Trinder (SSSI President).

Below: SSSI President John Trinder and Johnathan Saxon.

a keynote speech from the Hon. Malcom Turnbull the Minister for Communications and the Hon. Maurice Williamson the Minister for Land Information of the New Zealand Government, who presented a presentation about the New Zealand spatial industry.

❖ UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT: Jake Buswell ❖ POSTGRADUATE STUDENT: Xin Lui ❖ EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Glen Campbell ❖ YOUNG PROFESSIONAL OF THE YEAR: Nathan Eaton ❖ PROFESSIONAL OF THE YEAR: Linda Morgan ❖ HELEN OWENS was the worthy winner of the SSSI President’s Award for her valuable work and efforts within the spatial industry.

I would also like to congratulate Johnathan Saxon on being awarded an Honorary Fellowship Award. I couldn’t pick a better person to receive

“Locate14 was a huge success with a sell-out of exhibitors demonstrating the advancements within the spatial fields. The conference had over 450 attendees that included many SSSI members and other spatial professionals.”

Additionally, keynotes from Christ Tucker, creator, Map Story, USA, and Brett Bundock, ESRI Australia, were extremely informative for everyone within the spatial community, as well as an inspiring closing speech in leadership from Rachel Robertson, a former antarctic expedition leader. I believe I can quite easily say that I personally took a lot away from the presentations at the conference.

Part of the Locate14 Conference was the Annual 2013 APSEA GALA Awards dinner that acknowledged contributions that both organisations and individuals have made to the spatial science industry during 2013. The night highlighted the many achievements that both the winners and nominees have achieved within their respective fields. I would like to acknowledge and commend the following individual winners for their excellence:

the award as he has been a part of all aspects of the institute as a president, board member, treasurer, as well as a valued contributor to the surveying and spatial community.

A quick reminder that this year’s QCON, incorporating the 17th ARSPC, will be located from 7-10 October in Cairns, the gateway to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and rainforests. I recommend all members attend this event if they are able to.

In signing off, I would like to encourage all members to promote the institute and actively encourage your colleagues to join the SSSI, and I would like to thank you for your continued membership and contribution to this exciting industry.

SSSI Commission Chairs for 2013-2014 Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry Commission Chair Craig Smith chair.rspc@sssi.org.au Land Surveying Commission Chair Phil Pozzi chair.lsc@sssi.org.au Hydrography Commission Chair Simon Ironside chair.hc@sssi.org.au Spatial Information & Cartography Commission Chair Penny Baldock chair.sicc@sssi.org.au Engineering & Mining Surveying Commission Chair Bernard O’Sullivan Chair.emsc@sssi.org.au

SSSI Regional Chairs 2013-4 New South Wales Regional Chair Gaby Van Wyk chair.nsw@sssi.org.au ACT Regional Chair Greg Ledwidge chair.act@sssi.org.au Northern Territory Regional Chair Renee Bartolo chair.nt@sssi.org.au New Zealand Regional Chair Chris Weir chair.nz@sssi.org.au Victoria Regional Chair Zaffar Mohamed-Ghouse chair.vic@sssi.org.au Queensland Regional Chair Chris McAlister chair.qld@sssi.org.au South Australia Regional Chair Gary Maguire chair.sa@sssi.org.au Western Australia Regional Chair Kerry Smyth reo.wa@sssi.org.au Tasmania: Regional Chair Darren Llewellyn chair.tas@sssi.org.au SSSI National Office 27-29 Napier Cl, Deakin, ACT 2600 (PO Box 307) Phone: +61 2 6282 2282 Email: support@sssi.org.au

Roger Buckley SSSI CEO www.spatialsource.com.au 47

sssi news Spatial Information and Cartography Commission Update

JESSICA DAVIES The Spatial Information and Cartography Commission (SI&C) has been working hard on a number of activities over the past few months. Firstly, during the Locate14 Conference the SI&C presented the first Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) Masterclass. AURIN is an initiative funded by the Australian Government Super Science scheme that provides built-environment and urban researchers, designers, and planners with infrastructure to facilitate access to a distributed network of aggregated datasets and information services.

The first AURIN Masterclass, held on 7 April, gave those in attendance the skills necessary to access information within the AURIN portal, using their own personal computers. The AURIN Portal includes access to over 600 datasets

directly, and allows for secure access through federated servers across Australia that include Geoscience Australia, the ABS and PSMA. The last few months also saw the Cartography and Map Design Workshops held in Queensland and South Australia.

These workshops covered areas including mapping fundamentals, such as coordinate systems, the cartographic process, map data, projections and datums, as well as a series of group exercises and quizzes to test all the attendees’ knowledge on how to make a map.

Over the upcoming months we have a few events of interest that include an Open Source Workshop being held in Queensland. This workshop will be presented by Shaun Kolomeitz and will include topics ranging from the ‘Pillars of Openness’ (data, standards an software), the pros and cons of open source data, free data, getting data, exploring data and creating maps, as well exploring the GIS desktop tool QGIS. For those further south,Victoria’s Emerging Technologies Workshop in Victoria will focus on giving practical skills in how to start using emerging technology within the spatial industry, with the pre-

senters showing attendees what tools are required and how easy it is to get started.

And finally, a State of Play Series event will be held in South Australia.

Besides running multiple events over the past few months, the SI&C committee has been working on developing an operational plan. Key tasks includepromoting GISP-AP and planning to establish SI&C as the approving body for migration assessments.

I would like to congratulate Alan Hobson on being appointed as the SI&C Vice Chair, and also congratulate the following newly accredited GISP-AP: Stephen Clague, Jimaima Le Grand, and Mary Lewitzka.

In closing, I would like to thank everyone for attending the AURIN Masterclass in Canberra, as it was great to see the enthusiasm and interest in this event. As well, the Secretary of the Department for Communications, Drew Clarke, announced that the administration boundaries theme (covering jurisdictional, statistical, electoral and maritime boundary datasets) from the Foundation Spatial Data Framework (FSDF) would be made available to freely download on www.data.gov.au for a 12 month trial.

RMIT University helps secondary students experience surveying

THIERRY DEMATHIEU During the recent school holidays, RMIT University ran its 3rd Experience Surveying Day at Yarra Bend Park for students contemplating a career in surveying.

In conjunction with the Surveying Task Force, RMIT has provided secondary and mature age students the opportunity to have a real-life experience doing surveying tasks each year since 2012.

Invitations are sent to the Surveying Task Force’ database of students who have registered for more information about surveying. Career advisors are also informed of the event so they can invite students with a potential interest in surveying.

This year a mix of Year 10-12 students from across Victoria attended the event.

They were shown how to set up a tripod, take basic angle and height measurements, and test how a robotic total station

48 position June/July 2014

works independently to measure distances.

Attendees also used Liscad to determine differences in height and process data.

RMIT University - School of Vocational Engineering teaching staff mentored the participants primarily at this event, however, in previous years, licensed surveyors have also volunteered their time to support the event.

Despite poor weather conditions, student feedback was again extremely positive this year, with one student requesting a work experience placement in surveying at the end of the session.

Students mentioned they enjoyed using the surveying equipment, processing data and having the chance to find out more about working as a surveyor. Some of the comments were: “I really enjoyed going outside, seeing how it all works, and then going back inside and putting it all into the computer.

We got to see what surveying is like...”

“I enjoyed using the total station. We learnt about measuring height, distance, angles and bearings. It was good… it was fun.”

“I liked learning about how surveying works. Normally you just see the people

standing on the side of the road when you are going through road works… it’s good to learn what they are actually doing and how it’s done.”

Marketing activities by the Surveying Task Force, including email and social media campaigns, website promotion and joint events such as the RMIT University Experience Surveying Days, have supported significant growth in RMIT enrolments over the past few years.

By first increasing awareness and interest of surveying in youth, then offering students the opportunity to experience it for themselves, whether through a work experience placement or in the university environment, we can make a long-lasting impact on the career decisions of future students.

To continue to promote surveying as a career of choice, the Surveying Task Force and RMIT University are considering increasing the number of Experience Surveying Days held each year, and are investigating the opportunity to run the event in regional Victoria later in 2014. Volunteers from the profession are encouraged to participate.

SSSI sustaining partners

Australian Earth Observation Community Coordination Group (AEOCCG) – Update

CRAIG SMITH The AEOCCG is a group that provides a coordinating and sharing point for all people using image and spatial data acquired by satellite, airborne or other platforms, for many applications in Australia. We cover research, private industry, government, education, and non-government activities.

This involves people working across all natural and built environments, spanning the Earth’s atmosphere, terrestrial, aquatic, urban and marine environments.

This group was formed to enable all the people who collect and use Earth observation data to have a forum to present and discuss their activities and define their needs for support from industry, academia, and government.

This is not a government-focussed, spatial science special interest group.

The group spans all disciplines and provides an inclusive and collaborative resource to improve access to, and use of, Earth observation data for Australia.

The AEOCCG reports to the Australian Government Earth Observation from Space Working Group (AGEOSWG), as required by Australia’s satellite utilisation policy. See www.aeoccg.org.au.

Following the most recent wholeof-community webinar held on 5 March 2014 (see www.aeoccg.org.au/ activities/aeoccg-meetings for video and documents), the AEOCCG has been active in seeking feedback and information to provide to state and commonwealth agencies tasked with building EO capabilities and maintaining our international links for access to critical EO data streams. The Australian Government’s Earth Observation from Space Working Group, and Critical Infrastructure Resilience Program, needs, and benefits from, the input from the Australian EO community. For the Australian Government Earth Observation from Space Working Group, AEOCCG enabled the compilation of continental coverage for ESA Sentinel 1 data requests to be placed as a ‘whole of Australia’ submission. The Space Community of Interest (CoI) for EO sector is being set up within the Trusted Information Sharing Network (TISN) for Critical Infrastructure

Resilience (www.tisn.gov.au/Pages/default. aspx). The Space CoI is beginning a risk assessment of Australia’s EO data supply and processing.

The activities presented at the last AEOCCG whole-of-community webinar for discussion were: 1. Draft Australian Earth Observation Responsibilities and Security Plan: Review of draft. This was presented to the meeting and comes in two parts: the first part outlines the areas currently covered by the different sectors concerned with EO in Australia, and presents a future options model to reduce possible overlap and duplication. The second part is a modified version of the very rough draft version of Australian Earth Observation Action & Data Security Plan document, developed by Symbios Communications in response to Australia’s Satellite Utilisation Policy, and identified for further development through AEOCCG and AGEOSWG consultations. It is intended this document be developed into an ‘EO Data Risk Assessment’ document and then an ‘EO Data Security Plan’. Both documents will draw together the CEODA Reports on Operational and Research and Development Applications. Feedback has now been received from across AEOCCG for these and will be tabled on the AEOCCG website shortly.

2. Community snapshots. What we need to be thinking about and changing were provided from key contacts in this area: • International EO engagement: Stephen Ward, Symbios Communications.

• Government applications and engagement: Adam Lewis, Geoscience Australia.

• Private industry engagement: Stuart Phinn, University of Queensland.

• Research and education engagement: Alex Held, CSIRO and Stuart Phinn.

3. A set of pre and post webinar questions were also posted, these were: • Can the roles of government, private industry, and NGO and research bodies for EOS be defined?

• What are the roles of government, private industry, NGO, and research bodies for EOS? • What is the most essential aspect of EOS infrastructure for your activities?

• What is the most essential aspect of EOS infrastructure for your activities that is currently at risk?

Results from these questions can be found at www.aeoccg.org.au/images/ Documents/05032014/AEOCCG%20Premeeting%20Survey%2005032014.pdf The next webinar will be in mid-July 2014. Until then we have a lot to do in collecting information across all state and commonwealth levels and privately and establishing how to work more collaboratively. www.spatialsource.com.au 49

sssi news The End of the ‘Grandfather Clause’ The SSSI professional certification ESPAP forms a vital stage in an engineering surveyor’s professional development as it informs other professionals, employers, clients and the general public, that their skills and expertise are recognised at the highest level.

We feel the scheme can We are now approaching the end of the financial year a busy time for all businesses. As chair of the Engineering and Mining Surveying commission, I want to take the opportunity to circulate one last reminder for those who wish to gain certification through the SSSI ESP-AP certification scheme via the long-term practice provision, or ‘grandfather clause’.

You may be aware this provision is to allow professionals within our field acceptance via substantial experience and industry expertise in lieu of academic qualification. The commission had previously extended the offer to gain certification via this method, but sadly it must now end. The expiry date for this certification option is 30 June 2014, so those wanting to apply this way need to do so now.

for the engineering surveying profession which can act as a criterion for inclusion on supplier panels.

• Provide contracting organisations with a reliable and standardised metric when assessing tenders, procurements and contracts.

“The SSSI professional certification ESPAP forms a vital stage in an engineering surveyor’s professional development as it informs other professionals, employers, clients and the general public, that their skills and expertise are recognised at the highest level.”

• Provide independent assessment of the education and experience of your current and potential staff via peer review.

• Provide a guarantee that your staff have an ongoing commitment to keep their skills up to date through Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

• Represent a growing industry standard

ESP-AP certification requires a professional to demonstrate advanced levels of expertise in formal tertiary education, further relevant professional experience and contributions to the profession.

For more information please visit www. sssi.org.au/ESPAP or contact Bernard O’Sullivan chair.emsc@sssi.org.au.

The Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute is the not-for-profit national peak body representing and supporting the largest membership of spatial science and surveying professionals in Australia and New Zealand.

SSSI represents professionals in: Land Surveying, Spatial Information & Cartography, Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry, Hydrographic Surveying, Engineering & Mining Surveying and special interest groups including Women in Spatial and Young Professionals.

JOIN

SSSI TODAY...

Being a member of SSSI will provide you with the platform and support to maximise your skills, knowledge and experience including: • Professional recognition as a member of the Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute; • Over 200+ regular regional and national workshops, seminars and webinars; • Free membership for students, concession rates available for graduates and retired professionals; • Enhance your CPD via access to the internationally recognized certification and SSSI CPD program; • Professional partnership opportunities available.

NEXT

STEP...

PO box 307 Deakin West, ACT 2600

sssi.org.au | +61 2 6282 2282

50 position June/July 2014

The Australasian magazine of surveying, mapping & geo-information

June/July 2014 – No. 71

The Australasian magazine of surveying, mapping & geo-information

Position magazine is the only ANZ-wide independent publication for the Spatial Industries.

Position covers the acquisition, manipulation, application and presentation of geo-data in a wide range of industries including agriculture, disaster management, environmental management, local government, utilities, and land-use planning.

It covers the increasing use of geospatial technologies and analysis in decision-making for businesses and government.

FACILITIES MANAGEMENT

MADE EASY

Technologies addressed include satellite and aerial remote sensing, land and hydrographic surveying, satellite positioning systems, photogrammetry, mobile mapping and GIS. Position contains news, views and applications stories, as well as coverage of the latest technologies that interest professionals working with spatial information.

Official publication of

inside Easy fieldwork Asset inspection in real time

Automate it Manual tasks waste time

subscribe YES! I wish to receive Position magazine WITHIN AUSTRALIA*

$69.00 – 1 YEAR, 6 ISSUES $110.40 – 2 YEARS, 12 ISSUES – SAVE 20% $144.90 – 3 YEARS, 18 ISSUES – SAVE 30% * Prices quoted include GST. All payments must be made payable in Australian Dollars.

INTERPOINT EVENTS ABN 98 105 512 469 PHONE: 1800 651 422 RETURN YOUR SUBSCRIPTION FORM VIA FAX: 02 8580 6312 MAIL: P.O. BOX 55 Glebe NSW 2037 EMAIL: subscriptions@intermedia.com.au WEB: www.intermedia.com.au

Where’s MH370?

The search for the missing aircraft

It is the official magazine of the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute.

PLEASE FIND ENCLOSED MY CHEQUE/MONEY ORDER FOR $_______________ PAYABLE TO INTERPOINT EVENTS OR PLEASE CHARGE MY: MASTERCARD

VISA

AMEX

CARDHOLDER NAME: _________________________________________________ EXPIRY DATE: _____/_____ SIGNATURE: ________________________________ NAME: _______________________________________________________________ JOB TITLE: ____________________________________________________________ COMPANY: ___________________________________________________________ ADDRESS: ____________________________________________________________ SUBURB/TOWN: ____________________________ POSTCODE: _____________ PH: _______________________________ FAX: _____________________________ EMAIL: _______________________________________________________________

Your business, anywhere Learn more

solutions-tour.com

In the past your jobs were mostly limited to your backyard. With Topcon Enterprise Solution, the world is your backyard. Our new cloud-based solution keeps your business connected— your crews, your equipment, your designers, your schedules, even your material volumes.

Topcon Enterprise Solution brings you a new world of opportunity and productivity.

1300 867 266 www.positionpartners.com.au info@positionpartners.com.au