BRS SEMINAR SERIES PRESENTS:

Friday 12 November

“Why is Spatial Special?”

Ian Williamson - University of MelbourneBrian Lees - Australian National University

What is spatial information? How does it assist in better decision-making? In attempting toanswer this question Ian Williamson will bring a land and urban environmental perspective,while Brian Lees will provide a GIS and physical environmental perspective. The conceptof space and geography will be explored from an historical perspective, explaining its roleas fundamental to civilization. The role of spatial information will then be discussed as anenabling infrastructure to better manage our cities and the rural environment in aninformation society. Examples will be discussed showing the critical role that spatialinformation plays in decision-making and policy development.

Bio: Ian Williamson

Professor Ian Williamson AM, FTSE is Professor of Surveying and Land Information,Head, Department of Geomatics and Director, Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructures andLand Administration, The University of Melbourne. Prior to embarking on an academiccareer Ian worked in government and the private sector in Australia and the USA. He hasresearched, consulted and taught in the areas of land administration, spatial datainfrastructures and land information systems for over 30 years. He has undertakenprojects or consulted to The World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, UN agencies andgovernments in Australia and worldwide. He is currently at ANU as a Visiting Fellow andundertaking an independent review of issues concerned with access, use, maintenanceand dissemination of spatial data in DAFF.

Bio: Brian LeesDr Brian Lees is Reader in Geography in the School of Resources, Environment andSociety, The Australian National University. He is the Editor (Asia - Pacific) InternationalJournal of Geographical Information Science. He has had a career as a commissionedofficer in the RAF serving in the Middle East, Europe and Africa and has worked inexploration in the private sector in Australia. He has been teaching and researching in GISrelated areas for about 20 years and has published extensively in this area. He is onnumerous international committees providing leadership in GIS developments andinnovation and has been the recipient of numerous awards including the EminentIndividual Award by the Australian Urban and Regional Information Systems Association.

Why is spatial special?

Brian Lees

and

Ian Williamson

Objective

• Historical perspective (Brian)

• The built environment perspective (Ian)

• The natural resource and technicalperspective (Brian)

• Policy implications for the AustralianGovernment (Ian)

Relationship between the rate of change of orientation and direction preferences inthe primary visual cortex of the cat. Red lines indicate iso-orientation lines alongwhich orientation preference does not change. Dark blue marks regions whereorientation preference changes rapidly. The strongest changes are found at the so-called orientation centres from which iso-orientation lines radiate out in a pinwheel-like fashion. Light blue denotes direction fracture lines across which directionpreference shows 180ƒ reversals. Image size: 2.7 _ 2.1 mm2 of cortex. See Kisvrdayet al., Visual Cortex 636-647.

We think spatially.

Spatial concepts map directlyon to the cortex as topologicallycorrect mappings.

Hunter-gatherer societiesuse topologically correct mappings to communicatespatial information.

Rosie Fleming - NgapaJukurrpa

This painting depicts a waterDreaming. The rain (ngapa) storybelongs to Nampijinpa andNangala women and Jampijinpaand Jangala men. The NgapaJukurrpa travelled from east toMikanji west of Yuendumu. Thestraight lines represents thengawarra (flood waters) runningthrough the landscape. The smallbar shapes signify mangkurdu(clouds). The small circles aremulju (water soakages).

…….AND SO DO WE SOMETIMES.

TOPOLOGICALLY CORRECTDIAGRAMS ARE EASILYUNDERSTOOD BY HUMANS

The earliest map? 6200 BC Ankara, Turkeyexcavation of Çatalhöyük site in Anatolia

BUT, urbanisation and the start of civil society meant that there was a need for spatial information which was less ‘relative’ and more ‘geographic’; less symbolic and more quantitative.

Topologically correct depictions were inadequate for thepurposes of government. Consistent scale and consistentorientation appear by 8,500 years ago to meet the needs ofgovernment .

Who owns what, where is it and how much tax should they pay?

Clay Tablet map from Ga-Sur, 2,500 B.C.Redrawing with interpretation7.6 x 6.8 cm

An ancient property title? In thecentre of this 4,500 year oldoriented and (apparently) to scalemap, a plot of land is specified as354 iku (12 hectares) and theowner is named as Azala.

Property ownership, taxation, defence and facilities management appear to be the main purposes of these artefacts – all government concerns.

Mesopotamian City Plan, Nippur 1500 B.C., showingpart of the defensive city wall and planned repairs. This showsinternal property boundaries precisely, and to scale (in unitsof twelve cubits – six meters). There is emphasis on public structures such as temples, canals, store houses and a park.(Clay tablet 18 x 21 cm)

A modern perspective

Land Information Systems

Overarching PolicyIssues / Initiatives

• shelter• food• water• energy

• public safety• environment• sustainable development

Land Management• agriculture• environment

protection• conservation• biodiversity• catchment management• utilisation

Land Administration• security of tenure / interests• underpin land market• underpin land management

• spatial / textual recordof land interests

• survey• valuation• mapping• planning

Spatial information is the bedrock of gooddecision making and good governance

Spatial information is an enablingtechnology/infrastructure for modern society

SI describes the location of objects in the realworld and the relationships between objects

“Ready and timely access to spatialinformation – knowing where people andassets are – is essential for the creationof wealth in Australia. It is a critical toolfor making informed decisions on keyeconomic, environmental and socialissues”

CRC for Spatial Information

In the states and territories the focus for builtIn the states and territories the focus for builtenvironment data is primarily on land parcelsenvironment data is primarily on land parcels

Source: Land Administration (Peter Dale and John McLaughlin)

Built environmentspatial data isgenerated by thestates and territoriesthrough landadministrationprocesses

Characteristics of builtenvironment spatial data

• Medium to large scale

• Land parcels, properties and road networksare key components

• Address is the key identifier (location)

• Dynamic and high integrity. For example anew street address is created every three (3)minutes in Australia

The managementof overlapping

rights,restrictions and

responsibilities isfundamental to

sustainabledevelopment

Evolution of Land Markets (Wallace and Williamson, 2004)

Development of complex commodities (Wallace and Williamson, 2004)

The evolving complexcommodities market (including

water, marine, biota, carbontrading, resources etc) will play a

critical role in deliveringsustainable development

objectives nationally

Goodinformation

Betterpolicy

Better landadministration Sustainable

development

United Nations-FIG Bathurst Declaration onSustainable Development

Presented in Melbourne, 1999

http://www.fig.net/figtree/pub/figpub/pub21/figpub21.htm

Challenges facing Australianstates and territories

• Integrating natural and built environmental data• Accommodating all RRR relating to land• Designing systems to support complex

commodities in a modern land market• Facilitating a national “integrated” LAS• Establishing a win-win partnership between the

states/territories and the Australian Governmentfor land information

How do we manage/coordinatespatial information nationally?

• Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure (ASDI)

• Australian Spatial Information Council (ANZLIC)

• Public Sector Mapping Agency (PSMA)

• Geoscience Australia (GA)

• Office of Spatial Data Coordination (OSDM)

• National Land and Water Resources Audit

• Other?

Nature of SDI ComponentsNature of SDI Components

PeoplePeople

Access Network

Policy

Standards

DataData

Dynamic

Global SDI

Regional SDI

National SDI

State SDI

Local SDI

Spatial Data Infrastructures

Organisational SDI

Less detailed dataLess detailed data

Global Decisions

Regional Decisions

National Decisions

State Decisions

Local Decisions

More detailed Data

Success depends on cooperation between individuals and agencies

Strategic Planning &Decision Making

Organisational Decisions

The sophistication and utility ofbuilt environment spatial data has

grown dramatically in the lastfew years

Geocoded National Address File (G-NAF)Courtesy PSMA

Mesh Blocksto be testedby ABS for

the 2006Census

Courtesy ABS

The spatial smart tag• Installed on Microsoft Office XP and Office

2003

• Verify property addresses

• Link to post codes, LGAs, maps,administrative and political boundaries,CCD or Mesh Block

• Potential to automatically link people,address and geocode

Examples of the role of spatialinformation in some Commonwealth

Government activities

• Elections

• ABS

• Taxation

• Health

• Counter terrorism

• Emergency response

• Defence

The future will focus on

• using spatial information (and particularlylocation) more strategically, and

• integrating medium to large scale built andnatural resource spatial data sets

to serve specific needs of Commonwealthagencies

In part this is because we have expanded to occupy mostof available habitat and are thus increasingly at risk fromchanges to the natural environment - we need to managenatural resources, not just land, for our economic survival.

Stirling Range, WA

Threats to sustaining oureconomic prosperity

• Disease & Pests

• Climate change

• SalinityThese are all spatial phenomena. Managing these requiresus to know where the problem is, how it is changing andwhere it will be in the future. We also need to know whatelse is there to understand the potential impacts. Datasetsdeveloped for earlier priorities can be useful if rethought.

• Spatial Modelling of disease and pest behaviourallows us to intercept and manage their spread.

• For example; Foot and mouth disease presents apotential hazard to Australian pastoral industryand Cape York is a potential entry path. Thedisease has three phases, latent, infectious andimmune. Each has a period of time associated withit. This can be modelled using basic spatialdatasets.

• Cellular Automata Model of a Foot and MouthDisease outbreak amongst feral pigs in the Capeinitiated in the wet season using BRS data for feralpig density and vegetation (Doran, 2002). Notethat the disease became well established andspread extensively in all directions. RUN

• For a transition from susceptible to latent a cellhad to have at least one infectious neighbour. Theprobability of infection/interaction between cellsdepended upon the local density of susceptibleherds.

• An understanding of the domain, spatialdata and modelling tools are all necessaryfor successful implementations like this.

• IT staff often lack the skills necessary tovalue add to spatial data in this way.

• Spatial data is different – it needs to beunderstood before it can be used effectively.

Spatial phenomena and spatial data need anunderstanding of data types, the effects ofscale, generalisation and the ModifiableAreal Unit Problem.

We monitor climate impacts using remotely sensed data

• Remotely sensed data like this is effectivelyat a scale of 1:25,000 – medium scale data

• Scale affects the answers you get whenlooking at these problems. Using smallerscale images/maps distorts the information

• This the the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem

The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP)

is a form of ecological fallacy associated with

the aggregation of data into areal units for

geographical analysis. The scale at which we

perform spatial analyses influences the results.

•The larger the unit of aggregation the morelikely attributes will be correlated.

•By aggregating into different groups you canget different results.

Scale and aggregation need to be determined bythe proposed use and analytical method. As aresult, datasets designed for earlier nationalpriorities are not necessarily suited to current andfuture needs.

Comparison of Land Cover Values across Resamplings for Little River (Values are percentages of 30-m land cover category areas).

60-m 120-m 210-m 240-m 480-m 960-m 1920-m Water 100.12 94.50 121.23 97.04 98.56 65.71 0.00

Urban 104.04 94.34 100.28 76.73 68.51 35.97 89.98

Transitional 100.54 96.96 92.18 90.15 81.95 69.34 90.20

Deciduous 103.35 101.65 102.12 94.36 120.21 156.28 97.74

Pine 100.11 98.48 97.90 96.80 86.37 69.99 48.35

Mixed 98.18 101.29 94.74 98.41 86.33 65.95 148.47

Crop 98.99 97.72 95.42 95.80 91.40 88.33 74.46

Wetlands 99.50 100.27 99.98 102.78 101.91 105.47 82.45

(Usery & Finn)

Other Scale Effects – A Comparison of WatershedAreas (hectares)

35986.1210

36241.9240

37739.5480

40458.2960

35493.1120

46418.91920

35089.260

34885.830

Watershed AreaResolution (m)

(Usery & Finn)

• This shows the importance of scale choicein providing useful natural resourcemanagement data for good decision making.

• Many of our natural resource data sets arenot at scales appropriate to currentapplications, nor are their attributeaggregations particularly useful.

• Unlike built environment datasets, they arestill quite unsophisticated. Our needs in thecurrent application areas have not yet drivendata production.

A salinity change map; the yellow areas were saline in 1988, theorange areas were saline by 1994, and the purple areas are at risk(Evans et al., 1996; Upper Kent Catchment, W.A.).

Modelled using digitalelevation (10m contours)and Landsat derivatives.

This LWRRDC/CSIRO reportstates that the available topographicdata – our ‘best’ NRM dataset – was inadequate for thispurpose. They generated ahigher resolution dataset (2m)to produce this map.

We pride ourselves on ourprogress in salinity modellingbut the current maps tend tobe based on a simple terrainbased model which is notapplicable to much of thearea in blue

The emphasis on a terrainbased model reflects thatdataset’s ready availabilityat the appropriate scales-which are 1:50,000 andlarger (1:25,000 & 1:10,000)

One of our best nationaldatasets, geology, tends to beavailable only at scales of1:250,000 and 1:100,000. It isa key variable in the process ofsalinisation.

MAUP is a problem herebecause the nominal fieldswhich form the polygons areaggregated on the basis ofgeological age and notlithology.

Mapped geology is both at the wrong scale and maps the wrong attributes for the prediction of salinity and so it is rarely used….

There are many other examples of this problem in our NRM datasets.It is not a catastrophe – we can still do very powerful things withthe data we have, but we could do so much more if MAUP was eliminated…….

• From a producers point of view, most nationaldatasets are complete and appropriate for thetasks originally envisaged.

• From a users point of view, they are not atappropriate scales and attribute aggregationsfor addressing current and future nationalproblems.

• We are at an early stage of NRM datasetdevelopment, not a final stage.

Policy implications for theAustralian Government

Current or potential CommonwealthGovernment users of SI

• Agriculture, Fisheries andForestry

• Communications, IT andthe Arts

• Defence• Education, Science and

Training• Employment and

Workplace Relations• Environment and Heritage• Family and Community

Services

• Finance andAdministration

• Health and Ageing• Immigration and

Multicultural andIndigenous Affairs

• Industry, Tourism andResources

• Prime Minister andCabinet

• Transport and RegionalServices

The reality is that mostCommonwealth agencies use or willuse spatial information (particularly

location) and increasingly large scalebuilt and natural resource spatial

data for decision support.In the e-world this use will continue

to expand.

The end of WW2 to the 1980s saw a golden era ofnational mapping

Over the last 10 years the Australian Government appearsto have reduced spatial information activities in line withthe dramatic growth of state and territory based activity

We believe the Australian Government will need to makea major commitment to re-engage in spatial information

during the next decade, making the former nationalmapping initiative seem small in comparison

Challenges facing the Australian Government• Access to large and medium scale built and natural

environment spatial data• A change in focus from actually acquiring national

data to integrating and analysing state data sets• Re-conceiving natural resource data sets to better

serve current and future applications• Determining the Commonwealth’s role in building,

maintaining and accessing the Australian SpatialData Infrastructure

• Building the capacity to collect, integrate,manipulate and use spatial information

• Providing the leadership, coordination and vision tobuild “virtual Australia”

In a modern information society,spatial information plays a

critically important enabling andinfrastructure role in supporting

better decision making.

Simply spatial is special

BRS SEMINAR NEXT WEEK

Friday 19 November

Water Management in California: What Can We Learn

Dianne Deane - NRMBU