New Zealand Geospatial Strategy

It’s All About Engagement

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:08:00 +1300

As I become more integrated into the work programme of the New Zealand Geospatial Office (NZGO), and with my role as Geospatial Custodian, I'm increasingly aware of the importance of engagement. As the term 'engagement' is thrown about quite freely, I think it warrants some clarification.

In its most elemental form, engagement is the communication between parties. But in practice it is much more than that. Engagement involves an understanding between those parties, or a sincere attempt at achieving a level of understanding.

As someone conveying information, you engage with your audience when your message applies on some level and is accepted as sincere, if not always fully understood or completely accepted. When engaging others, your message extends beyond your individual context to permeate the contexts of the other parties. Ownership of the message then becomes truly dynamic as it is shared between all of the participants. This flow of ownership creates a momentum that can lead to exciting exchanges and the discovery of new solutions as the interaction takes on a life of its own.

The role of the NZGO, in simple terms, is to promote and champion the New Zealand Geospatial Strategy. Effective promotion relies on regular and effective engagement. As Geospatial Custodian, directing the work programme of the NZGO, a large part of my daily routine involves engagement - a favourite component of my job!

Through engagement I am able to spread the message of the value of well-planned geospatial implementations. Just as importantly, though, I get the opportunity to listen and to learn. Through engagement I come to understand how geospatial technologies and approaches are being applied to many business situations, as well as the problems practitioners face. I learn about the exciting and seemingly endless opportunities in New Zealand, as well as the difficulties hindering even broader success. I increasingly appreciate the value of engagement for the strategies, policies and work programmes arising from the efforts of the NZGO.

Much of our work in the NZGO of late has focused on developing a roadmap for a New Zealand Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). Because SDI is a concept not fully understood by many in the geospatial community, engagement has proven to be an indispensible tool for advancing this work. Be it written documentation, emails, workshops, blog entries (see David Swann's three-part series), or the numerous conversations between NZGO staff and various geospatial data providers and users. In our efforts to spread the word about SDI, we have learned a lot. This has helped us hone our message and direct our efforts to more closely match the realities of the current geospatial sector in New Zealand.

As I continue to interact with members of the geospatial community, I appreciate that being someone new to this community is part of the dynamic of my engagement. I hope my perspective helps inform these exchanges as I also expand the understanding and knowledge I need to promote effective geospatial strategies for New Zealand.

As always, and in the spirit of engagement, I welcome your thoughts and comments below or at ksweeney@linz.govt.nz.

Kevin Sweeney

Geospatial Custodian
New Zealand Geospatial Office

LUDB: New Zealand Land Use Database Envirolink Tools Project

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:11:00 +1300

The New Zealand Land Use Database project is a two-year Envirolink Tools project running from January 2010 to December 2011.

The Regional Council Land Monitoring Forum and Landcare Research are working together on the project, which aims to develop a national land-use database consisting of:

Land Information Engine - for collecting, synthesising, generating, reporting and storing land-use information
Classification - for consistently representing land use across multiple scales
Geospatial Land Use Layer - for quantifying and analysing land-use trends.

The need

New Zealand currently lacks nationally consistent land-use information, and this was confirmed through recent surveys* identifying a critical need for better information. The information from these surveys will enable improved policy and planning development and resource management. Regional councils, in particular, highlighted a need for nationally consistent, coordinated, and regularly updated land-use information to help fulfil their statutory requirements under the Resource Management Act.

Pressing information needs requiring better land-use information include:

better reporting of land use and land-use change
identifying the key drivers of land-use change
tracking intensification or urban expansion.

Benefits

Provide a consistent framework for environmental reporting on land use and land-use change within New Zealand.
Facilitate resource management information across jurisdictional boundaries and spatial scales.
Start to put in place coordinated processes for ongoing, consistent collection and dissemination of land-use information.

Land Use Database in context

The Land Use Database tool represents the next step in the evolution of land-use information for New Zealand. A recent review** identified four previous attempts within New Zealand to develop a land-use classification. The most recent was a land-use layer (LUNZ) that focused on primary production uses for the CLUES project***. The project is currently being updated.

Further several purpose-built land-use classifications and datasets, databases and associated geospatial data layers are being developed:

water quality (CLUES)
groundwater (IRAP)
integrated spatially-explicit decision support systems (Creating Futures)
integrated catchment management (Motueka ICM)
rural land use change (LURNZ)
resource management (Environment Canterbury)
Land Use and Carbon Analysis System (LUCAS).

This project will start to bring those efforts together and provide a sound framework for ongoing land-use information collection, analysis, monitoring, and reporting.

More information

For more information about the LUDB project, contact:

Dr Daniel Rutledge
Senior Scientist and Project Leader
Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research
Hamilton

Phone: 07 859 3727
Email: rutledged@landcareresearch.co.nz

*Surveys organised by Statistics New Zealand and the Regional Council Land Monitoring Forum.

**Rutledge, Price, Briggs, Cowell. 2009: Geospatial Land Use Classification for New Zealand: Review and Recommendations. Statistics New Zealand OS Research Series 5.

***MAF and the Ministry for the Environment have been working with NIWA on the Catchment Land Use for Environmental Sustainability (CLUES) project.

Collating New Zealand’s LiDAR Data

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:26:00 +1300

Over the last five to six years local and central government agencies have increasingly turned to remote sensing technologies such as Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) to obtain data about ground elevations.

In brief, LiDAR is very similar to RADAR (Radio Direction And Ranging) except that light waves - or more precisely, a laser - are used rather than radio waves. Typically the laser sensor is mounted on a plane (or satellite) and flown over the target area. The sensor emits a light beam and records the returned signals. The differences in each signal's return time, signal strength, and x, y, z co-ordinates are captured for later data processing.

Processed data from the return signals can be used to create Digital Elevation Models (DEM). These models provide a highly detailed and accurate picture of the height and shape of the land.

While LiDAR is currently the most commonly-used remote sensing tool, other light bands such as infra-red and multi-spectral are also available.

The data can be used in a range of projects, such as:

determining the extent of floodplains
monitoring coastal erosion
predicting areas sensitive to sea level rise
investigating the relationship between building insulation and heat loss
carbon accounting through identifying the type of vegetation cover
monitoring air quality.

The New Zealand Geospatial Office (NZGO) has started a project to collate a catalogue of all LiDAR data held by local and central government. We expect the catalogue will:

improve the discovery of the data
raise awareness about the wealth of data that has been collected
support re-use of the data (once collected, the data can be used over and over in different projects and by different people)
create opportunities for agencies to cooperate over new data purchases, and to improve compliance with technical guidelines and standards.

Next steps...

We are currently looking to publish a description (metadata) of the LiDAR data held throughout New Zealand, including the extent of LiDAR coverage.

The LiDAR inventory list is available from the NZGO and can be requested by contacting me on either my mobile (027-2499328) or via email (sbensberg@linz.govt.nz). Alternatively, you can contact us through this website.

We'd love to hear from you if you have any LiDAR data that could be included.

Stephen Bensberg

Project Manager Remote Sensing
New Zealand Geospatial Office

Showcasing Geospatial Information at the Rugby World Cup

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:54:00 +1300

Around 15 creative thinkers from government and the private sector got together on Wednesday to explore opportunities around New Zealand's hosting of the Rugby World Cup (RWC) in 2011.

The aim of the workshop was to stimulate big picture ideas and creative thinking on how we can showcase the power and potential of geospatial information and technology at the RWC. We also thought about how innovative organisations and individuals could create value using spatial information and technology in and around this event.

Our facilitators were Rumi Shivaz, a Wellington-based innovation consultant and Cyriel Koteleven, a creativity and innovation consultant based in Belgium. Cyriel took us through a number of exercises designed to get us out of our normal thinking patterns. It was an informal and fun experience and the group came up with some interesting ideas.

Our next blogs on this topic will share the ideas and outline how you can participate in discussions aimed at turning some of them into action.

Adam Cooper

Senior Analyst
New Zealand Geospatial Office

When Location Information Goes Social

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:02:00 +1300

Last week I was interested to hear a prediction made by one of the 24 international speakers at Webstock - a conference held in Wellington on all things web - on what the 'next big thing' in web will be.

Kevin Rose, founder of the popular news aggregation website Digg, was at Webstock to deliver 10 tips for new web entrepreneurs. During question time Kevin was asked, 'What's the next big thing in web?' and his response - location-based services.

The United States-based social location service Foursquare was mentioned more than once during the conference. Foursquare allows people to use their mobile to 'check-in' to a place they go to, such as a restaurant, announcing their whereabouts to friends. By doing this, people earn points and badges. If someone checks-in enough times to a certain place, they can even become 'mayor' of that place.

For some businesses, Foursquare is a useful tool in building customer loyalty. The mayor of their restaurant may, for example, be awarded discounts.

However, there are also significant risks in being too free with announcing information such as one's personal whereabouts. Stuff.co.nz has published an article about a website called Please Rob Me, which is designed to expose the risk of people announcing where they currently are - or, more to the point, where they are not (ie at home) - based on information they willingly release through sites like Foursquare. The website acts as a satirical warning about over-sharing personal information through the web.

Clearly, location information can be used to create some interesting social web services that many find engaging and fun. But there is also a strong need to properly educate people around the risks of releasing personal information through the internet.

So, do web-based social location services offer enough tools and information to help manage the potential risks raised by a site like Please Rob Me? What could be done to help people more safely share personal location information? Or do you think that everything that can be done is being done already? Post your comments below.

Anthony Lapwood

Communications Coordinator
Land Information New Zealand

SDI: How We Get There

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:54:00 +1300

In previous blog posts, I've covered what Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is and what some of the impacts will be for agencies wanting to participate in it. Now, let's take a look at what we've been doing to establish SDI, how it might function, and what a roadmap for a healthy SDI looks like.

This is the third of three posts introducing SDI in New Zealand. To catch up on my previous SDI updates, see:

What has the NZGO been doing?

The New Zealand Geospatial Office (NZGO) has been working to coordinate initial SDI implementation, mainly across the natural resources sector. As this initial work has progressed, we are now clearer that we already have many of the components of SDI - we're referring to this as 'the SDI we didn't know we had'.

We have many government organisations providing services of geospatial information (but not always using open standards).
We have some government organisations that are consuming services of geospatial information.
Conspicuously absent are the catalogue portals that make the discovery of data so easy.

This informs us that our efforts need to focus on establishing geoportals. LINZ has been working with Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, and the Department of Internal Affairs to build a demonstration geoportal that links to the DIA's data.govt.nz initiative. We're hoping to launch the prototype shortly. In addition, the Department of Conservation will be standing up a geoportal in the middle of 2010 as an extension of their internal SDI initiatives.

Will there be one New Zealand government geoportal?

One of the elegant aspects of SDI is that catalogue nodes (geoportals) can harvest metadata from one another. So if metadata gets posted onto any one catalogue node, all other nodes can harvest that metadata. This allows each organisation to establish geoportals that meet their own business, architectural and technical needs.

What is clearly needed is one geoportal that contains everything. The model for this is the United States 'Geospatial One Stop' at www.geodata.gov. It is important to appreciate that this is not the 'only geoportal' for the whole US: most states, most federal agencies and most cities will have their own focused geoportals. So if we were to use this as the model, we should aspire to create www.geodata.govt.nz as a national geoportal but encourage the establishment of focused geoportals in central government agencies, regional councils and territorial local authorities.

What does the SDI roadmap look like?

We're becoming clearer about the nature of the SDI roadmap. As we see embryonic SDI emerge in the coming weeks, I'm confident we will see a rapid, if slightly chaotic, growth in adoption. It's important we appreciate this chaos as a desirable aspect of early SDI since it represents a release of pent-up demand.

We cannot approach SDI like a normal program of work where we design, then develop and then build. Remember that SDI is not a system! We can only establish SDI using the data and systems we already have... and then evolve forward to gradually improve data, improve connections between systems and develop better geoportals.

Once underway, we can connect emerging SDI to other streams of work that will gradually define a more orderly direction for SDI:

There will be a need for legislative development that will eventually establish a mandated framework for SDI in New Zealand. As with any legislative process, this will take several years to develop. By running this in parallel with emerging SDI, legislation will be informed by real experience and will eventually direct SDI development.
Out of the legislative development will emerge the governance framework for SDI - the steering committee and working groups. Pending formal governance arrangements, it is recommended that the formation of domain and functional user groups be encouraged.
The New Zealand Geospatial Office will provide guidelines for agencies that will explain how best to connect existing systems and programmes of work into emerging SDI. Current thinking is that these connections will be low risk, low cost and easy to accomplish. This will include the recommended standards that will need to be implemented.
Work will continue on fundamental data set identification. This work will benefit significantly from emerging SDI since it will expose data sets to much broader communities of stakeholders. It is very important to appreciate that defining 'fundamental' can only be done from the perspective of the use of data; one organisation's junk is another organisation's fundamental data. What SDI enables is a gradual rationalisation and improvement in government geospatial information.
SDI relies on geospatial expertise. It is this expertise that makes sure that data provision is 'fit for purpose' and that data consumption is appropriate. Work will continue on geospatial capacity building.

That's the last in this series of posts introducing SDI and the current thinking around implementing it in New Zealand. We'll have more to say as this work develops, so stay tuned.

What do you think of the work we've done so far? Do you think we're on track? Or is there anything you think we might have missed or need to consider?

Share your ideas below or contact us.

David Swann

CRCSI Position Opens

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:41:00 +1300

Event Date: 18 February 2010

Recruitment is underway for the new position of Director CRCSI New Zealand.

CRCSI, otherwise known as the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information, is a collaborative joint venture based in Australia. It works with industry, government and the education and science sectors to produce business outcomes and benefits for participants involved in the spatial sector.

Last August, it received AU$32 million from the Australian Government to further invest in spatial research, development and education in the areas of health, energy provision, agriculture, defence and security, and urban development, and will involve creating infrastructure to benefit both New Zealand and Australia.

The exciting new role of Director CRCSI New Zealand has been established within LINZ on behalf of the geospatial information community. It will create a presence for CRCSI in New Zealand, and grow New Zealand collaborative ventures into and beyond the initial CRCSI Australia base.

This dedicated, fulltime position will work across New Zealand's business, government and education sectors to broker knowledge, negotiate projects, manage relationships and opportunities, and build the New Zealand node.

To learn more about the Director CRCSI New Zealand role go to the New Zealand Government Jobs Online website. Applications close 1 March 2010.

Kevin Sweeney

Geospatial Custodian
New Zealand Geospatial Office

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SDI: What it Means for Agencies

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:56:00 +1300

In this post, I want to talk about some of the effects that implementing a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) will have for agencies. Specifically, the costs and value of SDI to an agency, and the standards needed for an agency to participate in it.

This is the second of three posts introducing SDI in New Zealand. To catch up on my previous SDI update, see:

SDI: An Introduction

How much will SDI cost my agency? What value will it have?

Within any one agency, the incremental cost to extend an existing system or program of work to participate in SDI will typically be fairly low. But it is important to appreciate that the incremental value to any one system is not huge: SDI is not a panacea that suddenly creates huge value to a program. The real benefit of SDI is in the aggregation across government; small individual benefits aggregating to create significant advantage to New Zealand as a whole.

What standards will my agency need to implement to participate in SDI?

SDI is all about establishing standardised connections between systems, rather than defining how to build systems. So an agency can build systems according to their own business needs, supplier relationships and internal standards. It's how those systems interact with external systems that matters.

If an agency's systems are to contribute to SDI, they need at a minimum to provide web services using Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)standards (they may choose to provide a range of other Web 2.0 services such as KML and REST as well). The minimum requirement is to provide a Web Mapping Service (WMS). A Web Feature Service (WFS) will provide much greater capability for consumers and should be regarded as 'highly desirable'.
Those services have to be discoverable so should be accompanied by ANZLIC profile of ISO 19139 metadata. There are over 40 fields in this profile and the more that can be populated, the more useful that metadata will be. Twelve fields should be regarded as mandatory.
If an agency's systems are to benefit from SDI, they will need to be able to query metadata portals - ideally using Catalogue Services for Web (CS-W) - and will need to be able to consume OGC services (WMS at a minimum, WFS ideally).
That's all! SDI resembles the Internet in many respects in that the underlying standards are relatively easy to implement and yet create real benefits.

This post doesn't cover all the benefits or impacts that implementing SDI will have for a participating agency. They'll be different for every organisation, depending on existing systems and business needs, etc. These are just some of the main points each agency will need to be aware of.

What do you see as some of the other gains and impacts for your agency in participating in SDI? Share your thoughts below or contact us.

Coming up, I'll give an outline of some the current thinking and work going on around implementing SDI, and what the roadmap for it might look like.

David Swann

GPS System Slashes Collection Costs

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:22:00 +1300

Every minute Fonterra saves when collecting milk reaps the company an extra $2 million a year.

Fonterra, the world's leading exporter of dairy products, uses a GPS-based dispatch system to manage its collections, and the benefits of this are already apparent. In the year to July 2009, the system reportedly helped the cooperative save 3c per kilogram of milksolids in collection costs. Translated into dollar terms, that's a reduction in collection costs of $2 million a year.

Fonterra collects from up to 10,500 farms each day, transporting milk to more than 20 production facilities around the country. Fonterra is facing an uphill battle to improve milk collection costs in the face of independent processors luring large suppliers away. It started seeking savings to its milk collection costs in 2004, by using rail transport in some regions, increasing tanker load capacity, speeding up collection times, and rolling out its new 'Genesis' tanker dispatch system, which includes drawing up a daily milk collection schedule at Fonterra's Hamilton office.

The GPS-based Genesis system allows the milk to be picked up at the right time 99.5 percent of the time. GPS is installed in all tankers and their locations are transmitted every three minutes to the control room. Drivers also have radio telephone contact with controllers.

Read more about Fonterra's use of geospatial information in the Spatial Information in the New Zealand Economy report.

John Forne

Analyst
New Zealand Geospatial Office

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Help LINZ Improve its Bulk Data

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:47:00 +1300

At Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), we're keen to unlock the value of our geospatial data. As part of this, we've created an online questionnaire that asks how we can improve our survey and title bulk data products and services.

LINZ has been providing its survey and title data in bulk format for around ten years. Some bulk data customers use the data internally, while others rework it into new products to provide.

Information gathered from the questionnaire will help us better understand what users of the data need in order to get the most out of it, and how we can therefore support the development of New Zealand's geospatial sector and contribute more to the economy.

Register for the questionnaire and let us know what you think of our bulk survey and title data products and services - it shouldn't take longer than 15 minutes to complete.

The questionnaire will be open until midnight on 5 March 2010.

Results are being gathered and analysed by independent research company Research New Zealand, who work in strict accordance with the Code of Practice of the Market Research Society of New Zealand (MRSNZ) and the Privacy Act 1993. Findings from the questionnaire will be reported to LINZ in a way that will ensure respondents aren't personally identified.

If you have any questions about the research, please contact either Liam Hickey or Emily Calvert at Research New Zealand on 0800 500 168.

Kerri Osborne

Manager Customers
Land Information New Zealand

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