Budget: $62,000
Project dates: February 2017 – June 2017
The Open Spatial Analytics (OSA) concept seeks to unlock the final component of the ‘open’ paradigm and create an open National Spatial Analytics Capability that becomes essential infrastructure for anyone who undertakes spatial data processing and analysis. We have had open products for many years and more recently, open data has swept the world with innovative, democratised ways to use spatial data. However, the science, processes, techniques and decisions used in working with spatial data remain hidden and obscure, often residing in the head of the spatial analyst or in poorly documented instructions. The OSA concept within the CRCSI aims to change all this by drawing heavily on scientific workflow models to create an open, shareable workflow platform that can be used to capture, document and easily recreate the spatial analytics used in the generation of any spatial data product.
Sharing spatial analytics will reduce duplication, avoiding multiple bespoke solutions to similar problems; increase transparency, generating “executable documentation” and auditable processes, increasing confidence in data products and decisions; and increase scalability, seamlessly exploiting efficient cloud-based, multi-platform and parallelised computing environments.
The Stage 1 demonstrator project successfully delivered a proof-of-concept tool - an OSA platform - that combines open spatial tools (including PostGIS, GeoTools, and GDAL) with an open (non-spatial) scientific workflow system (Knime). Together with Geoscience Australia, the demonstrator project has shown how this OSA platform made the construction of the National DEM automated, transparent, and easily repeatable ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42Npvvc1Nls ).