Australia's drought has become a key issue, in 2018. A long stretch of dry weather during Australia's April to October growing season is putting pressure on farmers and communities across the country. Part of addressing this challenge involves gathering and interpreting disparate pieces of data to inform decisions.
Recently, at Old Parliament House in Canberra at the National Drought Summit, we demonstrated our contribution to making information accessible and more easily interrogated, through our work on platforms that display spatial information. The Terria interface is being applied to the challenges facing drought-affected areas for the Joint Agency Drought Taskforce, bringing together data from several different sources.
The underlying data display software is known as the 'TerriaJS' platform, and our Terria team's work on the platform allows governments and other stakeholders to gain deeper insights into current drought conditions, where needs and sensitivities are and where more support is needed. It also facilities coordination of response, and provides information on the spread of drought using the latest meteorological information.
The platform is now live, at https://map.drought.gov.au/
They've worked with a litany of other platforms, showcasing fascinating and high-impact applications of the visualisation of valuable data, including AREMI (Australian Renewable Energy Mapping Infrastructure)[Link will open in a new window], NEII (National Environmental Information Infrastructure)[Link will open in a new window], SoE (State of Environment 2016)[Link will open in a new window], and Northern Australia Map.[Link will open in a new window]
The team working on this project include:
- Mats Henrikson
- Kevin Ring
- Chloe Chen
- Peter Hassall
- Phil Grimmett
- Stephen Davies
- Ana Belgun
Over time, we'll be making this interface publicly available. For updates, please check out our social media feeds or get in touch.