Environment

Gaia Resources was engaged in 2023 by the Northern Territory’s Department of the Environment Parks and Water Security to evaluate their flora systems.

Gaia Resources undertook a proof-of-concept project with the Department of Environment, Parks and Water Security to transcribe a number of scanned hardcopy field data sheets using our Clio Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool.  Clio is a web based system built around the Amazon Web Services Textract product, and it enables uploading, reviewing and correcting of scanned forms like field data sheets through the web interface.

In July, 2019 our partners Outline Global embarked on a 3 year contract to capture, process and supply aerial imagery across the Northern Territory. Gaia Resources provides a local client liaison and support resource for this project which covers the Darwin area and a broad range of towns and regional communities. Imagery and elevation models derived through photogrammetric methods are used by the Northern Territory government to support a wide range of programs and activities including infrastructure planning, flood modelling and environmental regulation.

Over the course of several years, Gaia Resources has seconded employees to Woodside Energy to deliver a wide range of spatial services. These included carrying out the tasks below:

Following on from the design of the Biodiversity Information Office (BIO), we were engaged to develop the Biodiversity Information Office systems.  This work commenced in 2021 and the launch was undertaken in June 2022.

The systems that were developed as part of this work includes:

Gaia Resources was engaged in the first half of 2022 to conduct a multi-criteria analysis in order to create a set of proposed wildlife corridors for the Shire of Mundaring. The corridors connect patches of vegetation – sometimes called ‘stepping stones’ – across the Shire through the spatial analysis of Urban Monitor native vegetation, LiDAR derived stream networks, land use categories and roads.

In early 2022, Gaia Resources became the data partner for the Australian federal government’s Biodiversity Data Repository project, created to improve the way that biodiversity information is managed.  Gaia Resources has built the technical data delivery ‘pipeline’ whereby information reaches the main data store of the Repository, through a series of quality reviews and transformations to turn relational data into linked data.

Carbon Neutral engaged Gaia Resources in March 2022 to assess their GIS environment. The Carbon Neutral team found that the file structure arrangement and data management were issues that were affecting their current spatial operational workflow. At the same time, other core elements were highlighted as potential areas for further development: including the establishment of processes relating to GIS workflows, and an overarching company standard for spatial data.

In early 2021, the Forest Fire Management group at the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) engaged Gaia Resources to undertake a technical investigation of spatial tools that could help in bushfire risk management in the Hume region of Victoria, Australia. Monitoring forest canopy change through remote sensing was seen as an emerging operational capability that could provide important information and trends to inform the agency about increased risks of catastrophic burns in a changing climate.

In 2021, we were engaged to undertake a significant amount of business analysis over a short period to assist the BIO team in developing a roadmap for the future of the systems development for BIO. To undertake this, our team developed four separate documents:

Gaia Resources worked closely with the  Northern Australia and Rangelands Fire Information (NAFI) to design and build the app, which you can now download onto your device now from the Apple Store or Google Play Store.

Gaia Resources undertook a short discovery exercise with the GIS Team Lead at Mineral Resources, to develop a Biodiversity Data Standard.  This consisted of a comprehensive governance document guiding the capture and storage of biodiversity data from both internal and external (consultant) workflows. The Standard includes a template spatial database for contractor data submission, and by virtue of its open-source nature, this spatial database is compatible with many common GIS software packages in use across the sector.

Gaia Resources developed a plugin that enables the data from the Northern Australia and Rangelands Fire Information (NAFI) project to be able to be readily used within the open source QGIS spatial analysis software.

We had the opportunity in early 2020 to do a deep dive into the GIS system at Garnet Mining Australia (GMA) and help them to set up a best practice spatial environment for their core business workflows. This started with our standard GIS health check followed by the migration of data to a cloud-hosted database. We helped GMA to design file and folder naming conventions, and built up a guideline and set of procedures to help them easily manage their spatial data into the future.

In late 2019, Gaia Resources were engaged by the Yamatji Marlpa Aboriginal Corporation (YMAC) to undertake a small QGIS plug-in development project. QGIS is a Free-and-Open-Source Geographic Information System software used by YMAC and many organisations as a core part of their business operations. It is used to analyse and model spatial information, and to create maps and data products that support decision making processes.

In 2019 we developed Slug Sleuth for the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS – now in the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment). Slug Sleuth aims to help scientists, locals and visitors to collect observation data for slugs and snails within Mount Kaputar National Park and adjacent Nandewar Ranges within NSW.

Gaia Resources was engaged in 2019 to develop a submissions portal for biodiversity surveys for the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER).

The new submissions portal complements DWER’s existing online repository of land-based biodiversity surveys in Western Australia, known as the Index of Biodiversity Surveys for Assessments (IBSA).

Gaia Resources were engaged by the University of Melbourne’s Clean Air Urban Landscapes Hub to develop a citizen science app to enable data capture for a range of urban species – bell frogs, flying-foxes and beneficial insects. This Hub is one of six in the National Environmental Science Programme (NESP).

Birdlife Australia approached Gaia Resources to build a Citizen Science smartphone app to support a Black Cockatoo Significant Trees initiative in Western Australia.

We worked with Gavin Jackson Cultural Resource Management to review their existing field data collection and reporting approach and develop a new way forward that would be sustainable for the business into the future.  

As a small business that specialises in consulting to other organisations, Gavin Jackson CRM has to have a system that supports their workflows, has minimal establishment and ongoing costs, and delivers a high degree of value, so that they can remain competitive and lead the way in their field.

In the first half of 2019, Gaia Resources was engaged to develop a mobile application for Animal Disease Notifications. Agriculture Victoria needed an app that would allow users to easily and quickly notify the Department of the presence or suspicion of notifiable animal diseases.

Gaia Resources has been working on the BioSys project in conjunction with the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) since 2015.

Gaia Resources started providing GIS mapping support to Hydrologia in March, 2018 and have been working with them on a series of projects since. Hydrologia is a specialist surface water hydrology consultancy with experience in a broad range of services related to understanding and managing complex rainfall and runoff issues.

Gaia Resources provided in-house training for the Environment team at Horizon Power in two separate sessions in June and November of 2018.

In mid 2018, Gaia Resources were engaged to develop a desktop app for Wildlife Drones to act as a field mapping application for the real-time display of (radio frequency) tagged animal locations monitored by a drone. The project involved an initial discovery phase and technology review to understand what software platforms would be ideal to meet the requirements of the solution.