• Geoscience Australia holiday shut-down period
• Sentinel: the national bushfire sentry
• The state of the nation's spatial information
• Geoscience Australia commended at national safety awards

Geoscience Australia holiday shut-down period

Geoscience Australia will close down for the holiday period at cob Friday 23 December 2005, and re-open on Wednesday 4 January 2005.

During this period, all general access areas will be closed to the public which includes the Library, the Sales Centre and the Foyer.

Geoscience Australia would like to wish everyone a safe and happy festive season.

Sentinel: the national bushfire sentry

Sample image of Sentinel showing
hotspots as of 20 December 2005.
© Geoscience Australia

The Sentinel bushfire monitoring system (Sentinel Hotspots) has found a permanent home at Geoscience Australia after nearly three years as a R&D demonstrator project.

The enhanced system (which went live to the nation on 19 December) provides the fire management community with near real-time spatial information to identify fire locations across Australia.

Sentinel was jointly developed by Geoscience Australia, the CSIRO Land and Water and Defence Imagery & Geospatial Organisation (DIGO) following the severe bushfire season of 2001-02.

The website displays hotspots, or firefronts, using satellite imagery which is updated four times a day by NASA's MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) sensor.

As a tool for emergency management, Sentinel highlights the importance of having accessible, accurate information for managing and protecting our land and its valuable resources.

For more information, please see the about Sentinel page.

The state of the nation's spatial information

Hinchinbrook Island and Great
Barrier Reef, Queensland,
Landsat 7 ETM+ image 1999.
© Geoscience Australia

Geoscience Australia is seeking input from users and suppliers of spatial information and associated technologies, for production of a report about the state of Australia's spatial information industry.

The report will address both current and emerging levels of demand for, and supply of:

• spatial data;
• spatial information technologies; and
• spatial information-based products and services.

This will be the first in a series of regularly prepared reports that in future years will describe changes within the industry.

Submissions may be any size and can contain facts, opinions, examples, arguments, or recommendations. Depending on your interests, you may cover any or all of the items relevant to the report.

All contributors will receive a free copy of the report before it is released to the general public.

To find out more, and to submit a contribution, please visit the spatial information report page.

Geoscience Australia commended at national safety awards

At Parliament House on 1 December, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock announced that Geoscience Australia has received a 'highly commended' award in the pre-disaster category of the annual Australian Safer Communities Awards.

Geoscience Australia staff with Minister for Justice and
Customs, Senator The Hon Chris Ellison.
© Geoscience Australia

The national awards, which recognise people and organisations for best practice and innovation in emergency management, are judged from winners of State and Territory elimination rounds across the country.

This is the first year that the Safer Communities Awards included an organisational stream for entries on projects considered of national significance. Of the four entries in the pre-disaster category of this new stream, the judges decided that three entries — all involving Geoscience Australia — should receive an award.

The three projects recognised were:

• Collaborative 100K Mapping Pilot for Emergency Management: the '100K pilot' project was developed by Geoscience Australia in response to concerns of emergency managers on outdated maps.
• Cities Project Perth: this Geoscience Australia project conducted in collaboration with Western Australian agencies is a natural hazard risk assessment study which estimated the impact on the Perth community of several, sudden onset natural hazards.
• Scenario Modelling for the Assessment of National Catastrophic Disaster Capability: four extreme event scenarios developed by Geoscience Australia on behalf of the Australian Emergency Management Committee to evaluate national capacity to respond to extreme or catastrophic disasters.

"These awards highlight the level of dedication and commitment of organisations to keeping our communities safe," said Mr Ruddock.

This is the sixth year of the Australian Safer Communities Awards, which are managed by Emergency Management in Australia.