Technical resources

Introductory Videos

AusPIX Spatially Linked-data APIs

AusPIX– providing metrics and spatial statistics (using a pre-calculated relationship grid built on DGGS technology)

AusPIX fastAPI tool (swagger page with many tools)

This API provides cross-referencing and statistical tools across geographical features. Exposes relationships between datasets to provide quick metrics and spatial statistics. Both human and machine to machine (automated) queries are easily processed, with results in json format. AusPIX handles points, lines, polygons and rasters.

AusPIX DGGS typical use cases:

Data drill: Discover the features recorded at a latitude/ longitude point. Useful for any query to discover the information at a given location. Very quick. Can answer such questions as:

  1. What is the name of the Electorate/ SA2/ LGA / Suburb / postcode / National Park that the location within?
  2. What is the risk related to earthquakes or cyclones at that location?
  3. Is the location likely to be ever flooded? (using WofS data)
  4. I have a list for Greater Glider possum sightings with latitude and longitude information. What is the approximate elevation above sea-level for these possum sightings?
  5. I need situational awareness for school locations and addresses. This tool allows me to discover which Electorate/ SA2/ LGA / Suburb / postcode etc a school or street address is located in.
  6. Supply this sort of information to higher level dashboards and APIs (via machine readable API calls using simple latitude and longitude parameters)

DGGS Cell query: discover the features and data available for a DGGS cell. Similar to the Data drill tool, returning information for a query on a DGGS AusPIX level 10 cell.

Apportionment Query: Discover the spatial relationship between a single feature in one geography and the features of any other geography. Quick analysis. User chooses the cross-analysis information they are looking for from countless options. Response is as a json string and includes a range of statistical results. Typical use cases include.

  1. I have an LGA. Tell me which SA1, SA2, SA3 etc, Postcodes, Suburbs, National Parks, Water Bodies, Streams, roads, Schools, Place names, Emergency Facilities etc etc are within or partly within (with % for apportionment).
  2. I am looking to buy a house and want to know the suburbs and the schools in them so I can choose. The user or a connected API can query suburbs for a list of schools in each one.
  3. I have a flood polygon that has been DGGS enabled and want some statistics on what land-uses have been affected within the flooded area. The user uses AusPIX to cross-reference the flooded area with land-use data that is already in the the AusPIX system.
  4. A bushfire has swept across large areas. The minister wants to have a list of the suburbs/postcodes/electorates that have been burnt along with the % figures to support a recovery initiatives.

User polygon: I have an area of interest as a WKT (well-known text) polygon. I need AusPIX cross-referenced information to describe and inform me about what features exist within that polygon.  The API provides apportionment information for this WKT user-defined polygon. For example, the WKT polygon may represent the landfall of a cyclone and the Emergency Service wants information about what is threatened in the impact zone. The AusPIX system can quickly cross-reference the WKT polygon with any geographic data available in the AusPIX system.

Other uses: There are literally hundreds of use-cases involving cross-referencing. AusPIX can support crosswalks between any data that has been DGGS enabled. No need to wait for reprocessing, the AusPIX system based on DGGS cells includes all combinations, being able to relate to any combination.

Other AusPIX DGGS based APIs

  • DGGS enablement API (AusPIX DGGS API tool to DGGS enable small-medium datasets (human and machine readable)
  • Interactive DGGS Enablement Map Demonstrator to build your own AusPIX DGGS spatial reference for points, lines or polygons.
  • Linked data API for each AusPIX DGGS cell (Provides human-readable and machine-readable access to cell information including Landing Page with map showing cell location and data describing location of cell corners and cell centroid. Parent cells and child cells are described.)

Semantically Linked data APIs

Providing for semantic linked-data queries, metadata information, provenance information, and individual feature mapping. These APIs source their information from RDF triple stores containing a copy of the source data. Features of these APIs are:

  • standardised interoperability
  • human readable landing page for each geographic feature,
  • machine readability for automation,
  • variety of alternate profiles for viewing and accessing data
  • metadata, conformance, and vocab information
  • searchable
  • built for semantic queries
  • cross dataset queries need to be done within the same triple store

Semantically linked data cannot natively provide apportionment figures. To work around this semantic systems sometime use different types of spatially linked databases (like PostGIS) and do spatial calculations to provide these apportionment figures (% relationships between features in different datasets). GeoSPARQL can also provide some of these calculations but the time takes is similar to a GIS package calculation doing the same thing. The AusPIX spatially linked APIs fill this gap to provide greater speed and flexibility.

Because these systems are built as machine-readable APIs, the network of information is available to API calls to gather exactly the information that is required.

Use cases for semantically linked-data using APIs

  1. A user has identified a feature (e.g an LGA) and needs to see it on a map, discover its attributes, and determine the age & provenance of the information. The search feature in the API allows this user to find the LGA and provide the information required. Note: the user has feature level access and doesn’t need to download and manipulate the whole dataset.
  2. A user quickly wants the geometry for Commonwealth Electorate. The user finds the Electorate in the Linked Data API, and copies the geometry (as geojson) to a map.
  3. A data scientist wants to semantically query Wikidata information against some GA Triple Store of RDF data. The scientist imports the required Wikidata triples and the GA/ABS RDF triples into a Wikibase instance and proceeds to discover trends and relationships for a study on Australian population dynamics. Since Wikidata and GA linked data are stored as RDF triples the schemas are identical – making the job a lot easier.
  4. To make data more usable under a Government directive regarding F.A.I.R principles, Geoscience Australia publishes its data as web-connected RDF triples. This allows the GA data to be part of systems that connect and query data from different sources. The RDF triples provide a common schema for rapid and standardised transfer of information. APIs written over the RDF triple stores allow diverse range of dashboards and informative web pages to be developed for special use cases. GA provides the data as Triples, builds some useful APIs inside GA, and allows others to build and maintain their own APIs over the GA world standard RDF data sources.

Available Semantic Linked-Data APIs in GA

Loci API products adapted for and hosted in Geoscience Australia

Technical Documentation

Training Plans

Ontologies

Concepts and categories with their properties and the relationships between them - providing data models and vocabularies.

Vocabulary Documentation and Tools

Provenance development

Semantic Validation tools

  • Validator Tool – Dashboard user interface using pySHACL - to suit many styles of RDF.

Code Repositories GitHub and Bitbucket

NOTE: Bitbucket resources require access authorisation.