National geoscience data network in development

A national integrated geoscience data network is being developed by CSIRO, Geoscience Australia and AuScope. The network is designed to break down barriers and open access to Australia’s wealth of geoscience data, enabling researchers from across disciplines to tackle challenges including natural disasters, climate change, water security and the sustainable development of our mineral and energy resources.

Project leader Dr Robert Woodcock, from CSIRO, explained that when organisations collect and produce data in a variety of ways, not only is this inefficient but the data is often “in various formats that are often incompatible”, thus making the gathering process slow and expensive.

“The network will make the approach to data more uniform across organisations, so that information can be brought together more readily and at little to no cost, regardless of where it comes from and who is accessing it,” he said.

The network is supported by world-class visualisation and spatial information storage software and features virtual laboratories that allow researchers to process big data online, in the cloud and in a fraction of the time traditionally taken on a desktop. It will utilise the National Computational Infrastructure’s supercomputer, which has the processing power of over 15,000 desktop computers.

The Virtual Geophysics Laboratory exploits cloud computing and is a key aspect of the network.

Senior adviser at Geoscience Australia Dr Lesley Wyborn said, “At the moment people tend to look at minerals data independent of environmental data, independent of water data. They spend far too much time trying to find data in all these data stores across Australia.” The network will, according to Dr Wyborn, enable scientists to “seamlessly access” valuable earth science data, in real time, from a range of sources across the country.

The national geoscience data network expands on the AuScope Grid, which is a portal for Australia’s geoscience information that is available to industry and the wider community. It was developed by AuScope in collaboration with several universities, government and research organisations, including Geoscience Australia and CSIRO.

The AuScope Grid and geoscience data network infrastructure will work to support and enhance current collaborative projects such as UNCOVER, which aims to increase investment in research to achieve mineral exploration success. Dr Wyborn said the network is currently focused on the minerals exploration industry “but it does have potential to be expanded into real-time accurate prediction of the impact of natural hazards”.

“At the moment, most tsunami warning systems are working on theoretical models of what might happen if you have an earthquake at a specific time and area, and when the tide is at a certain height,” she said.

“We hope that with further expansion of the network, we will be able to bring in all the available data, meld it together and give emergency managers a snapshot of what is happening at that exact point in time.”

Dr Woodcock suggested that another area to benefit may include climate change predictions.