A/Prof. Sanjeev Srivastava1, Dr Michael Rigby2, Mr Kheeran Dharmawardena3, Ms Melanie Barlow4, Mr Angus Scown5, Mr Peter Embleton1
1University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, Australia, 2Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network, Melbourne, Australia, 3Cytrix Consulting, Sydney, Australia, 4Australian Research Data Commons, Canberra, Australia, 5Dye & Durham Terrain, Brisbane, Australia
Over the last half-century, geospatial technologies have evolved considerably to adopt big data and cloud-based analytics, presenting considerable opportunities for researchers to investigate the grand challenges affecting today and the future world. While such developments have been exciting, presenting opportunities across new and existing domains, the step change is driving demand for new and diverse skills with significant questions being raised regarding how these can be met by the workforce in the future. For example, ecology and logistics studies are now dominated by the need to analyse satellite tracking information to answer a range of questions and digital twins are beginning to handle a range of new data types and formats, such as 3D building and terrain models, that need to be integrated and coordinated using web services. It has become clear that such advances are making it challenging for existing industries and workforces, particularly when all these skills are expected from a geospatial expert, requiring a new approach to training and workforce planning.
As the expectation to use more complex data in an expanding number of domains relies on interdisciplinary work and cross-collaboration, this Birds of a Feather session is aimed at discussing the opportunities and challenges of geospatial capabilities for the future workforce and the often unique and specialised training required.
Biography:
This BoF is proposed by the Geospatial Community of Practice group which is led by ARDC-AURIN- -CYTRIX-USC. The group involve people from government, academia, industry, and research organization. The Geospatial Capabilities Community of Practice intends to bring together as a community people who, in some capacity, work with geospatial data and make it available for broader use. Additionally, this BoF involves two external people from industry and academia. Mr Angus Scown, Chief Technology Officer, Dye & Durham Terrain. Mr Scown is working on SSSI’s national committee for Geospatial Competency Badges. Mr Peter Embleton, Coordinator, Specialist Technologies at University of the Sunshine Coast. Mr Embleton is also looking after QCIF facilities at UniSC.