Australia’s Scalable Drone Platform – What it is, Lessons Learnt, Moving Forward
Jens Klump1, Timothy Brown2, Steve Quenette3, Owen Kaluza4, Siddeswara Guru5, Samitha Amarapathy4, Chris Peters6, Gerhard Weis5
1CSIRO, Perth, WA, Australia
2ANU, Canberra, ACT, Australia
3Innate Innovation, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
4Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
5TERN, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
6CSIRO, Hobart, TAS, Australia
Abstract
Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly referred to as drones, offer transformative potential in monitoring, research, conservation, and management. However, the lack of established best practices for drone data work and the complex nature of drone usage create challenges, especially for resource-constrained users. The acquired drone datasets, including extensive 3D geospatial time-series data, are difficult to manage and visualise. Processing such data demands high-end hardware and specialised workflows, often requiring tailored solutions from organisations.
The absence of standardised practices impedes advanced processing tools for drone data and its integration with other sources. Each use case develops a unique data processing workflow that is rarely reused. Handling of drone-captured data often lacks adherence to data stewardship best practices, impacting its Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) nature. Locating and reusing relevant sUAS software for field research proves difficult.
The Australian Scalable Drone Cloud (ASDC), an ARDC-supported project, is a cloud-native platform for integrated drone data processing, pipeline development, visualisation, and publishing, supporting FAIR-From-Capture workflows.
The aim of this “Birds of a Feather” (BoF) session is to bring together the Uncrewed Aerial System (UAS) user and developer communities and to explore and discuss best practices for the handling of drone-captured data, end-to-end data management and associated software and tools. We will also provide an overview of the ASDC, our implemented science pipelines, and findings from analysed use cases. We look forward to hearing from the user community about existing capabilities, unmet needs and opportunities for wider collaboration.
For more information, visit https://asdc.io/.
Biography
Jens Klump is a geochemist by training and Group Leader Exploration Through Cover in CSIRO Mineral Resources, based in Perth, Western Australia. Jens work focuses on data in minerals exploration, looking at data capture and data analysis. This includes automated data and metadata capture, sensor data integration, both in the field and in the laboratory, data processing workflows, and data provenance, but also data analysis by statistical methods, machine learning and numerical modelling.
Jens is the president of the IGSN Organization (IGSN e.V.). The organisation coordinates the development and introduction of persistent identifiers for physical specimens of research materials.
Jens is the President of the Earth and Space Science Informatics Division of the European Geosciences Union.