Infrastructure Engineering - Research Publications
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ItemAdverse possession as repair mechanism: recent developments and further reflections(Department of Geomatics, University of Melbourne, 2007)Recent developments regarding the law of part parcel adverse possession of registered title ("Torrens") land in England, Nova Scotia, New South Wales and Queensland are discussed with particular regard to disputed boundary location.
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ItemAutomated geographic information fusion and ontology alignment(Springer, Berlin, 2007)
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ItemSimulation, Calibration and Validation of Recreational Agents in an Urban Park Environment(University of Arizona Press, 2008)
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ItemSpatial data integration: a necessity for spatially enabling government(University of Melbourne, The Centre for SDIs and Land Administration, 2007)Introduction Most governmental decisions involve a spatial component (Williamson and Wallace, 2006), therefore informative decision making within governments is highly reliant upon multi-sourced spatial data. The ability to spatially enable governments through the use of integrated multi-source spatial data at different governmental levels makes governmental decisions incredibly efficient (Mitchell, 2006b), though governments rarely produce all the data required for their business. Rather, they obtain and integrate data from different sources. However, the diversity of data producers hinders effective spatial data integration. There are many technical and non-technical obstacles in the integration of multi-sourced spatial data and this is one of the major problems in sharing and using spatial data among government organizations. From a technical perspective, spatial data may differ semantically, syntactically and structurally. Institutional, social, policy and legal issues also hinder data integration. In order to effectively overcome these issues, a holistic framework is required to manage and address the issues. SDIs aim to facilitate the integration of multi-source spatial data by providing a holistic framework in which spatial data stakeholders (governments, private sector, etc) interact with spatial data effectively through technological components. There are inconsistencies in the various data within an SDI which lead to data inconsistency and hinder data integration. These inconsistencies should be managed through the SDI framework. However, at the moment, the SDI framework does not deal with these inconsistencies effectively. Hence, we need to identify and map the inconsistencies and develop tools and guidelines within the framework of an SDI to manage them. This will then make it easier for data to be integrated across and within government organisations.
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ItemBrave new world: innovative tools for spatially enabling land administration(University of Melbourne, The Centre for SDIs and Land Administration, 2007)Introduction The term silo effect gained prominence in government and business circles during the 1990s (Williamson, 2007). It denotes the entrenched lack of communication and collaboration between organisations and their systems. For decades private organisations held onto their capital, information and skills for internal use only. All this changed with the introduction of information and communication technologies: by sharing resources with its business partners and customers a company could decrease costs, streamline processes and create better customer relations. The silo effect had to be overcome. The field of land administration was created in part in response to discussions about the silo effect. It was clear that the institutions dealing with tenure registration, cadastral mapping, natural resource management and so on, needed to be united. Integration of their theories, processes and information would result in better land management. The collaboration of ideas began in the late 1990s and has resulted in academic theories being used to enhance understandings of practical issues: for example hierarchal spatial reasoning has been applied to spatial data infrastructures (Rajabifard, 2002), policy design concepts to land policies (Ting, 2002), benchmarking to land administration systems (Steudler, 2003), cost benefit analysis to decision making about land (Paez, 2005). Organizational theory has advanced collaboration within land administration agencies (Warnest, 2005; McDougall, 2006) and tenure theories have been applied to the rural parts of developing countries (Dalrymple, 2006). Land administration is now multidisciplinary: its ability to use of the tools and theories of diverse disciplines has been its underlying strength. This chapter takes a similar approach: it looks at new theories and concepts from outside the discipline that will assist in spatially enabling land administration. Particularly, the management of the hundreds of new land rights, restrictions and responsibilities that exist over land. Ontological design, social learning, spatial technologies and uncertainty theory are four areas worthy of consideration. Each could profoundly impact upon existing land administration systems.
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ItemA mixed method approach for evaluating spatial data sharing partnerships for Spatial Data Infrastructure development(ESRI Press, Redlands, California., 2007)In recent years interjurisdictional partnerships have emerged as an importantmechanism for establishing an environment conducive to data sharing and hencethe facilitation of SDI development. However, unless the partnership arrangementsare carefully designed and managed to meet the business objectives of eachpartner, it is unlikely that they will be successful or sustainable in the longer term.The purpose of this paper is to focus on the methodological approaches and relevantissues for researching these new data sharing partnerships and their relationshipsto SDI development. This paper proposes a research methodology forinvestigating both the organisational context of data sharing partnerships andthe factors that contribute to the success of interjurisdictional data sharing initiatives.The paper examines past research and theory in spatial data sharingand examines the characteristics of a number of existing data sharing modelsand frameworks. The use of a mixed-method approach to evaluate local-stategovernment partnerships in Australia is described. Finally, the validationof the mixed-method approach and its generalisation to other SDI and datasharing initiatives is discussed.
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ItemSpatially enabling societies by shifting the basic building block(The University of Melbourne, 2007)Moving towards spatially enabled societies, governments have turned to best preserve, develop, allocate and use land, incorporating all interests in land. Generally, land registries contribute to recording the important interests in land such as ownership, land use, covenants, caveats, leases, easements, and mortgages in land parcels (Williamson 2002). At the same time land mapping agencies are responsible for recording land parcel dimensions to identify the extent of the interests. In a theoretical framework, Bennett et al. (2006) analysed the problem of management of interests in land and classified them into three categories. Firstly, some interests have been poorly designed. They may be unenforceable by authorities or may provide little incentive for those who are supposed to adhere to them. Secondly, some interests are poorly administered. The administration system may offer limited public information access, have slow permit and licence processing times, or might be administered in isolation from other related interests. Finally, some interests do not exist where they ought to exist. In a practical context, the parcel based organization of interests mentioned above encounters two problems: the interests in land are not necessarily limited to those mentioned earlier, and the interests are not necessarily restricted to specific parcels. In other words, the interests in land are diverse and some of the interests can not be defined by boundaries. An efficient technical solution for organizing the growing number of interests in land information systems remains a challenge. The solution suggested in this chapter redefines the relationship between land and interests in the context of modern land administration systems.
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ItemRe-engineering SDI development to support spatially enabled society(The University of Melbourne, 2007)The development of SDIs has continuously evolved and changed since their creation in the 1990’s, originally to enhance the ability to share spatial data. There is now the need to link and deliver a greater range of services and information to users across national, state and local jurisdictions, organisations and disciplines in order to support a spatially enabled society. The concept of a Virtual Australia, development of online players such as Google Earth and the increased need for integrated data and services is creating the need for the Australian SDI to be re-engineered to be able to meet this new challenge.
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ItemSDI design to facilitate spatially enabled society(The University of Melbourne, 2007)The role that Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) initiatives are playing within society is changing. An SDI is a dynamic, hierarchic and multi-disciplinary concept that includes people, data, access networks, institutional policy, technical standards and human resource dimensions. SDIs were initially conceived as a mechanism to facilitate access and sharing of spatial data for use within a GIS environment. This was achieved through the use of a distributed network of data custodians and stakeholders in the spatial information community. Users however, now require the ability to gain access to precise spatial information in real time about real world objects, in order to support more effective cross-jurisdictional and inter-agency decision making in priority areas such as emergency management, disaster relief, natural resource management and water rights. The ability to gain access to information and services has moved well beyond the domain of single organisations, and SDIs now require an enabling platform to support the chaining of services across participating organisations.The ability to generate solutions to cross-jurisdictional issues has become a national priority for countries such as Australia as a federated state system and the development of effective decision-making tools is a major area of business for the spatial information industry. Much of the technology needed to create these solutions already exists; however, it also depends on an institutional and cultural willingness to share outside of ones immediate work group. This creates the need for jurisdictional governance and inter-agency collaborative arrangements to bring together both information and users to facilitate the realisation of spatially enabled society. This chapter outlines the role of SDI in creating more effective decision-making processes to deal with cross-jurisdictional issues through the creation of an enabling platform that links services and information across jurisdictions and organisations. The creation of an enabling platform will be more than just the representation of feature based structures of the world but will also include the administration and institutional aspects of such features, enabling both technical and institutional considerations to be incorporated into decision-making. The chapter also discusses the central role that SDIs are playing in the development of such an enabling platform to facilitate the vision of spatially enabled society. This would support a knowledge base to access information derived from a model of integrated datasets from different perspectives.
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ItemA Spatial Data Infrastructure for a spatially enabled government and society(Published jointly by Space for Geo-Information (RGI), Wageningen University and Centre for SDIs and Land Administration, Department of Geomatics, The University of Melbourne, 2008)Meeting sustainable development objectives is a complex and temporal process that involves multiple stakeholders. The creation of economic wealth, social stability and environmental protection can be achieved through developing products and services that are based on spatial information collected by all levels of government. These objectives can be facilitated by developing a spatially enabled government and society where spatial information is regarded as common goods made available to citizens and businesses to encourage creativity and product development. To do so requires data to be accessible and accurate, well-maintained and sufficiently reliable for use by the majority of society who are not spatially aware. With this in mind Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) are being developed by many countries as an enabling platform to improve access, sharing and to integrate spatial data and services. However there are still many challenges to overcome in order to have a fully functioning SDI and to guarantee the investment in its development. Furthermore, in order to deliver this SDI, there needs to be a mechanism of assessment that uses a set of agreed indicators to measure the progress of its development and delivery of its services. In this regard, the assessment of SDIs is an important component in any SDI design and development and needs to be part of an SDI support strategy. This assessment can help to better understand the issues, to find best practice for certain tasks and to also improve the system as a whole. This chapter aims to introduce and discuss various challenges and issues associated in re-engineering current SDI design to support the new vision of a spatially enabled government and society. It also discusses the central role that an SDI plays as the enabling platform. In order to support this, the chapter also discusses the importance of having an SDI assessment mechanism or strategy as part of the SDI to measure the success and delivery of SDI services aligned with the objectives of SDI development. The chapter then highlights a range of activities and processes to be created across all jurisdictional levels to facilitate SDI design and assessment, including aspects of its design, creation and the processes involved in its development, particularly governance of an SDI platform and the overall relations between different challenges and the SDI assessment process.