Federation University Australia has over 23,000 students across multiple campuses and faculties. The Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation (CeRDI) has 28 staff working on eResearch projects across many domains. CeRDI develops digital solutions and data portals to connect academic research with community, government and industry needs. Examples include online databases and decision support tools for agriculture, natural resource management, and climate change adaptation. CeRDI also works on data interoperability standards and has international collaborations on projects like 3D visualization tools and soil data standards.

1. Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation
Federation University Australia
CeRDI Research Capability
Regional Universities Network Vietnam Agriculture Group
November 2015

2. Federation University Australia
Origins: 1870 Ballarat School of Mines
Campuses: Ballarat, Gippsland, Wimmera
Faculties & Schools:
(dual sector)
Students: ~ 23,000 domestic and international
• Business
• Education & Arts
• Health
• Science & Technology
• Industry Skills
• Federation College

3. Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation
CeRDI - www.cerdi.edu.au
~ 28 staff – 15 research, 11 technical, 2 project management/admin
Unaligned to Faculties - reports to DVCR

4.  Ubiquitous high-speed broadband…
Transforming our economy and society with major implications for research, government
and communities
 The Petabyte Age…
>50% of the world’s data is being collected each year – how will this change current
industry and research practices? What do we need to access, publish and share?
 Open data policies…
Opportunities for Universities and particularly regional universities to play a significant
role in generating insight from data
 Mobile technologies…
Digital disruption is happening at an accelerating – App development and responsive
design – for industry development, engagement, knowledge transfer and decision making
 3D and visualisation technologies…
Massive innovation and research opportunities
Major technology and research trends

5. National
and
FedUni
research
priorities
CeRDI Government,
industry and
community
needs
The application of eResearch and development
of innovative digital solutions to bridge the gap
between academic research and government,
industry and community needs
CeRDI capability:

6. Research Domains:
Groundwater
Soil
Agriculture
NRM
Climate change
Urban planning
Health
History
Sports
Social science
Arts
Etc., etc.
Technology & services:
Content management
Web portals
Knowledge management
Single source publishing
Web GIS
Data interoperability
Visualisation
Web services
Training
Servers, hubs
Survey instruments
Etc., etc.
Research outputs:
Real world applications
Community empowerment
Capacity building
Government
Community
Industry
Research
Research papers
HDR completions
Impact assessment
Global collaborations
Sector development
Research-ready datasets
Etc., etc.
x =
CeRDI capability: eResearch

7. CeRDI
Groundwater: Challenges and Strategies - 41st IAH International Congress, Marrakech, September 15-19, 2014 7
A variety of applications:
groundwater , soils, agriculture, biodiversity, fire, history,
sports, municipal, etc.
Allows integration of cross-disciplinary data sets
spatial.federation.edu.au
CeRDI capability: spatial data portals

8. Third party e.g. ABARE, ABS, BOM, CSIRO, EPAs, Unis, ………State base mapping, etc.
Water agencies, research organisations, industry, individuals, etc.
End users, e.g. Browser, mobile application, desktop application, groundwater model, etc.
Used by: researcher, community group, farmer, environmentalist, media outlet, agribusiness, etc.
Output as:
web services (W3C, OGC
compliant)
Input as:
Data, map layers, grids, text
and imagery in native
format (or web services)
Citizen science
 Landcare,
environmental and
community groups
 landholders,
farmers, individuals
 tourists, visitors
 schools, TAFE,
University students
 clubs, volunteers
GIS
SQL
Sensors
Images
Documents
Organisational
data
Sounds
Interoperability capability

9. Online Farm Trials – www.farmtrials.com.au
 GRDC funded 2012 - 2015
 All grains trials for Australia online
 Working with Grower Groups, government, industry
 Spatial filtering and selective keyword filtering
 Brings in climate data and soils data on-the-fly
 Allows data exports
 Decision support tool for agronomists & growers
 Research-ready data sets of all grain trials

10. CropPro – www.croppro.com.au
 GRDC funded 2012-2014
 CeRDI engaged in Northern and Southern projects in 2014
 Online diagnostic tool for wheat and canola constraints
 Uses Lucid - keying software developed by UQ
 Science by DAFWA and DEPI (now DEDJTR)
 Decision support tool for agronomists & growers
 GRDC funded support in place for further enhancements 2015 & 2016

11. www.vvg.org.au
 Broadband grant 2011 - 2013
 Federates all Victorian groundwater data
 5 bore databases, spatial layers, EPA data
 Predictions on the fly
 User selected 3D visualisations
 Allows data exports
 Decision support tool for practitioners
 Research-ready data sets

12. Corangamite Soil Health Knowledge Base
www.ccmaknowledgebase.vic.gov.au/soilhealth
 Corangamite CMA funded 2012 - 2014
 Online portal that combines eLibrary of grey literature with web-GIS
 Over 3000 documents and 120 layers in the system (legacy data capture)
 Allows crowd-sourced soil test data (e.g. farm soil tests)
 Strongly supported by government, industry and community
 Allows data exports, screen capture as pdf, saved workspace links
 Decision support tool for farmers, agronomists, catchment managers, Landcare
 Research-ready data sets of soil and related information

13. Climate Ready
 Help residents prepare for climate change by creating their own interactive,
personalised action plan.
 Support the community in preparing for the likely impacts of floods, fire, drought and
heatwave
 Project partners include Mornington Peninsula shire, City of Kingston and
Bayside City Council

14. South West Climate Change Portal
South West Climate change portal
 Make relevant and unique information readily accessible to communities, agencies
and regional organisations
 Filter climate adaptation information to geographic areas or topics
 Assist the development and on-ground plans for integrated future planning

15. Corangamite NRM Planning Portal –
www.ccmaknowledgebase.vic.gov.au/nrmpp
 Corangamite CMA funded 2013 – 2015+
 Identifying spatial intersection of investment opportunities
 Web-GIS tools to add projects online, crowdsourcing data
 Allows data exports, screen capture as pdf, saved workspace links
 Captures past and current on-ground projects and investment
 Decision support tool for investors and community groups
 Research-ready data sets of NRM data

16. CeRDI capability: example projects
 Captures information and data on rare and threatened species
 Very strong community engagement and support
 Decision support tool for municipalities, community groups, etc.
 Research-ready data sets
www.swifft.net.au

17. CeRDI capability: example projects
Natural Disaster Research
Major landslide events of January 2011 in the Grampians National Park
Floods precipitated over 190 landslides, contributing significant impact to the
environment and communities surrounding the Park
FedUni engaged by Northern Grampians Shire
Investigate the social, economic and environmental impact of the events
Project not only produced traditional research report – but also maps and data and a
resource library
Benefits of this approached confirmed by the Rapid Response Team responding to
bushfires in the region 12 months later

18. CeRDI capability: example projects
Integrated Fire Management Planning
 An interoperable spatial information system for Barwon South West stakeholders
 Providing access to the most current relevant information and fire risk data
 Developing more effective partnerships and creating enhanced stakeholder
knowledge
 Supporting the community to develop integrated regional and local fire management
plans
 Technology and skills transfer achieved by embedding project staff on-site with CeRDI
team
 Emergency Management Victoria applying learnings through VINE project

19. CeRDI capability: example projects
Ballarat Historic Urban Landscapes – www.hulballarat.org.au
 Captures heritage values for city planning (UNESCO approach)
 Combines eLibrary, web-GIS, visualisations and social media tools
 Before & after sliders, photo maps, panoramic visualisations, 3D landscape models
 Liberated significant municipal data sets to online availability
 Very strong community engagement and support
 Decision support tool for city planners, developers, community groups, etc.
 Research-ready data sets

20. International information standards development
 3D visualising tool BoM funded, collaboration with Queensland University of Technology
 Project completed and delivered platform independent, 3D visualisation tool for OGC
standard data, to be implemented in the BoM's National Groundwater Information
System
 Groundwater international interoperability experiment (GW2IE)
 With CSIRO collaboration, implementing the XML – led environmental use case.
 Completion and release of first standard as outcome of September 2015 (OGC Meeting
in Orléans, France).
 Soil markup language (SoilML)
 CSIRO research partnership extended to 2016
 FedUni has joined OGC SoilML interoperability experiment

21. Systems architecture

22. CeRDI research focus
Collaborate with our research, industry and community partners:
To take advantage of the eResearch tools to:
 Interoperably integrate data (open data, research data, big data,
sensor data, legacy data, crowd sourced data… any data)
 Answer the frequently asked data/information questions
 Dynamically generate conceptual and predictive models
 Make new discoveries from the research ready datasets
 Measure the impacts on decision making and facilitate practice
change

23. Further information
Visit
www.cerd.edu.au
http://spatial.federation.edu.au
Contact
Dr Helen Thompson
Director CeRDI
h.thompson@federation.edu.au