Federating world-leading research, data and technical capabilities to create Australia’s National Environmental Prediction System (NEPS). Community consultation presentation. 3-12 February 2020 Dr Michelle Barker (Facilitator) (Presentation v5)

1. National Environmental Prediction
System (NEPS)
Community consultations
3 -13 February 2020
Dr Michelle Barker (Facilitator)
Federating world-leading research, data and
technical capabilities to create Australia’s

2. Acknowledgement
of country
We wish to acknowledge the
traditional custodians of the land
we are meeting on, the Gadigal
people of the Eora Nation
We wish to acknowledge and
respect their continuing culture
and the contribution they make to
the life of this city and this region.
We pay our respects to their Elders
past, present and emerging.

3. Today’s agenda
Link to slides:
tinyurl.com/rfp82p8
Google docs:
tinyurl.com/t2fexwz
Twitter hashtags:
#NEPS #NCRIS
@NCRISImpact

4. Australia invests in national research infrastructure
• NCRIS is an Australian
Government funding
initiative
• NCRIS is a national network
of world-class research
infrastructure projects
• NEPS would be a new
national capability alongside
NCRIS projects

5. Developing a plan
for a National
Environmental
Prediction System

6. • Obtain broad agreement from key
stakeholders regarding the scope
of a NEPS
Expert Panel:
- Professor Rob Vertessy (Chair)
- Dr Andrea Hinwood
- Dr Adam Lewis
- Dr Phil McFadden AO
- Mr Warwick McDonald
- Dr Steve Morton
Supported by Terrestrial
Ecosystem Research Network
(TERN)
NEPS Scoping Study key objectives:
• Develop a detailed establishment
plan including identification of
stakeholder co‐investments and
actions necessary to support the
development

7. Consultation
participants
Feb 2020

8. Rationale
Vision
o Networked infrastructure
o Allowing integration of environmental observations with predictive modelling
o To provide evidence-based advice
o To boost our economy through improved environmental risk management
Drivers
o Increasingly urgent requirements from decision-makers for predictive advice on environmental
risks
o Maturity of existing infrastructure for environmental assessment
o Rapid technical advances in sensors and in data integration, and in research capacity for predictive
synthesis

9. Federating existing research infrastructure capabilities
Citizens Research Industry Government
Environmental
information community
v
International
(RDA, GBIF)
v
Existing information infrastructure
for climate (and other) prediction
Academies &
research centres
NCRIS RI
(inc Clouds)
GA
BoM
DoEE
ABS DAWR
DIIS
NEPS

10. Benefits
Users: simplified access to
rich cross-domain data on
the Australian environment,
with greater transparency,
reproducibility and reuse.
Service providers: greater
and more sophisticated use
of their digital assets and
from improved
understanding of priorities
for new data capture and
enrichment.

11. Poll: Which of the following describe you?
• Provider of environmental observational data
• Provider of environmental models and predictions
• Provider of environmental decisions
• Provider of environmental research infrastructure
• User of environmental observational data
• User of environmental models and predictions
• User of environmental decisions
• User of environmental research infrastructure

12. What does NEPS look like?
• Federated research infrastructure
• Not a research program or operational policy tool
• Goal is to enable good predictive models for any scenario
• Supporting collaborative science
• Value grows with more researchers, more data, and more models

13. Elements of an
Environmental
Prediction System

14. Federated Entity ~ Synthesis Activity
Collaboration across
three increasing levels:
• Shared conceptual
framework and
standards
• Shared access to
standardised data
• Shared and
interlocking system
models
ASRIS/
CSIRO

15. Synthesis centres characteristics include:
• Incubator for transformational science
• Highly interactive and connected culture
• Problem to solutions orientation
• Pathway for uptake
• Appetite for risk and adaptation
• Shared resources and services
Source: Rodrigo A, Alberts S, Cranston K, Kingsolver J, Lapp H, et al. (2013) Science Incubators: Synthesis Centers and Their
Role in the Research Ecosystem. PLoS Biol 11(1): e1001468. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001468

17. • Australian Aerobiology Working Group: medical
professionals, botanists, climate change modellers etc
• Collate and analyse regional pollen count data
• Provides data to medical community and allergy suffers

18. Flagship projects will help to:
• Form initial user community
• Seed NEPS with valuable data
and models
• Identify/resolve common
challenges
• Deliver early benefits and
value

19. Flagships – examples only
Australian
Fire Risk
Modelling
Urban
Strategic
Planning
Environmental
Impact
Assessments

20. SAFE
Urban
Strategic
Planning
NEPS
Investment
Conceptual
Framework
Federated
Data
Interoperable
Models
Provenance &
Traceability
NEPS Flagship Projects (Examples Only)
Regulatory Processes
Research Processes
Australian Fire
Risk Modeling

21. A future without NEPS?
• Fragmented, duplicated, ad hoc, inefficient efforts – opportunity and
financial costs
• Limited opportunities to integrate insights and models across domains
• National planning for environmental change curtailed
• Major decisions around key issues made without coordinated scientific input

23. Today’s discussion topics (30 mins each)
A. What are the key aspects that need to be included
in NEPS and which of these are the priorities?
B. What additional resources or approaches are
needed to enable NEPS?
C. What could you or your organisation contribute in
the context of NEPS?

24. What you can do
Questions and
comments?
Make a comment or submission
NEPS Submissions close
5pm AEDT
Monday, 2 March 2020
Email tern@uq.edu.au
NEPS online: https://science.uq.edu.au/neps

26. Today’s agenda
Link to slides:
tinyurl.com/rfp82p8
Google docs:
tinyurl.com/t2fexwz
Twitter hashtags:
#NEPS #NCRIS
@NCRISImpact

27. Topic A. What are the
key aspects that need
to be included in NEPS
and which of these are
the priorities?

28. Poll question: Please rank these potential aspects of NEPS in priority order
1. Establish a Synthesis Centre
2. Coordinate development of a comprehensive set of Australian Essential Environmental Variables
3. Develop/coordinate development of cross-domain spatiotemporal data integration services
4. Coordinate development/interoperability of catalogue services for discovery and use of vocabularies, services, datasets,
etc
5. Establish /coordinate ecosystem of modelling environments/expertise to deliver world-class cross-domain environmental
models
6. Focus on small number of high-value achievable exemplars for cross-domain integration, modelling, prediction (e.g.
specific systems such as the Murray-Darling, national-scale microclimate modelling, biodiversity value of land units, heat
islands, ...)
7. Represent Aust interests in international networks/standards bodies

29. Poll question: Which of the following major classes of information access are
most important?
1. Cross-domain access to all primary observations and measurements for
any location (point, grid cell or shape) within any time period.
2. Access to best-available modelled representations of key environmental
variables at different scales in space and time.
3. Hypercube functionality to retrieve modelled representations of a set of
key environmental variables across multiple space-time units at different
scales – including grid cells, cadastral units, and other arbitrary divisions
4. Ability to schedule models and analyses using arbitrary combinations of
spatiotemporal and non-spatiotemporal assets
5. Provenance, source data, contributing institutions and users for any data
asset or data product

30. What are some research and
industry R&D outcomes that
will be realised as a result of
this new capability, that
could not be achieved
without these aspects?
Add comments to google
doc: tinyurl.com/t2fexwz
Sectors include:
• Health
• Environment
• Mining and
resources
• Tourism

31. Today’s agenda
Link to slides: tinyurl.com/rfp82p8 Google docs: tinyurl.com/t2fexwz
Twitter hashtags: #NEPS #NCRIS @NCRISImpact

32. Topic B. What additional resources or
approaches are needed to enable NEPS?
What is needed in the NEPS investment plan, as potential future
additions to other organisations to enable the the NEPS vision?
• Resources to increase openness/access to existing/future data
• Funding to expand or maintain key long-term monitoring efforts
• Resources to participate in international networks, etc.
• Resources and staffing to coordinate efforts within NEPs to model
systems and align with other infrastructures
• Resources to build models
Which are needed in the short/medium/long-term?

33. Some challenges
Scientific
• Near term forecasts can ignore or even create long-term problems
• Maintain long term perspective, use long term data, even when we are focused on near-
term forecasts
• Use model-data cycle to learn the actual scaling structures of the systems
Social
• Failed forecasts breed scepticism about modelling and predictions
• People are bad at thinking probabilistically
• Adopt language of the military? E.g., threat levels, scenarios, consequences of actions
• Incorporate users in integrated learning communities when developing forecasts. “When
you incorporate users into the decision, they don’t blame you when surprises happen.”

34. Poll question: What are major barriers to establish/maintain a NEPS capability?
• cultural divide (eg between govt/industry/research or across research disciplines)
• competency (in modelling, data management etc)
• commitment (from govt to create and sustain)
• communications (with key stakeholders)
• the concept (is this supported)
Note: all five are needed to maintain successful collaboration

35. What new data sources,
analytic methods or tools that
are potential game changers
for environmental
management could arrive in
the next five years?
Add comments to google doc:
tinyurl.com/t2fexwz

36. Topic C. What
could you or your
organisation
contribute in the
context of NEPS?
Examples
• Established data standards
• Existing datasets (including consideration of
their FAIRness, openness, standards-
compliance, etc.)
• Environmental models (algorithms or services)
• Representation of Australian research needs in
international standards bodies
• Interfaces for accessing international
environmental datasets for use in Australia
• Virtual laboratories
• Storage/compute facilities
• Communications channels
• Use cases for environmental prediction

37. If you could access funding
to participate in NEPS,
what would you invest in?
Would you rank this
investment as:
- Urgent
- Nice to have
- Wish list

38. What are some research and
industry R&D outcomes that
will be realised as a result of
this new capability, that
could not be achieved
without these aspects?
Add comments to google
doc: tinyurl.com/t2fexwz
Sectors include:
• Health
• Environment
• Mining and
resources
• Tourism

39. Poll question: What will be some other outcomes if Australia does not
develop a NEPS capability?

40. Summation
•Topic A: What are the key aspects that need to be
included in NEPS and which of these are the
priorities?
•Topic B: What additional resources or approaches are
needed to enable NEPS?
•Topic C: What could you or your organisation
contribute in the context of NEPS?

41. What you can do
Make a comment or submission
NEPS Submissions close
5pm AEDT
Monday, 2 March 2020
Email tern@uq.edu.au
NEPS online: https://science.uq.edu.au/neps

42. SAFE – Shared Analytic Framework for the Environment

43. Parallel and separate processes
ASCERTAIN
factors
ACQUIRE
information
ASSESS
and decide
ASSURE
monitoring
ADAPT
Management
ADJUST
Values
REVIEW
Drivers
REFINE
Models
SPRAT
TERN
BOM
SAFE
AURIN
Regulatory Processes
Research Processes

44. Digital Twin of
Australian Environment
Science-Policy
Interface
NEPS
Investment
Unifying effort for environmental prediction
ASCERTAIN
factors
ACQUIRE
information
ASSESS
and decide
ASSURE
monitoring
ADAPT
Management
ADJUST
Values
REVIEW
Drivers
REFINE
Models
Regulatory Processes
Research Processes
Conceptual
Framework
Federated
Data
Interoperable
Models
Provenance &
Traceability

45. SAFE
Urban
Strategic
Planning
NEPS
Investment
Conceptual
Framework
Federated
Data
Interoperable
Models
Provenance &
Traceability
NEPS Flagship Projects (Examples Only)
Regulatory Processes
Research Processes
Australian Fire
Risk Modeling