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Government of Western Australia
Western Australian Land Information System
WALIS Marine Group - MEETING MINUTES
DATE:
TIME:
LOCATION:
CHAIRMAN:
Tuesday 22 November 2011
LUNCH 12:00-2:00 MEETING 2:00–4:00
1 Midland Square, Midland, Landgate, WALIS Conference Room
Jenny Smith
ATTENDANCE
Vivienne Panizza
Rodney Hoath
Luke Edwards
Mark Sheridan
Kathy Murray
Merv Lynch
John Fenner
Russell Teede
Ric Mahoney
Jenny Skipper
Kerry Skipper
Department of Planning (DoP)
Department of Transport - Marine (DoT)
Western Australia Marine Science Institution (WAMSI)/ iVEC
Department of Environment & Conservation (DEC)
Department of Environment & Conservation (DEC)
Curtin
Landgate (Boundary Services)
Landgate (Remote Sensing)
Department of Transport - Marine (DoT)
WALIS (Chair)
WALIS (Minutes)
APOLOGIES
Andrew Crotty
Bob Gozzard
Brett Harrison
LGA: Town of Cottesloe (on a training course)
Department of Mines & Petroleum (DMP) (away)
Department of Fisheries (DoF) (on a training course)
CHAIR’S WELCOME
Jenny opened the meeting at 1:50pm.
MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS MEETING
September minutes were accepted with one minor change from John Fenner. Members were advised
that as part of the WALIS office restructure, administrative support from the WALIS Office will be
reduced. As a result the WMG minutes will be scaled down to agency reports sent in and action items.
1. REVIEW OF ACTION ITEMS
The Action Items were reviewed.
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Government of Western Australia
Western Australian Land Information System
WALIS Marine Group - MEETING MINUTES
2. AGENCY REPORTS
Department of Mines & Petroleum (DMP) - Geological Survey WA
Rottnest Island: Data capture for RIA
 Visit Rottnest Island to ground-truth the mapped quaternary sediment cells and associated
vulnerability analysis;
 Discuss with RIA potential applications of the sediment cell and coastal vulnerability analysis in
relation to biodiversity, tourist site-specific visiting patterns, recreational opportunities and
infrastructure analysis, qualitative modelling of processes.
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Pilbara and Canning coasts: DoP funded project in collaboration with DamaraWA
Complete the description and mapping of coastal land systems at the tertiary compartment scale;
Complete the description and mapping of coastal landforms for the Onslow, Karratha and Port
Hedland areas of planning interest;
Identify the primary, secondary and tertiary sediment cells of the three areas of planning interest
and document the shelf, inshore, nearshore and backshore landforms of each tertiary sediment
cell;
Document the vulnerability of the whole coast at the tertiary compartment and tertiary sediment
cell level;
Visit the Onslow, Karratha and Port Hedland study areas to ground-truth the mapped data;
Commence report preparation for DoP;
Commence creation of the WACoast datasets for publication by GSWA in mid-2012.
WAMSI/iVEC
IMOS / AODN:
Development of the WA Node of Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN) continues with early 2012
being targeted for release of a WA specific version of the AODN portal
(http://portal.aodn.org.au/webportal/).
With the recent WA Government IMOS funding there has deployment of shelf and deep water
moorings. The ITF (Indonesian through-flow) line consists of four shelf moorings and two deep-water
moorings have also been deployed. A 50-m station along the Kimberley line was deployed in October
2011; the rest of the Kimberley and Pilbara moorings will be deployed in early 2012.
iVEC:
New program leader for Industry and Government Uptake Program - Mr Andrew Beveridge. He can be
contacted on a.beveridge@ivec.org or 08 6436 8126 for further information on how State Government
can be involved with iVEC.
WAMSI:
WAMSI 1 is now concluding. The end of WAMSI 1 Conference was successfully held on 19th / 20th
September at the Maritime Museum. WAMSI 2 commences on 1st January 2012 with some funded
activities in the Kimberley and in dredging and with a MRI bid into State Government for funding a
major new integrated Program of research. WAMSI data will be made accessible through the WA Node
of AODN.
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Government of Western Australia
Western Australian Land Information System
WALIS Marine Group - MEETING MINUTES
Landgate – SCDB
Landgate and Geoscience Australia (GA) Collaborative Project on WA Coastlines
A summary and update of the two year Project were reported at the last two meetings, in July and
September. Analysis continues at GA on the data we supplied for critical points in the determination
of the new (updated) position for the Territorial Seas Baseline (TSB). Landgate’s Location Products
and Services Branch is continuing to identify the most suitable digital imagery around the State,
including scanning of analogue imagery in the Eucla coastal region, which was previously not available
as digital imagery.
SCDB Coastlines and Marine Cadastre Boundaries
Ongoing revision of Coastlines and Marine Cadastre Boundaries data is occurring in the SCDB.
Currently, we are updating the 3 NML’s and 12 NML’s around the whole WA coastline. Following the
extensive spatial enhancement to the coastal region from Exmouth Gulf to west of Port Hedland, we
have updated the SCDB’s HWM and LWM in the vicinity of the Ningaloo Marine Park from Exmouth
generally south to Cape Farquhar.
Landgate - Satellite Remote Sensing Services
Currently in collaboration with the Centre for Water Research for the modelling of coastal areas in the
Swan.
Department of Transport
Funding of 1.2m for the LIS Coastal Vulnerability Business Case has been approved. Recruitment will
now begin for a Project Manager at DoT. Recruitment of technical specialists for the whole LIS
Project may be done in a consolidated approach. The project team will focus on improving the quality
and access of about 25 datasets and the Project Manager will work closely with the WMG.
Transport have also put in a submission to Royalties for Region for the Coastal Protection Program
which will provide a further $4m in funding to the existing $1m being received.
Department of Planning
DoP/WAPC MoU with Geoscience Australia - Storm Surge and SLR inundation modeling for Bunbury
and Busselton.
The Bunbury modeling has been completed, the final report, along with a public information sheet will
be considered by the South West Regional Planning Committee in December. It is proposed that this
information will then be made publicly available via the Planning WA website.
The Busselton modeling has commenced. This will also include a coincident rainfall event. A
preliminary report is expected about March 2012 with the final by end of June 2012.
WA Coastal Compartments work is continuing. Damara has been contracted to undertake a study for
the Pilbara Coast, this is well underway with a draft report due by the end of the year.
One of the first detailed coastal compartment assessment reports, the Dongara to Cape Burney
Coastal Geomorphology Study is now publically available in the Planning WA website at
http://www.planning.wa.gov.au/709.asp
Department of Environment & Conservation
The proposed Eighty Mile Beach Marine Park plan has been released and is now open for public
comment which closes on 20 January 2012.
The Marine Science Program is progressing with several projects, including the Gorgon Dredging
program. Two of DEC’s SLICP requests have been approved for Bathymetry capture in the Ningaloo,
Sharkey Bay, Jurien Bay and Metro Parks. Kathy is happy to provide copies of this data once captured.
WALIS Office
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Government of Western Australia
Western Australian Land Information System
WALIS Marine Group - MEETING MINUTES
Port Hedland and Dampier Port Authorities have indicated an interest to join the WMG. The WMG are
in agreement to have Port Authorities represented. As from 2012 Patric Gethin and Shannon Browne
will be included in the contacts list and meeting invitations.
3. PRESENTATION
Hyperspectral Sensing – Merv Lynch
Merv gave a presentation on Hyperspectral Sensing, including airborne hyperspectral sensing of the
marine environment and some recent results from Shark Bay.
Hyperspectral imaging gets a makeover – extract from TERN November Newsletter [tern@uq.edu.au]
AusCover’s Perth node is leading a national collaborative project to coordinate Australian scientific work
in hyperspectral imaging that will improve the country’s capability and increase our international standing
in the field. The project will encompass the development of standardised software to process and display
hyperspectral data recorded by satellite and airborne sensors.
Hyperspectral imaging makes use of the fact that every natural material has a unique colour or spectral
‘signature’. A hyperspectral sensor may record data in hundreds of narrow bands or wavelengths of the
visible, near infrared and thermal infrared light that is reflected or scattered by every natural material.
The data from each measurement needs to be processed to form an image. The images provide very
clear, detailed pictures of vegetation, soil types, water quality, and shallow-water marine habitats,
making it useful in monitoring the environment and understanding land use.
Professor Merv Lynch, in the Department of Imaging and Applied Physics at Curtin University, works
with AusCover. He reported that scientists from several Australian research institutions agreed at a
recent workshop in Perth to develop generic processing software that would achieve much greater
efficiencies and result in a higher quality and more versatile product. These advances would position
Australia to be well prepared to take advantage of the sequence of the next generation of satellite and
airborne sensors.
AusCover itself will acquire and use hyperspectral images taken from the supersites and national
transects. Supersites are relatively large areas that are representative of the range of vegetation types,
such as tropical forests and rangelands, found on the Australian continent, and are used to collect data
about those environments. Terrestrial transects are long corridors across a region that are designed to
capture gradients, for example annual rainfall along a transect that runs from the coast to the interior and
may change by 500 mm or more a year. By monitoring variability along transects over long periods
scientists expect to be able to more readily detect the impact of climate change.
Existing sensors on Earth-observing satellites typically have just a few spectral bands. For example,
Landsat and SPOT (Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre, or Satellite for Earth Observation) may have
four or five sensing bands or spectral channels, such as blue, red, green, near infrared and thermal
infrared. However, the spectral properties of the range of cover on the Earth’s surface or on the seafloor
environment is huge, and several hundred spectral bands may be required to identify and discriminate
particular species and even sub-species. So, hyperspectral data will provide a far more detailed
inventory of the Earth system by being able to classify in detail its biogeochemical components and how
these change over time. ‘Historically, several Australian centres have processed hyperspectral datasets,
and they have been operating more or less independently,’ Merv said.
‘We agreed that it’s important to build on what we have learned from experiences using Hyperion, which
was the first hyperspectral Earth-observation satellite, launched by the USA in 2000. The US Geological
Survey has provided the Hyperion dataset recorded for Australia free to the research community. ‘Much
of the code to process its data is currently in the form of ENVY scripts, which you could run on a desktop
computer. Although it’s not decided yet, the scientists at the workshop favour reworking the existing code
so that it can also be executed on supercomputers,’ Merv said.
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Government of Western Australia
Western Australian Land Information System
WALIS Marine Group - MEETING MINUTES
‘High-resolution hyperspectral datasets are rather large – you measure them in gigapixels – and they will
be larger in the future, so desktop computers can’t really handle remote-sensing data any more, other
than for testing code or doing test runs while developing code. As we move into the next generation of
sensors we see the need to use supercomputers to process the data.
‘Open-source generic software will also make it much easier for end-users to optimise processing for
their specific requirements and in no way will it limit the specific application they wish to develop.’
Scientists from CSIRO, the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, the University of Adelaide,
Curtin University, and the United States Department of Defense took part in the workshop.
4. GENERAL BUSINESS
4.1 Events
TERN Data Users' Workshop on the 8 December. http://www.ivec.org/node/416
The primary purpose of the Workshop is to review the range of Terrestrial Ecosystem Research
Network (TERN) products that are being provided FREE to users through TERN including the AusCover
remote sensing program and to provide examples of the uptake of these TERN products WA users for
monitoring and management purposes.
Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) workshops on new remote-sensing software
TERN and AusCover are organising two workshops on the new (VIIRS) processing software that has just
begun to be used in satellite sensing. A VIIRS workshop will be held in Perth on 6-8 February 2012, the
workshop will be presented by a team comprising Professor Paul Menzel, Mr Liam Gumley and Dr Geoff
Cureton from the Space Science and Engineering Centre (SSEC) and the Cooperative Institute for
Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. This team wrote the
well-known and widely used International MODIS/AIRS Processing Package (IMAPP). The workshops will
cover the instrument characteristics, the algorithms, the hands-on processing of simulated datasets
and, if they are available in time, processing of VIIRS down-linked datasets. Information on the
program, venues and registration will be emailed to everyone on the TERN central email list and to
other remote sensing groups. For more information contact Professor Mervyn Lynch, in the
Department of Imaging and Applied Physics, Curtin University, Perth, by email or on (08) 9266 7540 or
0407 443 951.
Metocean Awareness Course
The course will be held 15-17 February 2012 in Perth. The course explains why meteorology and
oceanography (metocean) is important to the offshore oil and gas and marine renewable industries,
explores how the regional metocean conditions around the world impact operations and engineering
design, examines how metocean statistics are presented and how they are used, explains how weather
and ocean forecasts are derived and identifies the process for obtaining key metocean deliverables.
Contact perthevents@sut.org for more details.
6th WA State Coastal Conference
The Conference will be held in Exmouth on 7-11 May 2012. Visit
http://www.2011wacoastalconference.com.au/ or contact Sharon Haseldine, on 65519344
Sharon.Haseldine@planning.wa.gov.au
Marine Extremes - and Everything In Between: AMSA-NZMSS 2012 Joint Conference
Will be held at Wrest Point Hobart, Tasmania 1-5 July 2012.
You are invited to submit your Symposium for consideration, or to suggest thematic sessions of
relevance to the conference theme. Please send outlines and suggestions to the chair of our scientific
program committee, Dr Karen Miller. More information available on: View Event Summary and
http://www.amsa-nzmss2012.com.au/ .
Everyone was wished a safe and Merry Christmas and the meeting closed at 3:45pm.
4.2 Next Meeting
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Government of Western Australia
Western Australian Land Information System
WALIS Marine Group - MEETING MINUTES
Potential WMG Meeting Dates for 2012: (Venue & Agenda to be confirmed)
Tuesday 13 March 2012
2-4pm Landgate, 1 Midland square, WALIS
Tuesday 15 May 2012
2-4pm Landgate, 1 Midland square, WALIS
Tuesday 17 July 2012
2-4pm Landgate, 1 Midland square, WALIS
Tuesday 18 September 2012
2-4pm Landgate, 1 Midland square, WALIS
Tuesday 20 November 2012
2-4pm Landgate, 1 Midland square, WALIS
Conference room
Conference room
Conference room
Conference room
Conference room
ACTION ITEMS
Number
Actions
Who
1
SEPT 2.1
2
SEP 2.2
3
SEP 2.3
Jenny
Russell
Jenny
Chris
Jenny
Aaron has provisionally committed
to 13 March 2012
Meeting was held on Wednesday 9
November at DoT in Fremantle
Organise for May / June 2012
4
SEP 2.4
Aaron Thorn to do a presentation on the Port
Hedland DEM at a future meeting.
WALIS Office to coordinate the attendance of
WMG representatives at the meeting with Fugro.
WALIS Office to coordinate a presentation by AAM
on bathymetry and LIDAR and available
technologies.
Luke to forward contact details for the
representative at Flinders University in regards to
an AMSAR presentation.
Status
Luke
Jenny
Airbourne Research Australia
http://ara.es.flinders.edu.au/index
Main.html
http://www.flinders.edu.au/people
/jorg.hacker - Details of the
director whom Merv will chat to
5
NOV
6
NOV
7
NOV
8
NOV
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Notify WMG / DOP – Vivienne where bathymetry
(other than the usual government custodians) was
sourced for specific DEC projects
Check Marine Futures Website and provide
feedback to WMG if data is free and accessible
Do a detailed presentation / hands on workshop
on AODN (data streams, technology available)
Follow up with Landgate – GA agreement on
purchasing satellite images for Kathy Murray / DEC
Kathy
Luke
Luke
Russell
May / June 2012