Hire us Australian Space Agency

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cI1LS1WqedaZ-O7Md64emY-_-YiUb98L/view

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-GFuMnUCqs&ab_channel=SarahO%27Connor

The Australian Space Agency’s (ASA) Civil Space Strategy 2019-2028 identifies Earth Observation (EO) as one of seven National Civil Space Priority Areas (ASA, 2019, pp. 12-13). The ASA has committed to developing a roadmap for each of these Priority Areas. The EO from Space Roadmap, published in 2021, was developed by the ASA in collaboration with other Government agencies and the Australian space industry, and establishes a vision and plan for creating an “aligned, connected, and informed Australian space sector” (ASA, 2021, p. 4). This roadmap contains five focus segments, with the Enhanced Data Management segment being of relevance to the NASA Space Apps Challenge. The Enhanced Data Management segment identifies that by approximately 2024, the ASA wants to have established Enhanced Data Access Hubs (ASA, 2021, pp. 12-15), which are analogous to this challenge’s Capacity Building Resources Gateway. This Gateway or Hub, would serve “as a central gateway to help point users to the right training for their needs [and connect] them to [fit-for-purpose EO] resources” (NASA Space Apps website). 

Our team has created the blueprint for this Enhanced Data Access Hub and have submitted it as our Final Project for this challenge. In short, our solution provides (1) education on a variety of EO topics and (2) access to a range of EO resources and datasets. As explained in our Final Project our solution will allow policymakers to learn how EO can support flood monitoring and management and point users to relevant EO resources and datasets for analysis and improved decision-making. The solution that our team is proposing can be used for much more than just flood management, but for this challenge we have narrowed our focus to an important recent issue so we can make more of a Local Impact. 

Our team's solution centralises EO resources and allows end user to interact with these resources either through (1) a key word search or (2) a customised search based on focus area and skill set.

The website works like an online data portal where users search for the EO data and resources they are after. It offers peer review from users to ensure that the resources are accurate, timely, complete and suitable. The solution links off to the source location of the EO resources and doesn't host any sources, but instead acts as a bridge. This enhances its flexible and maintains its relevancy. A sample of our Enhanced Data Access Hub is displayed below:

The prototype solution above was created using Canva.

Our team utilised data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Australian Space Agency, the European Space Agency, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. We used this data to create a hypothetical EO resources list, and more specifically, we used the data to create what an end user would expect to locate and use in the context of flood and emergency management. There was a wealth of EO datasets and educational resources available to end users, and this inspired us to make it visible and easy to access and comprehend for those users combating flooding events.

Figure: Satellite image of flooding in Bourke, Australia. Image courtesy of Pablo Larraondo.

Floods are the most expensive, and often the most devastating, natural disaster in Australia (Queensland Government, 2011). Currently many Australians are facing severe flooding events which have destroyed people's homes, businesses and large areas of wilderness and farm land. Our team have friends and family that have been personally affected by recent flooding, and seeing the devastation first hand has motivated us to help. Our team is inspired by the shared goal of lending a helping hand and trying to assist Australian Government policymakers, emergency services crews and scientists utilise EO data and resources to better monitor, manage and respond to flooding events.

With the above Project Objective in mind, our approach to creating our EO Gateway solution was driven by our respective unique skills sets across the disciplines of systems engineering, enterprise cloud architecture, website design, data analysis, design thinking and business analysis. The journey began with a discovery phase where, based on our skill set, we researched topics relevant to flood management, EO data sets and types, learning management systems, capacity building resource gateway best practice across industry and the Australian Space Agency's (ASA) strategy and recent initiatives. Our team brought this research together and we created our prototype solution based on requirements and plans called out in the ASA's EO from Space Roadmap. Our Final Project includes a showcase of our solution, its architectural blueprints, and details on data feeds and sources.

Our team worked collaboratively with open discussions where we welcomed feedback on our ideas and work so that we could iterate and improve them together over the Hackathon. Setbacks and challenges were resolved through an open dialogue of ideas on how to overcome blockers and then we rallied around the team member's problem to support them resolve it. Overall, our experience of the NASA International Space Apps Hackathon was fantastic because we were given the opportunity to solve real-world challenges that make a meaningful impact to people's lives. We we will be back next year!

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Image on Solution Landing Page: Photo by ANIRUDH on Unsplash

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#EO, #earthobservation, #ASA, #floodmanagement, #spacedata, #Australia, #NSW, #MakeSPACE, #CreateExploreLearnBuild, #AlwaysSpaceForOneMore