Australia

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Parts of the world will become virtualized as time and people arise to tackle them.  If you are working on any particular location and are willing to be listed here, please let us know!

Data

• SPLASH was a web server for aerials, parcel and other data layers for the Sydney area, the components included 45Gb of aerial images, but it appears to be no longer online (was at bearings.nsw.gov.au)
• the government-backed mapping agency is Geoscience Australia (AUSLIG)
  • their Free Downloads page is a good starting place
  • LS7 Picture Mosaic of Australia (false-color, 300m resolution) can be browsed as an ECW in a small web-plugin viewer (very slow) or downloaded (registration required) as a 58MB ECW file
  • full national elevation data is the GEODATA 9 second DEM (around 250m)
• there are third-party providers like GEOIMAGE
• an article on  the Geocentric Datum of Australia (GDA) explains the difference between this new Datum and the previous Australia-specific Datums used (Australian Map Grid [AMG66/84], based on the Australian National Spheroid [ANS])
• SRTM3 (90m elevation grid) is available as of July 2004, from their FTP site
• Great Barrier Reef (GBR)
  • There exists a DEM (bathymetry) of the GBR at 250m resolution, compiled from various sources by the CRC Reef Research Center.  Anyone wanting this DEM should contact them about it.
  • their Technical Report 33 has more information
  • reportedly some work is being done to produce a 30m DEM, perhaps available in 2005
• The harbour of Sydney has been surveyed bathymetrically by DSTO but the data isn't public
• AAMHatch
  • a consulting firm that provides GIS services and data, including textured 3D city models for cities (primarily in Australia, including Melbourne and Hobary) based on oblique aerials from Pictometry

Projects

• Adelaide 3D City Model
  • The city government is slowly assembling a survey-accurage 3D model of the city, with the goal to "assist in visualising the City's future, particularly in relation to growth scenarios and land use planning."
  • New buildings are submitted by developers (not the general public) and become the property of the city.  They accept submission in 3DS, .X, FLT, or Collda (DAE).
  • They don't distribute the city model as-is, but only allow viewing access through Skyline's TerraExplorer Viewer
    • Unfortunately, when i tried it (December 2012), the city model Viewer did not run in either Chrome 23 ("*** Browser not OK") nor in Internet Explorer 9 ("*** SG initilisation failed Object doesn't support property")
  • The base map is very accurate, claim is "generally within 50cm accuracy, DEM is vertically accurate to +/- 0.15m, buildings are accurate to 0.25m"
    
  • Aerometrex has a blog entry comparing it to their own (more detailed) aero3Dpro model at Adelaide 3D city model - From High Above
• In 2007, a 'Virtual Australia' project was proposed by a number of Australian geospatial users
  • Article from IJDE: Virtual Australia: its key elements - know, think, communicate
  • Definition: "A virtual (digital) model containing and representing all non-trivial objects and their contextual environment – from blue sky to bedrock – in (real world) Australia."
  • Very long-term proposal involving millions of realtime tracked objects
  • Bruce Thompson and T.O. Chan  - State of Victoria, Ian Bishop - Univ. of Melbourne, Peter Woodgate - CRCSI, and others
• CSIRO's "Glass Earth"
  • Originally proposed in 1999 as a project using a lot of new geophysical sensing technologies to create a "transparent" set of 3D geological data for "the top kilometre of the Australian continent"
  • Supposedly it would include "advanced visualisation", although there is no evidence that occurred
  • As of 2009, a glassearth.com site appeared, but as of 2011 the domain only goes to the main CSIRO site
  • Is it a real project, or just a talking point for CSIRO's department of Exploration and Mining ?
• BLUElink is an ocean forecasting project to "synthesise and assimilate real-time data on winds, ocean temperature, salinity and sea surface height"; it's unclear whether the data would be useful for terrain visualization

Scenes

• The City of Perth worked with Simmersion to produce 3D models, see City of Perth 3D City Models
• the 3map VRML project site has some models: Sydney (a few downtown buildings), Perth, and a small area in Tasmania
• Some very progressive city governments have map servers which include vectors and imagery.
  • Example: City of Manningham (near Melbourne) has the site Mapping Manningham.
• Manningham has even produced some excellent interactive visualizations using the VTP software.
  Some snapshots from Michael Johnston, GIS/GPS Group, Manningham City Council, September 2005:
   

  February 2006:

  Thanks to their cutting-edge work with the VTP, they won local recognition, the 2006 Local Government Professionals Award for Excellence in Innovative Management Initiative.

• Another area within Manningham called Doncaster Hill
  • As part of their redevelopment plan, produced a Virtual Reality Model, begun in 2003-2004 by UFL (urban futures laboratory at RMIT)
  • 
  • As of 2011, the project is still ongoing and improving, see Virtual Doncaster Hill
    
• Other historical UFL Projects in Australia:
  • Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, 2003, proposed residential tower in Melbourne
  • Bourke Street Mall, 2002.  Model was "used for design and review of public space, analysis of designs in regard to occupational health and safety, options for layout and designs, testing height and configurations of street furniture and services access, consultation with stakeholders and general public, presentation and promotion of concepts and designs."
  • City of Maribyrnong, 2003.  "A skyline study, the Laboratory procedurally built the digital model from Council's GIS data bases; this was used in a series of workshop viewings to test a number of height and bulk scenarios, and to test several planning applications."
• City of Mount Gambier
  • the city website describes it as 'South Australia's second largest City, located midway between the major capital cities of Melbourne and Adelaide', with very scenic volcanic terrain nearby
  • 2007: Michael Silvy (msilvy@mountgambier.sa.gov.au) has done some VTP modelling of the region with terrain and city GIS data:
    

Australian plants

• contact: Ian D Bishop, Director - Centre for GIS and Modelling, The University of Melbourne
• Ian sent VTP some great Australian plant images for 4 species, some data notes
  • Eucalyptus obliqua - Messmate Stringybark
  • Pomaderris apetala - Pomaderris
  • Acacia dealbata - Silver Wattle
  • Nothofagus cunninghamii - Myrtle
• correspondence between age and height in meters
  

  Age	Eucalypt	Pomaderris	Acacia	Myrtle
  1	1.7	1.7	1.7	0.1
  3	4.5	4.3	4.3	0.3
  10	12	10	10	1
  25	23	14	14	2.5
  89	50

• images suitable for billboard textures - filenames have some correlation to age

  	filename	cropped size	estimated size in meters (height, width)
  Eucalypt	euc3a	551x850	4.5, 2.9
  	euc3b	548x1183	5, 2.3
  	euc10	329x822	12, 4.8
  	euc25a	400x1420	23, 6.5
  	euc25c2	512x1328	21, 8.1
  	euc89a	612x1330	40, 18.4
  	euc89b	684x1242	35, 19.3
  Myrtle	myrtle1	?	2.5, 1.2 (large plant, >>1 year old)
  Pomaderris	pomaderris1	590x879	1.7, 1.14
  	pomaderris3	476x1190	4.5, 1.8
  Acacia	swattle1	554x1065	4.3, 2.2

• these have been integrated into the VTP Plant Library