The Pit of Success: How the Bioregional Assessments Program used FME as a Strategic Capability

The potential for coal seam gas extraction in key agricultural areas in Australia has put the mining community and the agricultural community at odds. Due to the highly polarising attitudes to coal seam gas and the importance of both the mining sector and the agricultural sector to the economy of Australia, the Bioregional Assessments Program, seeking to ensure an unbiased assessment, has made transparency one of its guiding principles. This means carefully tracking every one of more than thirty thousand features, ensuring at all times that licence restrictions are observed, and that sensitive locations such as the habitats of endangered species are treated appropriately. To complete the assessments the program assembled a set of experts whose skills range from scientific specialists such as hydrologists, geologists and ecologists, to geospatial experts to IT experts including programmers, specialists in data analytics, search engine technology and responsive web technology. The various experts were often at odds and working out the best approach required a number of iterations. A framework was needed that would gradually improve processes to allow clear pathways to emerge. The IT team selected PostGIS and FME working on Amazon Web Services for the job. This presentation is about our experience as IT people introducing FME into the world of academic scientists. It is about the challenge of working with multi-disciplinary teams, of forging a common language and creating a meaningful framework of concepts that allow other disciplines to be able to contribute in an optimal way.