The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) brings together Victoria’s planning, local government, environment, energy, suburban development, forests, emergency management, climate change and water functions into a single department. Its aim is to strengthen connections between the environment, community, industry and economy.
The challenge is to maintain Victoria’s liveability with a population that is expected to almost double by 2050, while responding to climate change and protecting the natural environment, infrastructure and heritage for future generations.
The Challenge
DELWP, together with the Victorian Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the State Library of Victoria, wanted to create a tool which enabled Victorian property owners to identify and investigate the quality of land and groundwater in their property. This tool would require the development of a geocoded land use dataset from historic Sands and McDougall business directories dating from 1860 through to 1974.
The land use data was captured and analysed to feature in the new “Victoria Unearthed” online map system being developed in response to recommendation 14.1 from the 2016 Independent Inquiry into the EPA.
The Solution
The GHD Digital Intelligence Team worked with property data specialists Lotsearch to bring sense and structure to the various forms of data, manage the data effectively and bring disparate data sets together. The team relied on leading edge data analytics and business intelligence technology to help the client see patterns and find insights in the data.
The result included the categorisation of historic land uses based on potential contamination, a data cleanse, geocoding of the structured data and manual inspections to fix multiple geocoding errors.
Throughout the project’s lifecycle the team monitored and measured data quality, developed meta data and a data dictionary to assist with product data descriptors and delivered a final geocoded dataset for publication.
The Benefit
The data was shared via the public, interactive online Victoria Unearthed Map which was developed in response to recommendation 14.1 from the 2016 Independent Inquiry into the EPA. DELWP, EPA and the Victorian public were provided with a highly valuable framework for a spatial dataset.
The dataset assisted with identifying current and historical land uses which have the potential to cause land contamination. The governing agencies are also now moving towards the establishment of a comprehensive, time-aware spatial dataset representing historical land use across Victoria.
To view the map please click here.
For more information please visit www.ghd.com/digital or contact: