The presentation that won the Best Presentation Award at the GITA ANZ Geospatial Solutions Conference was given by John Moore, Manager Building and Infrastructure Project, Emergency Information Coordination Unit (EICU) of the Land and Property Information Department of the Government of New South Wales.

The remarkable Sydney Down Under project brings together into a single database, utility infrastructure including water, wastewater, telecommunications, electric power, rail and subways, and roads and highways, together with buildings (above and below ground) including interior spaces and occupants. It integrates 3D BIM and geospatial and 2D data.  I don’t know of any other comparable comprehensive compilation of digital urban infrastructure for a city of this size anywhere in the world. 

To me the most impressive aspect of this project is managing to get 200 organizations including local and state governments, utilities and the telecommunications company to cooperate in providing the data.  As John Moore said in response to a question from the audience of how this was achieved, having emergency in the organization’s name helped.  Some of the data comes from the Emergency Services Spatial Information Library (ESSIL) database.  The project has been underway for over five years, but only recently achieved the critical mass required to find broad application.  John said that the data is refreshed every six months from the source organizations.  The buildings data comes from the City of Sydney (geometry) and occupants from another source.

The project is focussed on emergency and disaster management, but as you would expect, the database has realized other benefits as well, including planning, critical infrastructure protection, event management, and access and communications.  Since the information is intended for emergency response applications, its availability is restricted.