Our last speaker for this session is Dr Johnathan Kool who is going to
talk about a new era of Antarctic exploration, Australia's East Antarctic mapping initiative.
Johnathan is manager of our Australian Antarctic Data Centre. He's responsible for
curating and delivering all of AAD's data and supervising its mapping and GIS capabilities.
He's currently known for his computer-focused work but was formerly a coral reef biologist and his
current work to build the mapping and charting program for East Antarctica is considered his
career highlight. Thanks Jonathan. Thank you,
thank you very much Nicole, I'm keenly aware that I'm all that's standing between people and lunch
so I'll try and make sure that I send people in with a feeling of excitement and also opportunity.
As Nicole said, I'm Dr Johnathan Kool. Dr Kool of the Antarctic seems like it would
work out pretty well but like Phil I am in the Technology and Innovation branch and we
see it as our mission to support the great work of Science and to facilitate things so
that they can get on with what they need to do and make the discoveries that need to be made.
We heard from Matt King earlier talking about the blanks on the map and 'there be dragons'
and I suppose that's what the mapping program is about is going out and challenging those dragons,
and when people often think about the Golden Era of exploration they think
of Captain Cook or Mawson or maybe the BANZARE Expedition, and a big part of that was actually
undertaking those mapping activities and putting to paper what they found there.
And in fact Australia has been involved with many many important mapping activities and
in 1939 a map was developed of Antarctica and this actually became the basis, it was it was
the authoritative map of Antarctica at the time and was the basis of Australia's Antarctic, the
Antarctic territory as we know it today. But this continues today and so the importance of mapping,
the importance of discovery has continued being reflected by governments, the Australian Antarctic
Strategy and 20-year Action Plan highlighted the importance of developing an enhanced mapping,
an enhanced program of mapping and charting for East Antarctica. This was continued to
be supported under the update to the 20-year Strategy and Action Plan and now we continue
to receive very strong support by government in order to implement this and we put together some
proposed activities as part of an East Antarctic mapping program document and so we're currently
going through a process of engaging with a range of partners across government. We've identified
a sweep of different areas but this is not the final tally, we're really just trying to work with
people to understand where do people want to go, where are the areas that are important to them,
and once we have a sense of where then we can try and fit it together into when can we put it in a
meaningful schedule. But again, we're just going through that process with a range of different
partners to identify where it would make the we would get the greatest value out of mapping,
and we will map them we will map there on the land including field surveys, station surveys,
in putting putting in improved ground control to improve positioning, same with real-time
kinematic radios, also in conjunction with Geoscience Australia putting in a satellite-based
augmentation, and there are new land-based drones as well. By sea, there's RSV Nuyina watercraft,
the vehicles that Jonny had showed earlier and other autonomous water vehicles. By air,
there should be several drones in there, in terms of aerial drones, helicopters and aircraft.
And something that's really exciting is that what Digital Earth Antarctica that
we would be undertaking in association with Geoscience Australia using world-leading open
data cube technology, and for those of you who aren't already familiar with Digital
Earth Antarctica there's a video that was produced by our colleagues that highlight
it's about taking an integrated approach to all forms of remotely sensed imagery. People often
think about satellite images but we could also potentially incorporate radar information, aerial
photographs, it's remote sensing writ large, but it's being able to take this analysis-ready data
and take a look at changes through time, generating statistics and so Geoscience
Australia have already developed this for the Australian continent as well as for Africa, but
we would be taking this world-leading technology and applying it in the Antarctic context as well,
to get a synoptic view of what's going on in the Antarctic continent and generating and supporting
those scientific efforts I was describing before. So in short people often think of the Golden Age
of Exploration as being sometime long time ago, but I am firmly of the opinion that the Golden Age
of Exploration is now and we have the opportunity to make it happen, and so again I want to send you
into lunch with a feeling of excitement and opportunity, and we look forward to working
with all of you to advance Australia's Antarctic mapping interests. Thank you.