EcoCommons to Support Ecological Data Service for State of Environment Reporting

QCIF has been awarded an Advance Queensland Industry Research Foundations grant to create an innovative ecological data service using EcoCommons Australia, a modelling, analytics and decision support infrastructure supported by the Planet Research Data Commons. The data service will assist data management, species distribution modelling and statistical analysis for State of the Environment reporting.

Using EcoCommons Australia technology and expertise, the project, Ecological data service for state of environment reporting, aims to revolutionise environmental reporting by improving efficiency, transparency, and repeatability.

“This new opportunity, supported by Advance Queensland, will assist QCIF and EcoCommons Australia in achieving their goals of increasing technology uptake for government and Commonwealth-level environmental reporting,” said Dr Sebastian Lopez-Marcano, Principal Data Scientist at QCIF.

Hamish Holewa, Director, Planet Research Data Commons, ARDC, said, “This expansion of EcoCommons to support environmental reporting demonstrates how research infrastructure can support better decisions by accelerating research translation through easy access to data and analysis tools. We congratulate QCIF on being awarded this significant grant.”

Harnessing the Skills of Recent PhD Graduates

A key objective of the grant is to help Queensland businesses advance innovative products and services towards commercialisation by harnessing the skills and expertise of PhD-level graduates.

QCIF and its member, Griffith University, collaborated to identify a suitable candidate and welcomed Dr Ryan Newis, a recent PhD graduate with extensive experience in statistics, biology, and research.

Professor Rebecca Ford, Dean, Griffith Graduate Research School said, “Griffith is extremely pleased to collaborate with QCIF through this internship. This is an excellent opportunity for Ryan to move into a career post-graduation, and we look forward to collaboratively mentoring him in this new role.”

To find out more about the project, contact Dr Jenna Wraith, from the QCIF Data Science team.

Learn more about EcoCommons.

This article is based on an article by QCIF.

EcoCommons is led by QCIF in partnership with the ARDC, University of Melbourne Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis (CEBRA), Atlas of Living Australia, TERN, CSIRO, Macquarie University and UNSW.

EcoCommons received co-investment (doi.org/10.3565/chbq-mr75) from the ARDC. The ARDC is enabled by the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).