Client Success Story
Atlases
for the National Oceans Office
Alicja Mosbauer, National Oceans Office, Hobart
The
National Oceans Office (NOO), based in Hobart, is charged with
development of management plans to address the conservation and
sustainable use of resources over the vast ocean jurisdiction
of Australia. Management planning over this enormous geographic
extent is undertaken via a set of planning areas (PA). NOO also
has a mandate to provide information to stakeholders and the public
relating to uses and management options for each PA.
Alicja
Mosbauer, NOO's Marine Data Manager, had the challenge of providing
national information across the whole oceans jurisdiction and
specific information on the Northern Planning Area (NPA) to support
the development of MPA and delivery to stakeholders.
Ms
Mosbauer led a national tender process that selected Spatial Vision
to produce a series of map based information products in the form
of hardcopy and digital atlases, and an interactive CD-ROM containing
maps for all marine regions. The purpose of the atlases was to
identify the many and varied non-fishing uses of the Australia
oceans jurisdiction.
To prepare the atlases, Spatial Vision contacted almost 100 organisations
nationwide to identify their relevant data holdings, collected
and documented an extensive range of marine datasets of various
standards and formats, and loaded them into a sophisticated geodata
library. Spatial Vision used its expertise in spatial information
development to transform much of this source data into cartographic
products appropriate for an atlas. One such example is the transformation
of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority ship location information
into a density surface that provides a clearer representation
of shipping movements within Australian waters.
The
atlases cover a comprehensive range of themes including: shipping;
petroleum and mining; indigenous issues; defence; tourism, recreation
and sport; natural heritage; ocean disposal; research; cultural
heritage and social topics. These themes are presented individually
or as multi-use maps to illustrate the extent, breadth and dependency
of use of the oceans surrounding Australia. The atlases contain
over six hundred individual maps and were published as two hardcopy
documents (one National Marine Atlas and one Northern Marine Atlas).
In
addition to the hardcopy atlas, the final information products
were made accessible to stakeholders for the marine environment
via an interactive CD-ROM containing maps for all marine regions,
and placed on the NOO website, and the NOO metadata website, Neptune.
The interactive CD also contains links to map metadata and other
supporting information.
Figure
1: Northern Atlas
Figure
2: National Atlas
Figure
3 : Interactive CD
Figure
4: A sample of the range of maps produced
Information collected and developed in preparation of the
atlases will provide the basis for the development of a number
of regional marine management plans to be developed by the
Australian Government around the continent.
Ms
Mosbauer was impressed by Spatial Vision’s dedication to producing
multiple high quality documents and meeting NOO’s project deadlines.
She was further impressed by Spatial Vision’s ability to provide
a comprehensive range of services to support the project that included
designing and producing posters that were displayed at the national
launch of the new Atlas.
“For
the first time we have a comprehensive picture of the marine uses around
the entire Australian EEZ and this could not have been achieved without
the systematic and comprehensive approach undertaken by Spatial Vision.
The Office has a great deal of confidence in the Atlas products and
in the underlying data that will be fundamental to developing plans
for managing our vital ocean resources”, said Ms Mosbauer.
Copyright
© Spatial Vision, Thursday, 29-July-2004
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