Highlights from ANZLIC's July 2019 meeting

Key highlights from the July 2019 ANZLIC meeting included appointment of a new ANZLIC Chair and Deputy Chair, ANZLIC’s work to drive diversity and inclusion in the spatial sector, and ANZLIC’s value proposition to spatially enable digital twins. For more information, see the detailed summary.

New Chair and Deputy Chair

At the July 2019 ANZLIC meeting, ANZLIC appointed Bruce Thompson as the ANZLIC Chair and Melissa Harris as the ANZLIC Deputy Chair.

Bruce is the Executive Director, Spatial Services, Department of Customer Service, NSW and Melissa is the Executive Director, Strategic Land Assessment and Information, Land Use Victoria, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, VIC. Both appointees bring a breadth of experience across government and spatial information to ANZLIC, and will help shape and drive ANZLIC’s agenda over the coming years.

These appointments follow the end of Steve Jacoby’s (Executive Director, Land and Spatial Information, Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy, QLD) term as ANZLIC Chair, and Bruce’s term as ANZLIC Deputy Chair.

Steve and Bruce have together provided strong leadership for ANZLIC during their terms. They have driven collaboration across jurisdictions to share learnings and harmonise approaches where possible. This has included work to modernise spatial data towards 3D and 4D formats, and embed foundation spatial data into jurisdictional approaches for the creation of digital twins.
 

From left to right: Bruce Thompson (new ANZLIC Chair), Melissa Harris (new ANZLIC Deputy Chair), Steve Jacoby PSM (outgoing ANZLIC Chair)

Diversity and Inclusion in the spatial sector

ANZLIC reinforced its commitment to driving diversity and inclusion in the spatial sector by showing its support for the Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan launched at the Locate19 conference in April 2019.

For the first time in ANZLIC’s history, the July meeting saw appointment of a female ANZLIC member to the leadership team and a gender balance around the table. Going forward, ANZLIC will share information on diversity and inclusion initiatives across the Commonwealth, state and territory jurisdictions.

Spatially enabled digital twins

ANZLIC members from Queensland, Victoria and NSW showcased their work to progress reform of land parcel and property (i.e. cadastral) data in support of digital twins for key areas including South East Queensland, Western Sydney and Fishermans Bend in Melbourne.

Members discussed ANZLIC’s value proposition of leveraging foundation land and positioning data to spatially enable digital twins, thereby enhancing their value as a strategic asset to achieve more integrated planning and sustainable development of Australia’s cities and regions.

ANZLIC also discussed the UK’s Gemini Principles from 2018, which represent an important set of guiding principles Australia can learn from as we prototype and develop digital twins.