Locate Podcast

“I’m engaged in this because I was stuck in the fires with my two brothers. We fought for six and a half hours for neighbours in the house. We saved the property, but we shouldn’t have come out of it.”

Adrian Turner, CEO of Minderoo Foundation Fire and Flood Resilience Initiative, joins us in this impactful, heartfelt and grounded podcast episode that hits home. Tune in to hear the massive cost and impact of natural disasters - societally, environmentally and economically – and about the common-sense and attainable data-driven alternative that spatial data combined with machine learning technologies offers us. We could save billions of dollars and keep communities safe by reducing the harm caused by natural disasters. Learn about the resilience dividend Australia can earn by getting it right, and hear Adrian speak about the the technology, policy and data gaps in disaster response in Australia and globally and the many opportunities that these challenges present.

Join Dr James Johnson (CEO, Geoscience Australia) and Mr Tom Hamilton (Director, Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation) as we hear from this powerhouse duo about opportunities, innovation, and inclusion in relation to government's role in a spatially-enabled Australia. We explore just how fundamental geospatial data is to the work that both of these organisations do, what priorities lie ahead to propel the Australian geospatial forward in this light, how they're equipping their workforces to manage these changes, and how partnerships are paving the way forward. 

Dr Johnson and Mr Hamilton will be presenting a joint keynote at Locate22 on Wednesday 25 May 2022 titled 'Government role in a spatially enabled Australia' - be sure to join us to hear more!

Listen in to hear how innovative drone technology is being used by Emesent to access hard-to-reach spaces and create point clouds, improve safety outcomes, and even being used on the latest 007 movie sets. Dr Stefan Hrabar, CEO and Co-Founder of Emesent, will be presenting his keynote "From CSIRO to global company" at Locate22 on Thursday 26 May in the 'Technical Innovators And Business Leaders' session. Stefan has been at the forefront of drone autonomy R&D for 20 years. Following his PhD in Computer Science / Robotics on this topic, he spent 13 years at CSIRO where he continued his work on vision and lidar-based perception and navigation for drones. He led the development and commercialisation of Hovermap in CSIRO, and co-founded Emesent in 2018 to bring this ground-breaking technology to market.

What makes industry-university collaborations succeed? And why is this vital for our industry, and Australia's economy? Join us as we speak with Dr Wachowicz, Associate Dean of Geospatial at RMIT University and Cisco Innovation Chair in Big Data. She is a world-renowned expert in Geospatial Data Science, with a unique multidisciplinary background in Geomatics Engineering, Geography, and Computer Science. She specializes in machine learning to analyze data streams from the Internet of Things, with the purpose of identifying opportunities and challenges in building sustainable smart cities. She has collaborated in research projects with many high technology companies, such as IBM, Cisco, Orange Communications, ESRI and Siemens, as well as academics from the USA, Canada, Australia and Europe. She has over 300 publications and 50 invited talks and keynote speeches at the United Nations, GIScience Conference and Big Data Congress. Her pioneering work in multidisciplinary teams from government, industry and research organizations is fostering the next generation of data scientists for innovation in green economies. Dr Wachowicz will be joining us at Locate22 to give a keynote presentation to take the ideas presented in this podcast episode further - join her on Thursday 26 May 2022 in the session 'Communities and Collaboration' to hear more!

We're delighted that Australian Statistician, Dr David Gruen AO, joined us on the Locate Podcast to speak about his keynote at Locate22, Building Geospatial data capabilities across the Australian Public Service. Join us in this episode as we explore with him the ways in which geospatial data brings value to the work that the ABS does, as well as what he sees as the future for data in the ABS. 

Dr David Gruen was appointed Australian Statistician on 11 December 2019. As Agency Head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, he is accountable for the functions and operations of the Bureau. David was previously the Deputy Secretary, Economic and Australia’s G20 Sherpa at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Before joining the Department in September 2014, he was Executive Director of the Macroeconomic Group at the Australian Treasury. David joined the Treasury in January 2003, before which he was the Head of the Economic Research Department at the Reserve Bank of Australia from 1998 to 2002. Before joining the Reserve Bank, David worked as a research scientist in the Research School of Physical Sciences at the Australian National University. With financial support from a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship, David was visiting lecturer in the Economics Department and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University from August 1991 to June 1993.  He holds PhD degrees in physiology from Cambridge University, England and in economics from the Australian National University. David was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (General Division) in 2022 for distinguished service to public administration, to economic research, to business, and to education.

Join us as we welcome Dr Fiona McKenzie to share with us why we, as an industry, should be thinking a lot more about megatrends. Fiona explores with us the sorts of influences that megatrends have on the process of disruption and innovation, why leveraging them helps us to remain relevant and on the front foot, and what steps we can take to do this. She will be giving a keynote presentation at Locate22  on Wednesday 25 May 2022 in the session 'Technology and Transformation', speaking about "From disruption to transformation: shaping the future in a rapidly changing world".

Dr Fiona McKenzie is the Director of Orange Compass, an organisation dedicated to supporting change makers on their journey to transform systems and build better futures.  With 20 years’ experience working with academic, corporate, government, non-government, and intergovernmental organisations in Australia and Internationally, Fiona and her team are sought after for their expertise in co-design, futures and systems thinking and in navigating complex challenges. Fiona is in- demand as a speaker, for her insights into today’s wicked challenges and trends shaping the future. Fiona has qualifications in Human Geography, a PhD on innovation; and expertise in both public policy and academic research, and has published on a wide range of topics. Examples of recent projects have included working with: CSIRO (Australia); Department of Social Services (Australia); David Suzuki Foundation (Canada); Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System (Australia); United Nations Development Programme - Green Commodities Programme (Indonesia); and the World Health Organisation (Western Pacific) to name a few.

Alexis Smith is the founder and CEO of the automated business intelligence brand, IMGeospatial. IMGeospatial creates market-leading data intelligence products via machine learning, artificial intelligence, automatic feature extraction and remote-sensed data for multiple industries, globally. Alexis is a seasoned entrepreneur, who is passionate about stimulating creativity and innovation to create positive societal change for a better world, along with championing diversity of thought in everything she does.

In this episode of the Locate Podcast, we step outside of our normal structure for a candid, meandering and truly delightful conversation with Alexis, spanning over the course of her life and career so far, and cutting to the core of many issues around the geospatial industry's future, diversity and inclusion, and many more topics. 

Tune in to Alexis's Locate21 Keynote, 'IA not AI', right now: https://cvent.box.com/s/rplh4tq8zdz45qks8h8rfxwhwsw3iis6 

New York State Police's Senior Intelligence Analyst, Kellen Crouse, will provide an inside look at the crucial role of geospatial analysis in solving a missing person case turned homicide in his keynote presentation at Locate21, 'The geography of crime: How the NY State Police catch a killer'. From visualising witness statements, to recovering evidence and organising search teams, GIS helped bring closure and justice to a rural New York town.

Kellen Crouse is a Senior Intelligence Analyst with the New York State Police, assigned to the Intelligence & Analysis Unit. He is responsible for tactical and strategic intelligence products and provides support for major case investigations. He specializes in geospatial analytics for law enforcement, gang investigations and cell phone record analysis. Previously, Mr. Crouse worked as a crime analyst for the Albany Police Department (NY), Baltimore City Police Department (MD), and Camden County Police Department (NJ). Mr. Crouse earned a Master of Science in Criminal Justice from Radford University and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Mars Hill University. Mr. Crouse, will provide an inside look at the crucial role of geospatial analysis in solving a missing person case turned homicide. From visualising witness statements, to recovering evidence and organising search teams, GIS helped bring closure and justice to a rural New York town.

How do we create a location-enabled Australia? What are the steps along the way, and why is it important? Join Alison Rose, Geoscience Australia's Chief of Place, Space and Community, as we discuss this and more in this delightful conversation. 

Prior to her appointment as Chief of Geoscience Australia’s Place, Space and Communities Division at Geoscience Australia, Alison led the Border Intelligence Support to Operations branch at the Department of Home Affairs providing integrated intelligence support to the Australian Border Force on migration systems, trade enforcement and border protection priorities. Previously, Alison held senior executive positions within both the private and public sector, including Director of National Government Industry Solutions with Esri – a US-based GIS technology company; delivery of the Department of Defence’s corporate and geospatial ICT programs and projects and enterprise information management implementation; and, leadership of the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation’s foundation mapping, advanced analytics, training and tradecraft, data and collection management, and customer services.

Welcoming Prof Duffy to our podcast, for a broad-ranging but very thought-provoking discussion on speak about space and spatial. This episode is a teaser for his keynote presentation at Locate21, where he will speak on this in much more detail. As he says - awareness within the academic and industrial sectors of the benefits of Space is at an all-time high and yet, still, far fewer are aware of the sector than use the products from it. The success of Space and Spatial is how ubiquitous it has become. That very success is itself a challenge, and to ensure the greater benefits from new technologies into the future we must ensure the wider community is informed of these developments.  He will explore the awe-inspiring possibilities that these future developments present as AI is deployed across constellations of nanosatellites that fuse SAR and ultra-wideband hyperspectral sensors, all underpinned with 10cm (or better!) precision positioning and ground-sensors. However, handling that data, equity of access and privacy challenges inherent in constant surveillance are all challenges that we as a community must address to realise those possibilities.

Prof Duffy is the Director of Swinburne’s Space Technology and Industry Institute, finding novel uses for astrophysical knowledge in aiding business and society on Earth. In particular, he leverages his experience of creating and visualising large supercomputer astrophysics simulations to explore Remote Sensing opportunities. Alan was recently named Academic of the Year in the 2020 Australian Space Awards. He is also the Swinburne Node Leader in the new national ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics and a Chief Investigator of SABRE, the world’s first dark matter detector in the Southern Hemisphere, at the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory.