Earth:Australia addresses the transformation challenge of opening up government data sets in its ‘re-purposing’ of GIS (geographic information systems) data from ERSI shapefiles, to the more useable, and accessible KML (Keyhole Markup Language) format. KML files are supported by many different GIS viewers and as discussed in Wikipedia are excellent for: ‘expressing geographic annotation and visualization on existing or future Web-based, two-dimensional maps and three-dimensional Earth browsers’.

The technology Infrastructure for Earth:Australia includes: Google Earth browser plugin for data viewing, Adobe Flex framework for the user interface, and the Geospatial Data Abstraction Libray (GDAL) with related application libraries for shapefile to KML format conversion.

At a glance, see where Australia is hot, windy, and get general wind direction across the nation.

Also provides last three days’ data for each station in an interactive graph beside the map.

By incorporating the Mashup data into the site, volunteers can now view Government GIS mapping information to help strategically position their local river monitoring sites. For example, they can identify Government surface water monitoring stations, ground water bore sites, major river basins and protected areas across Queensland. They can identify Detox facilities around Victoria to encourage local communities to dispose of toxic substances, such as paint and batteries, at appropriate facilities to prevent them being illegally dumped down drains or directly into our rivers and creeks.

If you have been collecting data on the health of your local river, creek or wetland from anywhere around Australia and would like to submit you information online through our community-owned website, please send us a message using the Contact Us button on our home page at www.communityrivers.org.au.

Currently this uses the Commonwealth Agency data released by the National Archives and the goal is to link this to all the other datasets that have been released.

This makes EasyData a perfect tool for the staff of local government, regional development bodies, government agencies, and community associations, to substantiate grant writing, regional profiling, strategic planning, program evaluation, and evidence-based policy making.

EasyData is now the single, largest source of web-based information for South Australia’s metropolitan and rural regions. Used in conjunction with SA’s Strategic Plan, EasyData empowers communities to set regional targets and monitor performance against them.

Part one: 16 MashupAustralia lists in NeoGopher.
NeoGopher is a universa data browser developed in Melbourne, Australia and is designed to allow browsing of an HTTP web based API. NeoGopher is the intersection of linked data and the web. We have created 16 NeoGopher lists, each list presenting a data set from data.australia.gov.au. To see our MashupAustralia lists, download NeoGopher http://www.neogopher.com/downloads.shtml

Part two: 26 HTTP web based APIs.
We have converted CSV and XLS data from data.australia.gov.au into 26 HTTP web based XML APIs. These APIs are accessible by the public and support Xquery access including searching, sorting, paging and return compressed XML.

Numerous geological layers and data types can be portrayed in a simple map based interface.

Filtering and searching is also enabled on feature layers, with responses coming directly from services provided by multiple government agencies, not stored locally.

All layers can be added or subtracted to allow for visual inter-relationships to be seen.

Dynamic access to government web services means the data is always current