GBS has developed a product (or tool), which is a new data solution designed to tackle the challenge of sourcing multi-jurisdictional geospatial data in New Zealand. It is a catalogue of over 35,000 New Zealand geographic data layers. The raw data for this catalogue is referenced from:
- Local, Regional and Unitary Authorities
- Several central government agencies, CRIs, utilities and private company entities.
This tool – Hubbit – has relevance to the NZ Esri user community, as a wide range of GIS users undertake projects that cut across multiple jurisdictions and so ought to derive significant value from the tool’s data category layers. Organisations often have to spend an extraordinary amount of time and effort to acquire publicly available data for multi-jurisdictional, regional or national projects. This is often an under-estimated cost because of the time it takes to acquire the necessary data. We know this from personal experience. Those costs get passed onto the project, the sponsoring organisation, and ultimately the taxpayer.
With regards to the tool itself, each of the tool’s layers has undergone a deep learning inference process (powered by Esri’s GeoAI), enabling the categorisation of each layer into one of 100 data categories. The tool heavily utilises the new Esri’s Catalog Dataset data type, to make this classified catalogue accessible to users of the Esri ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Pro GIS software. Using these tools, users can experience a hugely significant reduction in the time and effort required for nearly any NZ data acquisition task. That is potentially a huge cost saving.
Our experience to date in developing this tool has:
- Used Esri Catalog datasets, including providing real-world experience on their use, benefits and shortcomings.
- Given us some commentary on New Zealand’s data sources and genres.
- Insight into AI Large Language models and Esri GeoAI tools, and the use of the textual classification GeoAI, and detailed knowledge as to why good metadata is key to drive future use of AI in GIS.
We believe this tool will be of interest to (but not limited to):
- Government departments
- CD & EM entities
- Environmental scientists and organisations
- Conservation entities
- Insurance organisations
- Māori interest groups including Iwi, Hapu, Whanau, Treaty Settlements, and Māori business organisations
- Special interest groups
- Planners, and Planning and Engineering organisations
- Engineers
- Natural Hazards groups
- Natural Resources groups
- Utilities companies and organisations
To find out more, get in touch with GBS at info@gbs.kiwi
