Sydney, Australia – 1 February 2017 – Geospatial data’s enabling role in digital transformation will be on show at the International Symposium on Digital Earth & Locate17 in Sydney in April, combining one of the world’s most prestigious symposiums with Australia’s premier geospatial conference.

Dr Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse, chair & convenor of the Locate17 and Digital Earth Symposium Organising Committee, says attendees will come away with the knowledge to transform business practices in industries as diverse as agriculture, transport, construction and medicine.

“Both government and the private sector will be able to identify opportunities based on what is happening around the world,” he says. “Geospatial data underpins many disruptive and innovative organisations. Without it, companies like Uber would not be in business.”

According to Dr Mohamed-Ghouse, who is also director for NSW & International Relations of the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRCSI), the event comes as governments around Australia open up access to geospatial data to promote innovation.

Australia’s now freely available Geo-coded National Address File is used online to validate people’s addresses. The biggest Australian subscriber group for the Global Navigation Satellite System is not transport or surveyors, but the agricultural industry.

With a program featuring more than 130 international and Australian speakers, Digital Earth & Locate17 provides a unique opportunity to understand digital transformation practices from around the world, and to develop and leverage geospatial data.

The two main conference days will be split into eight separate streams with topics including smart cities, virtual globes, intelligent transport, agriculture, engineering/utilities, smart sensors for natural resource management, water & climate, disaster & emergency management, and the geospatial economy.

Some of the symposium’s highlights include:

• Susan Moran from NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive Science Team presents a special session on remote sensing and applications of global soil moisture monitoring
• Trisha Moriarty, Geological Survey of NSW delivers a keynote on the application of open data policy in the Earth Sciences across government, scientific and industry
• Singapore Land Authority & AAM presents, ‘Singapore Smart Nation: Measuring from the ground up’
• David Wortley, Gamification and Enabling Technologies Strategic Solutions, delivers, ‘The role of Digital Earth technologies in digital medicine’.

The joint conference will be held 03-06 April 2017 at the new International Conference Centre Sydney.

About the International Symposium on Digital Earth
The International Symposium on Digital Earth is a flagship event of the International Society for Digital Earth. Founded in Beijing in 2006, ISDE is a non-political, non-governmental and not-for-profit international organisation principally promoting academic exchange, science and technology innovation, education, and international collaboration towards Digital Earth.

ISDE also explores Digital Earth as an enabling technology to play key roles in economic and social sustainable development, environmental protection, disaster mitigation, natural resources conservation and improvement of living standards.

About Locate17
The Locate Conference (Locate17) is the national conference of the spatial and surveying industries of Australia and New Zealand. The event is an initiative of the Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI), Spatial Industries Business Association (SIBA) and Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA).