NSW Government engages the community in many natural resource related decision making processes. Community groups, as custodians of knowledge and active participants in decision making processes, will both benefit from improved access to natural resources data, and add value to the process by providing their own data and planning documentation.

Conservation and other community groups currently participate in a huge number of natural resource management committees and plan making or liason processes with government. Plans (both government and community alternatives) should relate online to, and be accessible online through the areas they pertain to. CANRI provides a great opportunity to integrate planning information with other natural resource data, whilst retaining the relative technical independence of data records.

Community groups also hold fauna/flora records which may go back 100-150 years, such as the Dubbo Field Naturalists’ files on Pilliga and Goonoo. This data is an important form of community knowledge and contributes to a better understanding of the natural ecosystem. It should be broadly accessible, compatible with NSW Biodiversity Information Working Group data, and able to be added to other spatial data sources such as National SoE Report and National Land & Water Resources Audit data via the CANRI process.

We hope CANRI will view this project as a model for sector collaboration which has broad application.

The Partner plus project will maximise sharing of spatial and policy information for engagement in natural resource management and urban planning. There are two major objectives of the Partner Project

• A - Community collaboration on Regional / Catchment Plans
• B - Community Environmental Monitoring (CEM)

Pilot#1 (for implementation between Sept. 2001 and 30^th June 2002). Sydney’s Water Catchment already has plans underway from DUAP, SCA and DLWC – including Warragamba and Southern CMB Areas. Local Action Plans will be nested under this one pilot region. This pilot project also plans to enable state-wide collaboration on submissions on Regional Plans from July 2002, focussing on community contributions to Native Vegetation, Water & Catchment Mgt. Plans.

Project Objective: Enhancement of stakeholder participation in the use of CANRI information and provision of geo-spatially referenceable policy development documents to CANRI

Community groups hold fauna/flora records which may go back 100-150 years, such as the Dubbo Field Naturalists’ files on Pilliga and Goonoo. This data is an important form of community knowledge and contributes to a better understanding of the natural ecosystem. It should be broadly accessible, compatible with NSW Biodiversity Information Working Group data, and able to be added to other spatial data sources such as National SoE Report and National Land & Water Resources Audit data.

This web site capacity to support CEM will be provided in stages (see technical environment), including;

B1. NCC Server reconfiguration and development of standards, templates, and protocols (eg refer NPA’s Biodiversity Manual)

B2. Implement web mapping tools to serve data for any new CEM Project (including SQL Data, OGC compliant Map & Feature Servers)

B3. Build specific applications through pilot projects and provide training and on-going support for NCC Member Groups.

Biodiversity / Native Vegetation Data: Two pilots are proposed:

Pilot#B1 - Existing Urban Bushland data will be updated and published with more recent spatial data.

Pilot#B2 - Western Conservation Alliance flora and fauna data from Brigalow CRA Project

Upload & publish Web Maps: created off-line on PCs using standard GIS Software (eg ESRI)

Pilot#B3 - Swamp Mahogany spatial data uploaded from the NSW Central Coast

Pilot#B4 - Community Reserve Proposals (CRP’s include public & private land, wilderness areas)

Pilot#B5 - Transport Proposals (including Transit network and Bike path development)

All CANRI users will be able to access community owned data through CEM community groups and community groups will be able to access CEM CANRI to provide their information to the world at large.

Additional Benefits Include:

a) Add Documents (including Plans) as key Natural Resource Information linked to CANRI

b) Expand CANRI by linking to content provided by PC users of Microsoft Office

c) Build capacity to upload, download and serve data from Non-Government CANRI Partners

A simple 'link' is provided from within www.nswncc.org.au to the new

Microsoft Document Library and Collaboration Server - and vice versa.

No expensive technical design or programming to provide a 'common interface'

to the SCO and Microsoft Servers is included for 2001/2002, but progress on

other CANRI and Agency technical projects will be studied, and this next

phase will then be specified in the plan for 2002/2003.

The project is part of the following cluster(s): Partner Plus

The project will have relevance/application for a number of other projects involving current and potential community data collection eg Streamwatch and the NSW Wildlife Atlas. These and other relevant projects will be reviewed and suggestions for collaboration included in the final evaluation report for the project.

Configure and host server with Microsoft Sharepoint

Develop web interface for NCC document collaboration services

Yahoo and other 'component' options have been evaluated but only added to

costs, complexity and RISK compared to Microsoft SharePoint.

This existing server (supplied and managed pro-bono by SCO $120 –150K hardware, maintenance and support) represents a highly capable platform for hosting a range of services. It is proposed to install and support a range of common software that provides an appropriate platform for the types of services required by CANRI.

• Apache Tomcat (web server/ application container)
• Relational database (PostGres) and JDBC connectors
• OGC compliant Web Map Server (mapserv)

• Web Feature Server (to deliver point data from uploaded tables)

Installation, including documentation (immediate) and ongoing support, functionality and security upgrades, monitoring troubleshooting (this is highly discounted by normal commercial standards – check against DLWC’s RFQ for similar services)

• Upload interfaces - Point (tabular) data, and GIS exports

Other development as required.

The cost of ongoing management for data sets and implementation of new data sets will be scoped in the pilot project phase. Pilot applications will demonstrate the process and practice used to enable affordable integration of a range of other community data sets. Training and ongoing support will identify core and optional needs and functionality.

Each pilot will require validation and refinement of the system’s ability to support user-controlled application development (so subsequent similar applications can be managed without additional support)

Documentation collaboration will require the willing participation of appropriate planning committees. This will be achieved through the Sydney’s Water Catchment planning committees.

CEM pilots will provide data for their projects. Pilot B1 and B2 will require data management (by SCO) in the initial phase (which is costed into the budget). Pilots B3-B5 will require map exports in the required format by pilot contacts in conjunction with the project manager. The key test here is that these pilots will be able to do this with minimum effort (ie not a separately costed project)