Achieving a more consistent and high-quality solution for location-based reports across NSW.
The Challenge
NSW State Government departments wish to improve their location-based reporting of population-based statistics. This reporting is routinely undertaken by agencies on a wide range of phenomena ranging from health and education to transport and amenity. Reporting is required using a variety of geographic areas according to the Administrative Geographies of the various departments. However, differing administrative geographies for collection of data make it difficult to compare phenomena. For example, population data is grouped by ABS statistical areas, health data is collected by local health districts and emergency call-out records are collected by State Emergency Service areas. In addition, inaccuracies in the definition of spatial boundaries and inconsistencies in concordance based spatial analytics can reduce confidence in the analysis outcomes. Therefore it is required to be repeatable to identify changes over time for a given phenomenon, and to be able to compare different phenomena that may be collected on differing geographic bases.
Partners
This project was a partnership between FrontierSI, NSW DCS Spatial Services and Kurrawong AI.
The Solution
This project developed a concordance assignment methodology in which data for the purposes of Location-Based Reporting, which are originally collected and associated to a location/place, are then aggregated/redistributed spatially via an interim geographic area or Concordance Geography. ABS Mesh Blocks were selected as the Concordance Geography as the smallest unit that supports data anonymity. A Kappa Score gave a confidence measure for how well the Concordance Geography would align with an Administrative Geography, with an average Kappa Score being calculated for the entire area being reported on. A web based proof-of-concept was created to demonstrate concordance between a selection of Administrative Geographies. The concordance architecture of the future Location Based Reporting system, and implementation requirements and recommendations were provided for the customer.
Impact
FrontierSI is proud to have collaborated with NSW DCS Spatial Services on a project investigating how to reduce the costs, risks and issues associated with location-based reporting. In NSW, location-based reports are widely used, with many Government agencies summarising issues and trends using maps that quantify and visualise the frequency of trends of observations or transactions by defined regions. The need that DCS Spatial Services had was to reliably convert between reporting geographies. Working with Kurrawong AI, FrontierSI developed methods to perform the conversion between geographies and demonstrated their impact through an online proof-of-concept. The project assessed and recommended the best approach to achieve a more consistent and high-quality solution for location-based reports across NSW and potentially at a national level.
Contact
To learn more, contact FrontierSI at contact@frontiersi.com.au or connect with Project Manager, Gavin Kennedy, at gkennedy@frontiersi.com.au.