Data

Data for the City of Port Phillip council area and the State Government of Victoria will be the most relevant for Fishermans Bend.

Data relevant to non-human design

• Location of trees
  • Important to identify shelter, habitats, and connectivity between green spaces.
  • Fishermans Bend Trees dataset
• Proximity to water bodies, existing and planned green spaces, and transit corridors
  • Can generally be derived from OpenStreetMap with reasonable confidence urban areas
  • More granular and accurate data can be obtained from relevant government organisations via Digital Twin Victoria and Data Vic
    • City of Port Phillip Tree Canopy dataset
    • City of Port Phillip Council Park sites and Community Gardens
• Measures of species population
  • Interventions should target areas with established populations of target species.
  • Occurrence sightings are a reasonable proxy of local species population and distribution.
    • Available via Atlas of Living Australia and /
  • The Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub manage a dataset of observations of threatened species in urban areas.
• Measures of local biodiversity
  • Species richness is a standard measure of biodiversity for an area. Typically, these measures are not available at high resolutions.
  • CSIRO provides an Australia-wide dataset estimating species richness for birds, reptiles, and fungi.
  • The Biodiversity Report does not estimate species richness or biodiversity measures, but instead focuses on supporting existing target species.
• Presence of colours and other sensory data in the environment
  • Non-human species do not interpret their environment the same way as humans. For example, many species perceive a wider colour spectra than humans.
  • Some species associate particular colours with threats, prospective mates, or as a method of spotting each other. For example, a group of researchers argue that fairy-wrens have evolved plumage colouration that they can easily perceive but birds of prey cannot.[^1]
• Exposure to pollution
  • Fishermans Bend groundwater studies 2015–2017 assess the pollution of water bodies.
• Exposure to noise and human activity, e.g., traffic, construction activity
  • The majority of non-human species prefer habitats that are removed from busy pedestrian and transit corridors.
  • Transit corridors also pose a risk to species crossing them and disrupt habitat connectivity.
  • Proximity to traffic corridors are a reasonable predictor, but local governments increasingly provide sensor data about traffic speed and volume
    • City of Port Philip transport data for bikes, pedestrians, and traffic

Data about non-human species

• Atlas of Living Australia contains geolocated occurence records and species information.
• iNaturalist provides crowd sourced images, identification, and audio files for species globally.

Platforms

3D buildings and topography are available for Fishermans Bend and Port Melbourne via the Digital Twin Victoria platform.

Other datasets relating to Fishermans Bend are available on the data.gov.au platform courtesy of the City of Port Phillip.

Data Vic provides open access to a range of data for Victoria. Most geospatial data is also available via Digital Twin Victoria.

OpenStreetMap is an open access geographic database. Data can be downloaded and interpreted using GIS software like QGIS.

[[TERN)](TERN|Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Infrastructure (TERN)]]) provides data about ecosystems and biodiversity for Australia.

CSIRO provides open-access geospatial data sets about biodiversity, ecology, and ecosystems. These are often for specific locations and research projects.

The Atlas of Living Australia contains occurrence records for 5,820 species. For example, you can search for the Superb fairy-wren to access a dataset of sightings and information about the species.

The / also provides occurrence records for Victoria, but these are incorporated into ALA.

iNaturalist is a global citizen science database where users can upload geotagged images and sounds using a phone application that identifies the species automatically.

City Nature Challenge is a global citizen science project where volunteers upload observations to iNaturalist. See the outcomes for Greater Melbourne.

Types of data

• 3D scans: documents the structure of physical reality, e.g., LIDAR, STL, point clouds.
• Geospatial data: describes and position objects in physical space in relation to a coordinate system, e.g., cadastral maps, location of trees, transit networks, animal sightings, etc.
  • OpenStreetMap
  • Digital Twin Victoria
  • Atlas of Living Australia
• Sensor data: in situ measurements of values using sensors, e.g., noise levels, light levels, movement tracking.
  • Arduino sensors
  • Specialist equipment, e.g., light meters
  • Consumer monitoring devices like cameras
• Statistical values: estimates for a specific geographical region based on an average of observations, e.g., a local government area or Federal electorate; useful for design and planning, but not always accurate. For example, solar exposure, rainfall, average number of cars per person.
  • AURIN
  • Australian Bureau of Statistics

^1:%201269–76,%20[https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2011.1777).