Published on the 16/04/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Australia’s leading IT research organisation has called on major infrastructure projects to invest more time analysing data and less pouring concrete…
Peak IT research body National ICT Australia has advised the Productivity Commission that open access to Government and industry data could be “transformational” in terms of its impact on the cost and longevity of national infrastructure.
In an appearance this week before the Productivity Commission which is conducting a review of public infrastructure investment, NICTA CEO Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte said that; “Banking, telecommunications and services sectors have been maximising their productivity with ICT for years, but major public infrastructure projects continue to leave ICT out of their equations. To be more efficient infrastructure projects need more ICT applied to them, not more concrete.”
The Australian Information Industry Association has also raised the need for more attention to be paid to data and technology in its submission to the Commission.
NICTA’s submission to the Productivity Commission which was made public this month features a slew of examples of how data has been or could be used to improve infrastructure efficiency. It has, for example, conducted analysis for Western Australia with regard to freeway congestion, suggesting that instead of spending $300 million adding an additional four kilometers of freeway, the State could install roadway sensors that could be used to direct on-ramp traffic lights, delivering 40 percent increased traffic throughput.
In NSW a project in association with Port Botany Rail demonstrated that more sophisticated use of supply chain and traffic data could optimise scheduling to the extent that a planned $200 million rail track upgrade could be postponed for 15-20 years.
NICTA has called for the Productivity Commission to recommend that smart ICT be integrated in the planning, design, development and operations of infrastructure projects.
According to Durrant-Whyte; “Making all the relevant data freely available would not only change the way we approach large infrastructure projects but would also make larger supply chain processing possible.
“The data is all out there – it just needs to be made available, preferably to everyone.”
The Australian Government has already made inroads in terms of providing access to more data. The data.gov.au website now provides access to 3500 different data sets, and has recently called for proposals for joint public-private projects using big data.
