Working tools on the same data and models as the consulting work. Most run in the browser, and some will also come as applications to download.
Constraint screening and assessment
Draw the site, run the screen, download the written report. SiteCensus queries every layer in its library that could reach your site in one run and writes the assessment, with the reasoning and the full record behind it.
Queensland and New South Wales are live, with more states to follow. No install and no GIS licence. Free for seven days, no card needed.
For environmental, planning and engineering teams who screen sites before design.
Clearing, development and threatened species
What GLIDER does. GLIDER, the Guide to Land-use Impacts, Development and Extinction Risk, sets out for Queensland the woody vegetation cleared since 1988, the development approved, applied for or referred now, and the projected exposure of threatened taxa to development and climate change by 2070. Every council, electorate, threatened taxon, protected area, offset area and current EPBC referral has its own page. Each morning GLIDER rebuilds a one-page brief for each referral and names those newly open for public comment.
What it gives wildlife conservation charities. The evidence for a referral comment, on one page, while the referral is open. Figures for each state and federal electorate to put to the local member. The threatened species most exposed to development and climate change, and where their habitat lies. A check on whether nature refuges and offsets keep their vegetation.
For wildlife conservation charities, councils and government teams working on threatened species.
Wildlife records and map layers
What EMU2 does. EMU2 (Explore, Measure, Understand, second edition) answers questions about Queensland's wildlife records and the 13,399 map layers in its register, asked in everyday words. Every answer is kept as a sheet that can be split, filtered and mapped, and any row can be asked further: against a habitat map, by the distance to the nearest protected area, or by how likely each threatened species is at a drawn site. It compares places by the species recorded in them and tests whether groups of places differ. Every figure carries a record of how it was reached, and the work saves as a report or an Excel workbook.
What it gives ecologists and planners. A desktop picture of what has been recorded in a place, and where those records sit against the habitat mapping, with each source's custodian and licence named. A rating of every threatened species at a site before the field visit. Cluster analysis, PERMANOVA and SIMPER on the same records, beside the map. Figures that can be checked or repeated, because every request to every data service is logged.
For ecologists, environmental planners, councils and researchers working with Queensland's wildlife records.
Regional ecosystem mapping, checked
What NUMBAT does. Queensland's regional ecosystem map, drawn by the Queensland Herbarium, sorts the state's native vegetation into more than 1,400 types. Each type's class under the vegetation laws helps set the rules for clearing, development and offsets. Because the map is drawn at a regional scale, it can be wrong on a single property. NUMBAT (Native vegetation Uncertainty Mapping: Bioregional Accuracy Testing) makes its own reading of the vegetation type in every 20 m square. It then shows where its reading agrees with the map and where it doesn't.
How it works. It reads each spot from above, with satellite data recorded over several years, and from below, with the rock, soil, height and slope. It learns what each vegetation type looks like from thousands of patches where the map shows one clear type, and it is never shown the 5 km square it is tested on. Every spot then gets a traffic light:
Its own guesses are shown beside the light. High value regrowth is read the same way, and its height and cover are set against the remnant of its type.
Why it's useful. Checking every hectare on foot is slow and expensive. For a site of up to 400 km², NUMBAT shows in minutes where the map is likely sound, where it is doubtful and what the likely alternatives are, so field time goes where it is most needed. It covers seven of Queensland's 13 bioregions so far and is being extended to the other six; it is tested against field sites from published ecological assessments in five of the seven. Other states will follow, each read against its own vegetation classification, such as the plant community types of New South Wales. It does not replace a field survey.
For ecological consultants, councils and state agencies, mapping teams and landholders who rely on Queensland's regional ecosystem mapping.
Questions asked of the public data
Drop one map layer on another and see how they relate, read as a table, a map and a chart of the same numbers. In this view, Noosa Shire's wildlife records are cut by vegetation, with each type's share of the records set against its share of the land.
In development. It will be listed here when it opens.
National environmental data discovery
Free and national: Australia's public environmental data, from councils to the Commonwealth, in one catalogue of more than 1,600 layers. Find a dataset, filter it and put it on the map.
In development. It will be listed here when it opens.
Read any map layer
Choose a map layer, narrow it down by a filter, a place or another layer, and read what it holds: how many, where, when, and which features look odd. Every view is linked, so a click in one filters the map and the rest.
In this view, Wildnet records of the spotted-tailed quoll (southern subspecies), across the whole layer. In development. It will be listed here when it opens.
Habitat quality scoring for Queensland offsets
BioCondition field data in, habitat quality scores and the Offset Delivery Plan tables out. It scores by the Queensland Guide v1.3 and the BioCondition Manual against every published Herbarium benchmark.
A separate licence, with one plot scored free on its page.
For ecologists delivering Queensland offsets.
Wildlife corridors in 3D
Least-cost corridors for six species across the Scenic Rim, draped over the terrain in a 3D web map anyone can open.
It came out of the corridor modelling for the Scenic Rim, described on the conservation page.
For councils, landholders and conservation groups deciding where to connect habitat.
Built for the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland
Ranked one-kilometre squares to search, squares with old records to recheck, and the habitat modelling behind each one, for south east Queensland. Every figure on its pages is read from the modelling rasters.
For the society's survey volunteers and coordinators.
Cairns northern beaches to Port Douglas
Days with a higher than usual chance of Irukandji stings, read from the wind forecast, seven days ahead. The rule behind it was tested against the stings recorded on these beaches from 1998 to 2016.
It never says a beach is safe.
For anyone on that coast in the stinger season.
The wildlife around your home, anywhere in Australia
Set a point near home and a circle around it, and Home Range shows the wildlife recorded there from the Atlas of Living Australia's open records: what has been seen lately, what grew on the street before clearing, a nature calendar for the year, and local days to join.
No accounts and no advertising. It runs in the browser, and on Android phones from Google Play.
For anyone who wants to know what lives around their home, and what they can do for it.
Scan to open Home Range on your phoneGoogle Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google LLC.
Several more run privately for clients, behind a password: dashboards and decision-support platforms built around one project's data. That work is described under geospatial platforms.
Most projects start with a short call or email to set scope, timing and fit. There's no minimum project size, from a focused model over a few weeks to multi-year platform builds.