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AARSC wins at the Earth Observation Australia Inc. Awards 2022!

We were amongst very worthy nominees of the inaugural Earth Observation Australian 2022 award for the category: Innovation in Earth Observation Made by a Group, Company, or Organisation and are so proud of the team to have won!  In the last two years, the University of New England’s Applied Agricultural Remote Sensing (AARSC) team have made significant contributions to the Australian Earth Observation community by developing academically validated EO applications that transcend 15 agricultural and horticultural industries; Achieved industry adoption and commercialisation of these outcomes including contracts with COSTA (all national citrus and avocado orchards), Sunshine Sugar for all sugar grown in NSW and the entire South African Macadamia industry; Developed short course material that now adopted by Catholic Colleges Parramatta will help inform and inspire the next generation; Have received international awards for best dashboard (ESRI) and best use of high resolution imagery (MAXAR), as well as industry award for innovation (Australian Macadamia Society); and finally initiated a national collaboration to map all crops across Australia annually, now championed by NCLUMI.
These achievements are the direct result of the strong scientific ethic, comradery, hard work and diverse background of all AARSC members and their collaborators.
The impact, significance, and measurable benefits AARSC has delivered:
  • The ATCM Dashboard is now hosted on the participating industries webpages, as a direct conduit for the collection and collation of crop locations and extent e.g. (https://avocado.org.au/);
  • This ATCM dashboard and associated Web Apps have been used directly by industry as essential baseline information for monitoring industry extent and change, forward selling, marketing, harvesting logistics, water, labour and transport infrastructure, traceability, and response to natural disasters (bushfire, cyclones and floods);
  • The ATCM data has directly assisted in the decision making around the rebuilding of Paradise dam;
  • Direct commercial contracting of AARSC for:
    • yield forecasting of all COSTA citrus and avocado orchards;
    • yield forecasting of all New South Wales sugarcane crops (Sunshine sugar);
    • mapping and yield forecasting of South African macadamia (South African Macadamia SAMAC);
    • Delivering remote sensing short courses to Catholic Colleges Parramatta in term 4 2022 (year 9 students);
    • Delivering the remote sensing short courses to the Ugandan Worldbank, Ministry of Agriculture and Bureau of statistics;
  • AARSC with the support of EOA initiated the ‘Unified Approach to mapping all crops’, this included the running of three workshops and the development of a strategy that NCLUMI has now taken up.
  • Delivery of project outcomes at industry forums, international events, relevant print and social media.
  Awards and major recognition of the AARSC in the last 2 years: