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Purpose: The achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) for all communities and jurisdictions require a comprehensive roadmap that encompasses all dimensions of data infrastructure, social, economic, environmental and governance ecosystems. With this in mind, this paper aims to establish the link between the curriculum and intended learning outcomes of undergraduate and postgraduate subjects offered by the University and sustainability. This study is a part of a wider university strategy to embed sustainability knowledge and values in the university curricula. The 17 SDGs developed as a part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainability Development was used as tool to measure and map how the subjects are linked with sustainability. Design/methodology/approach: To incorporate sustainability into the curriculum, this paper developed an interdisciplinary approach for analysing the interconnection between the SDGs, the expected subject learning points and the relevant aspects of sustainability (geospatial information, the legal, policies and institutional components). As part of the approach, in the first phase of the study, qualitative data were collected through a review of published information on the SDGs and the content of the subjects available in the subject handbook. Subject codes were assigned to the keywords and key phrases extracted from the SDGs and the subject content, and then compared and matched to establish the link between the subjects and the SDGs. Six university schools offering over 2,157 subjects were investigated. In the second phase, a survey was conducted involving subject coordinators with the purpose of validating the findings of the first phase and determining the strength of the linkages between the subjects and the SDGs. In the third phase, a plugin was designed to be used in the digital twin platform developed in the UoM, allowing visualisation of the research outcomes. Findings: Based on the interim findings, it was found that some subjects within the schools are linked to more than one SDG. However, not all of the subjects within the schools can be linked to the SDGs. There is a scope of improvement for embedding sustainability in more subjects within the schools. Some of the schools were also found to have weak linkages with sustainability, which demonstrate the challenge in technical subjects in linking their subject contents with sustainability. Originality/value: This study provides a methodology which enables the integration of sustainability into current state of the curricula at the university to be established. Further, with the advancement of geospatial technology and new visualisation opportunities through the use of the digital twin platform provides capabilities to communicate the outcomes of sustainability and involvement of each faculties and departments more effectively to the university community and wider stakeholders.

The extent and severity of bushfires in a landscape are largely governed by meteorological conditions. An accurate understanding of the interactions of meteorological variables and fire behaviour in the landscape is very complex, yet possible. In exploring such understanding, we used 2693 high-confidence active fire points recorded by a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor for nine different bushfires that occurred in Victoria between 1 January 2009 and 31 March 2009. These fires include the Black Saturday Bushfires of 7 February 2009, one of the worst bushfires in Australian history. For each fire point, 62 different meteorological parameters of bushfire time were extracted from Bureau of Meteorology Atmospheric high-resolution Regional Reanalysis for Australia (BARRA) data. These remote sensing and meteorological datasets were fused and further processed in assessing their relative importance using four different tree-based ensemble machine learning models, namely, Random Forest (RF), Fuzzy Forest (FF), Boosted Regression Tree (BRT), and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost). Google Earth Engine (GEE) and Landsat images were used in deriving the response variable–Relative Difference Normalised Burn Ratio (RdNBR), which was selected by comparing its performance against Difference Normalised Burn Ratio (dNBR). Our findings demonstrate that the FF algorithm utilising the Weighted Gene Coexpression Network Analysis (WGCNA) method has the best predictive performance of 96.50%, assessed against 10-fold cross-validation. The result shows that the relative influence of the variables on bushfire severity is in the following order: (1) soil moisture, (2) soil temperature, (3) air pressure, (4) air temperature, (5) vertical wind, and (6) relative humidity. This highlights the importance of soil meteorology in bushfire severity analysis, often excluded in bushfire severity research. Further, this study provides a scientific basis for choosing a subset of meteorological variables for bushfire severity prediction depending on their relative importance. The optimal subset of high-ranked variables is extremely useful in constructing simplified and computationally efficient surrogate models, which can be particularly useful for the rapid assessment of bushfire severity for operational bushfire management and effective mitigation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A 3D integrated legal-physical model of underground assets was developed. • A new ADE for CityGML was proposed at the conceptual, logical, and physical levels. • The ADE defines semantic entities for underground legal spaces. • The viability of the model was tested in a real-world complex underground area. • The prototype showcased benefits of CityGML for underground land administration. Current practices of managing and communicating underground physical and cadastral (legal) data are based on fragmented and silo-based 2D methods, which cannot provide unambiguous, coordinated, and reliable representations of assets and their rights, restrictions, and responsibilities (RRRs) in subterranean environments. There is also no link between underground physical and legal data in current practices, resulting in ineffective Underground Land Administration (ULA). A single 3D integrated model of underground assets associated with the cadastral data at a city-scale can improve understanding and interpretation of underground legal and physical aspects. Extending a 3D city model to include underground legal data requirements can potentially provide a viable approach for developing a 3D integrated model. This research aims to develop a new Application Domain Extensions (ADE) for CityGML 3.0 (called VicULA ADE) to manage underground data using a single 3D integrated legal-physical model at a city-scale. The VicULA ADE proposes semantic entities for underground legal spaces, enabling the model to define spatial and semantic relationships between different types of legal spaces. The proposed approach comprises identifying requirements based on the Victorian state of Australia, developing the conceptual and logical data models in UML, and implementing the XML schema as the physical data model. The viability of the VicULA ADE is tested in a complex real-world case study that has various underground legal and physical objects, shifting this data model from a conceptual level to the implementation level. The proposed ADE of the CityGML 3.0 standard revealed how underground legal data elements can be logically embedded in this 3D data model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The Australian digital cadastre initiative, namely ePlan, has been introduced and discussed. • The main challenges of visualising digital cadastral plans in Victoria are discussed and illustrated by images. • A research methodology to tackle the digital cadastral data visualisation challenges in Victoria is discussed in detail. • Implementation of a tool enabling the surveyors to enhance the presentation of digital cadastral plan is discussed. • The results of the usability evaluation of the tool and the future direction for this research are discussed. Abstract ePlan, as a digital cadastral data initiative, is a collaborative program between the land authorities and the surveying industry which aims to replace paper and PDF cadastral plans and surveys with digital data in LandXML format. ePlan has been adopted by Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. ePlan has been operational in the State of Victoria for 2D plans since 2013. The ePlan files are automatically converted into PDF plans by the ePlan visualisation service within the Victorian state's digital lodgement portal, namely Surveying and Planning through Electronic Applications and Referral (SPEAR). Cadastral plan in PDF format forms part of the legal title in Victoria. Presently, ePlan, in terms of development, has limitations in visualising detailed, complex and large scaled 2D plans. The visualised plan from the LandXML file must comply with accepted Victorian survey drawing standards as the plan is a source for plan certification by council, forms part of a contract of sale, and when the plan is registered by the State of Victoria land authority, Land Use Victoria (LUV), it becomes the title diagram. In addition, through significant engagement with the Victorian Surveying industry, LUV has received feedback from surveyors that they would like to have the ability to enhance the presentation of visualised plans to create enlargements, define additional sheets, exaggerate the position of lines, and move the placement of visualised labels. These enhancement provisions would provide greater scope to ensuring plans complied with the aforementioned drawing standards. A Licensed Surveyor, the creator of the LandXML file is also duty bound to sign the visualised plan. In addressing the abovementioned problem, a research methodology, including the conceptual, choice of technology, development and evaluation phases has been defined and implemented at LUV. The 'conceptual' phase considered the business and technical requirements for developing a tool to support surveyors to enhance the presentation of the visualised ePlans. The 'choice of technology' phase focused on defining the most suitable technologies for developing the tool. In the 'development' phase, the tool was implemented within SPEAR. The surveyors' feedback on the tool usability was collected as part of the 'evaluation' phase. The main outcome of this research has been the ePlan Visualisation Enhancement Tool (VET) developed within SPEAR based on OpenLayers technology, which enables surveyors to improve the presentation of auto-generated cadastral plans. The evaluation phase showed that end users were generally satisfied by the usability of VET and identified the areas that need further improvement. This paper first provides an overview of the ePlan project in Victoria with a focus on the research problem and objective. The relevant interstate and international experiences are then reviewed. Next, the paper discusses the research methodology including the above four phases in detail. The outcomes of the evaluation phase are then discussed. The paper concludes with some discussions around the approach taken for this research, the surveyors' feedback and the future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using state‐level annual variation in natural disasters and economic output in Australia, we estimate the direct effects of floods and bushfires on sectoral gross value added during the period 1978–2014. We find that floods exert an adverse and persistent effect on the outputs of agriculture, mining, construction and financial services sectors. For example, our estimates indicate that a state that experienced a flood in a given year encountered, on average, 5–6 per cent lower agricultural output in both that year and the following year, compared to another state with no such flood experience. Sectoral responses to bushfires are more nuanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies in Australia and New Zealand have explored various technological, legal, and institutional aspects of 3D cadastre modernisation. The majority of these studies concentrate on a single jurisdiction. The reason is that each jurisdiction is in charge of its own cadastral system. As a result, each jurisdiction's standards, rules, and processes for implementing 3D digital cadastre are unique. In Australia and New Zealand, however, the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM) has established national frameworks for cadastral systems. To implement 3D digital cadastre at a national level, it is vital to identify the variations and commonalities across existing cadastral systems. Comparisons of 3D cadastre for several civil law countries as well as international standards have been undertaken in the present literature. However, common law jurisdictions such as Australian states and New Zealand have not been compared in terms of 3D cadastre. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to propose a multi-jurisdictional framework that includes variations and commonalities in the current methods adopted for subdividing ownership of vertically placed properties in order to support 3D digital cadastre in all Australian and New Zealand jurisdictions. The proposed framework comprises four layers: definition, core, interoperability and jurisdictional. This framework would potentially serve as a starting point for building a nationally integrated digital data ecosystem for 3D cadastre in Australia and New Zealand. • The study identifies 3D primary and secondary parcels, boundaries, and spatial relationships in Australia and New Zealand. • A multi-jurisdictional framework that includes variations and commonalities across the studied jurisdictions. • The framework provides a foundation for a national digital data ecosystem for 3D cadastre in Australia and New Zealand. • Having a standardized approach for 3D digital cadastre will facilitate sharing data across multiple jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Every year, about 1.24 million people are killed in traffic crashes worldwide and more than 22% of these deaths are pedestrians. Therefore, pedestrian safety has become a significant traffic safety issue worldwide. In order to develop effective and targeted safety programs, the location- and time-specific influences on vehicle-pedestrian crashes must be assessed. The main purpose of this research is to explore the influence of pedestrian age and gender on the temporal and spatial distribution of vehicle-pedestrian crashes to identify the hotspots and hot times.Methods: Data for all vehicle-pedestrian crashes on public roadways in the Melbourne metropolitan area from 2004 to 2013 are used in this research. Spatial autocorrelation is applied in examining the vehicle-pedestrian crashes in geographic information systems (GIS) to identify any dependency between time and location of these crashes. Spider plots and kernel density estimation (KDE) are then used to determine the temporal and spatial patterns of vehicle-pedestrian crashes for different age groups and genders.Results: Temporal analysis shows that pedestrian age has a significant influence on the temporal distribution of vehicle-pedestrian crashes. Furthermore, men and women have different crash patterns. In addition, results of the spatial analysis shows that areas with high risk of vehicle-pedestrian crashes can vary during different times of the day for different age groups and genders. For example, for those between ages 18 and 65, most vehicle-pedestrian crashes occur in the central business district (CBD) during the day, but between 7:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., crashes among this age group occur mostly around hotels, clubs, and bars.Conclusions: This research reveals that temporal and spatial distributions of vehicle-pedestrian crashes vary for different pedestrian age groups and genders. Therefore, specific safety measures should be in place during high crash times at different locations for different age groups and genders to increase the effectiveness of the countermeasures in preventing and reducing vehicle-pedestrian crashes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socioeconomic factors are known to be contributing factors for vehicle-pedestrian crashes. Although several studies have examined the socioeconomic factors related to the location of the crashes, limited studies have considered the socioeconomic factors of the neighborhood where the road users live in vehicle-pedestrian crash modelling. This research aims to identify the socioeconomic factors related to both the neighborhoods where the road users live and where crashes occur that have an influence on vehicle-pedestrian crash severity. Data on vehicle-pedestrian crashes that occurred at mid-blocks in Melbourne, Australia, was analyzed. Neighborhood factors associated with road users' residents and location of crash were investigated using boosted regression tree (BRT). Furthermore, partial dependence plots were applied to illustrate the interactions between these factors. We found that socioeconomic factors accounted for 60% of the 20 top contributing factors to vehicle-pedestrian crashes. This research reveals that socioeconomic factors of the neighborhoods where the road users live and where the crashes occur are important in determining the severity of the crashes, with the former having a greater influence. Hence, road safety countermeasures, especially those focussing on the road users, should be targeted at these high-risk neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data ambiguity and invalidity can cause significant expensive issues in the cadastral domain (e.g. legal disputes). An automated data validation can significantly help to reduce the potential issues. Quality assurance has been comprehensively investigated in various domains, however, the validation of 3D cadastral data is still in its early development. The availability of various regular and irregular shapes for 3D cadastral objects and modern building designs has resulted in a critical need for developing validation rules to ensure data validity and quality. The land registry in Victoria, Australia, is investigating the technical requirements for implementing a 3D digital cadastre. The study of 3D cadastral data validation requirements has been part of this ongoing investigation. This study is being undertaken in three main phases including 1) developing geometrical validation rules, 2) developing non-geometrical validation rules, 3) implementing an online service to validate 3D cadastral data. This paper aims to discuss the initial outcomes of the first phase of the aforementioned study which has focused on developing geometrical validation rules for 3D cadastral objects. The paper reviews the development of four geometrical validation rules which have been formalised using mathematical expressions to check the individual 3D parcels and their relationships with adjoining or neighbouring parcels. The first validation rule checks the compatibility of the cancelled parcel against the created parcels. The second rule deals with parcel collision detection which is required for flagging unacceptable intersection of 3D objects. The third rule ensures the faces forming a 3D parcel are flat. The fourth validation rule assures 3D objects are watertight. The paper concludes with a discussion around the impacts of the proposed validation checks on the subdivision process and future research for the Victorian 3D digital cadastre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is frequently argued that, at the parcel level, stakeholders are capable of and well supported in managing their land-related risks. Yet, evidence from the contemporary Australian context suggests otherwise: numerous large-scale disaster events have revealed that citizens are ill-prepared to respond and recover adequately. This paper begins with the premise that information, specifically land information, could better support parcel-level risk preparation, mitigation, response, and recovery. State land administration organisations in Australia primarily maintain this information and make it accessible. Land information is used regularly across all levels of government to support risk management activities; however, such application has not always occurred at the parcel and citizen level. Via a case study approach, this paper initially explores the land information available in Australia to stakeholders interested in parcel-level detail, and then goes on to propose how the utilisation of parcel-level land information could serve to enhance risk management practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population growth and lack of available land in urban areas have resulted in intensive property development both above and below ground. According to the ‘Cadastre 2034 Strategy’ published by the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM) for Australia in 2014, the current digital cadastres have limitations in positional accuracy and do not adequately represent the three-dimensional nature of real property. This strategy highlights the fact that land parcels that are limited in vertical dimension are not adequately represented in the current digital cadastre. This makes it difficult to visualise security of tenure as it relates to a building or an apartment within a building. Since 2011, a national cadastral data model (ePlan Protocol) is being implemented in different Australian jurisdictions including Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland for 2D (non-building) plans of subdivision. Following the ICSM’s strategy, the ePlan Working Group has started to investigate the requirements for supporting 3D building subdivisions in ePlan. As part of this investigation and to assess the potential of the ePlan Protocol in terms of supporting 3D spatial units associated with land and property management, a research project was recently undertaken in Victoria, Australia. In this research, various building subdivision plans were investigated and modelled in ePlan and a number of technical and non-technical challenges were identified. Overall, the study confirmed that the ePlan Protocol is able to support 3D building subdivision plans, however curved shapes are not well handled. This paper also proposes future investigations for implementing a 3D digital cadastre in Victoria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land information has an important role in informing macroeconomic policy. Timely and accurate market information is essential for evidence-based fiscal and monetary decisions. Currently in Australia, there is a gap between the creators of land information at state level and the users at federal level. The capacity of evidence-based policy is under-realised as a result. This paper explores the inter-governmental flow of land market information within three state-based land administration systems in Australia. Results show that integration is occurring within some state land agencies; however, communication with federal government agencies is limited, leading to information asymmetries. Future collaboration is essential. This will require an understanding of and openness to information sharing, involving a move away from historic silo approaches to land information creation and use. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Accurate land valuation is necessary for tax purposes, land resources allocation, real estate management and urban development and planning. Since various factors from different domains affect land prices through non-linear relationships, automating the land valuation process on a large scale is a complex task. Advanced technologies in big data analysis and artificial intelligence have demonstrated superior capabilities in knowledge extraction in such cases. Accordingly, this paper develops and compares the performance of four Automated Valuation Models (AVMs) based on machine learning and deep learning techniques utilizing physical, geographical, socio-economic, environmental, legal and planning factors in Melbourne Metropolitan, Australia. According to the results, the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) method outperforms other algorithms of Support Vector Regression (SVR), random forest and Deep Neural Network (DNN). This method has achieved the coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.862, Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 0.139, and normalized Root Mean Square Error (nRMSE) of 0.281. The achieved high accuracy is due to incorporating a wide range of driving factors and applying innovative feature selection and hyperparameter tuning procedures evaluating various possible feature sets and hyperparameters. Accordingly, this paper can contribute to research, governmental and industry-based activities in terms of developing AVMs for mass land valuation. • Automated land valuation models using machine learning and deep learning • Comprehensive feature set and hybrid feature selection process for robust model performance • Spatial mapping of land values in large urban areas • Contribution to fair housing policies and urban development by accurate land valuation • Practical insights for housing affordability strategies in terms of land management [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Role of indicators in measuring sustainability is critically evaluated. • Role of SDI in solving the shortcomings of indicators is discussed. • UADI has been developed using Ontology as a core component. • Selected transport sustainability indicators are quantified manually and using UADI. • Indicators quantification by user and UADI are compared considering 5 technical lenses. This paper examines capabilities of a new Spatial Data Infrastructure called Urban Analytics Data Infrastructure (UADI 1 1 Spatial Data Infrastructure called Urban Analytics Data Infrastructure), through deriving and evaluating transport sustainability indicators. The UADI was developed in Australia to support multi-disciplinary and cross-jurisdictional analytics to overcome the challenges related to model generalisation, data accessibility, data integration, data heterogeneity and city performance benchmarking. In this paper, the UADI were evaluated through 5 technical lenses of: data accessibility; integration; harmonisation; data reliability and model reliability. The paper shows that using open geospatial standards in UADI enabled transport sustainability indicators to be derived through accessing and integrating different spatial data layers and the process of mapping data to ontology facilitated data harmonisation. In addition, the input data, tool processing, and output of ontology-based transport sustainability indicators could be traced in UADI, which addresses the challenge of model and data reliability. The paper highlights the role of spatial data infrastructures in decision support systems for uncertainty analysis and promoting smart cities and resilient environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial metadata is a critical part of any spatial data infrastructure, which enables the organising, sharing, discovery and use of spatial data. This paper highlights a knowledge gap in the usability of the metadata systems for the end–users. It then addresses the gap by applying the User Centred Design approach to investigate the usability of metadata records. The research engages with end–users concerning efficiency and effectiveness of metadata systems, and end–users' satisfaction and expectations. The results indicate significant gaps with the effectiveness and efficiency of metadata systems for spatial data discovery and selection. Inconsistency and irrelevant information in the metadata records were found in the title, keywords, abstracts, data quality and other elements of the metadata. Additionally, essential improvements were identified for user interfaces. Discouraging presentation of the metadata is a prominent problem found in the interface of the metadata systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The massive property development of high-rises and complex structures above and below the ground surface in cities indicates the lack of land and high demand to use spaces. However, the existing land and property administration systems are mainly two dimensional and not capable of efficiently managing these complex spaces. As ownership rights on plans are recorded in paper or PDF, understanding these rights and making effective decisions and analyses can be difficult without having experience in the art of reading and interpreting plan information. This paper attempts to address these issues by presenting a prototype for visualizing three-dimensional land and property information. The aim of this prototype is to illustrate and communicate the requirements and benefits of a 3D digital cadastre platform. The prototype is a web-based application and includes functionality to display both legal and physical data, interact with 3D models, display administrative data, identify objects and search objects, visualize cross-sections, and undertake measurements in 3D. For this prototype, a multi-story building was selected as a case study and its 3D model was imported into the prototype to display ownership rights. The prototype was then evaluated by various stakeholders and their feedback was considered for future enhancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) has been widely adopted to assist in disaster management, yet its characteristics of uncertainty and requirements of large amounts of manual manipulation for data validation and interpretation hinder VGI applications. In this study, we aimed to develop an effective method to assess the credibility of VGI for time-critical conditions, such as disaster response. We collected datasets from two extreme flood events in 2011 and 2013 from Brisbane, Australia. According to the defined geo-location factors, we built a binary logistic regression with the 2011 event dataset to measure the credibility scores of the VGI instances. At the threshold of 0.917, the overall accuracy of the model in the 2011 training dataset was 90.5%. Next, the performance of this probability model was evaluated by the 2013 testing instances. We found that our model could categorize the credibility classes with 80.4% accuracy. These results suggest great potential for our model to be used by emergency management sectors to sort credibility of VGI for efficient and rapid response, decision-making, and coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Nine sustainability indicators related to urban transport were selected. [•] A composite transport sustainability index was developed. [•] Combined PCA/FA was used for weighing indicators. [•] Inner SLAs have better composite transport sustainability index in Melbourne. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many countries macroeconomic policy making and land administration operate independently. A review of the literature from both disciplines supports this view. The failure to include authoritative land information generated by a country's land administration system in macroeconomic policy making can result in suboptimal governmental fiscal and monetary decisions. This is demonstrated through two case studies of the Australian context, with a focus on managing land taxes and administering interest on debt financing. A simplified empirical model is derived from the study results. The model aims to articulate and promote the important role of government land information in policy and decision making. Practical implementation will require determination of the legal, institutional, and technical requirements of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National spatial data infrastructures (SDI) have been built throughout the 1990s in both Australia and the USA, conceptualized and initialized by the Australia New Zealand Land Information Council (ANZLIC) and the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), respectively. Numerous SDI-related activities at the national, state, and local levels in both countries share similar core objectives to stimulate coordinated collection, dissemination, and use of spatial data by public and private entities. This coordination is to result in digital databases that would be easily accessible and seamless across administrative and organizational boundaries and that would contribute social, environmental, and economic benefits to the involved communities. Improved information resources, at the local level in particular, are expected to aid decision-making process and to enhance cooperation between government and non-government sectors. This paper raises a question about the effectiveness of existing SDI developments and about outcomes of the related interactions between the local, state, and national levels. Case studies of local governments in Victoria, Australia and Illinois, USA are used to evaluate the utility of existing SDIs to local planning activities and to make suggestions for increasing their effectiveness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]