Enterprise Spatial Data Platform Transformation

Enterprise Spatial Platfoms transition from on-premise to AWS Cloud.

The Challenge

The Victorian Government Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) has successfully transitioned its Enterprise Spatial Platforms and Services from an on-premise data centre to the AWS Cloud, establishing new spatial capabilities. This transformation involved a comprehensive redesign and re-build of core services for both internal and external users. The program has delivered cost-effective, reliable, scalable, and recoverable platforms, ensuring easy access to critical spatial data, supporting informed decisions about Victoria’s natural and built environment. At the heart of this transformation is the Enterprise Spatial Data Platform, comprising the Vector, Raster, and Metadata platforms.

The former Spatial Vision team, now operating in Veris were to assess, design and deliver spatial metadata cataloguing via the open source GeoNetwork platform, known within the DEECA platform as Metashare.

Metadata is crucial to spatial data infrastructure because it provides essential information about the data’s origin, quality, format, and usage, ensuring that users can effectively discover, understand and utilise spatial datasets.

The Solution

Spatial Vision, now operating in Veris, was initially approached to assess the viability of GeoNetwork as the metadata component of the larger Enterprise Spatial platform. The main driver was retirement of the old on-premise system (developed by Spatial Vision many years ago) in favour of a more scalable, modern, cloud-based metadata platform. There was also a need to consolidate multiple existing sources of metadata – notably, metadata for Raster and Vector datasets were held in different locations, and there was a desire to bring these two portals together. Once viability had been determined and GeoNetwork selected as the platform of choice, the team was contracted for the implementation and build of custom reports, as well as other custom business features for Metashare.

GeoNetwork is an open-source catalogue application designed for managing and sharing spatially referenced resources. It provides a platform for efficiently publishing, discovering, and accessing geospatial metadata and datasets, enabling organisations to improve data transparency, accessibility, and collaboration within spatial data infrastructures. Importantly GeoNetwork has robust support for international metadata standards – in this case ISO 19915-3 2018 Geographic Information – Metadata.

The former Spatial Vision team was just one partner in the consortia chosen to work through the broader solution; 1Spatial Australia, Spatial Partners, Jirotech, CSIRO, Geocat BV, Datacom, and AWS all collaborated to complete the project.

The first component of the Metashare implementation was a proof-of-concept to assess GeoNetwork’s suitability for the new metadata platform. Once suitability was determined, the former Spatial Vision team performed stakeholder consultation with key Victorian Government business units and data custodians to determine requirements for the metadata system, and this consultation led to the platform design.

Business level customisations for reporting, aided by CSIRO staff who were also core contributors to the GeoNetwork open-source project, were built on to the proof-of-concept system and eventually deployed into the DEECA digital infrastructure. A key requirement was to migrate DEECA’s existing metadata from two separate systems into the new, standards-based repository. This required a detailed mapping process from old to new formats and extensive testing to ensure the data was migrated correctly.

We also supported implementation partners to integrate with the metadata system via its web services interface, allowing other enterprise spatial platform components, such as DataShare, to access up to date information about spatial data.

The Benefits

The former Spatial Vision team was able to test and develop the metadata platform Metashare in collaboration with DEECA and CSIRO. The finished platform is a modern metadata portal that will be used by Victorian government data custodians and business stakeholders for years to come.

• A resilient, modern cloud-based metadata platform customised for the Victorian government
• Stakeholder driven business decisions and customisations
• A centralised, accessible metadata portal for Victorian spatial datasets.