Australia is vulnerable to the predicted impacts of climate change on the coast and there is a growing demand from decision-makers for better information to assess the risks from coastal inundation. A key component is high-resolution elevation data to assess risks and adequately inform adaptation efforts and investment decisions.
The Dept of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency commissioned the Urban Digital Elevation Modelling in High Priority Regions (UDEM) project to map key urban and industrial areas which may be subject to inundation due to the impacts of climate change or storm surge.
The Project is managed by the CRCSI in collaboration with Geoscience Australia and ANZLIC as a keystone to the development of the Australian National Elevation Data Framework. Support is also provided by state and local agencies and some companies, and from the Inter-governmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping.
The CRCSI and partners continue work in
- Acquisition, processing and management of high resolution elevation data
- 2008/9 National Data audit of elevation data and 2010 audit of coastal data
- Design, implementation and management of data distribution portals to handle terabytes of data
- Data and metadata standards
- Research of elevation models and derived products
UDEM has acquired and conditioned elevation data for coastal analysis, developed a distribution portal and visualisation tool, and made coastal maps available.
CURRENT RESEARCH
A series of aligned research projects are underway to answer the following questions:
1 Performance of DEM Generation Technologies in Coastal Environments
How well do different technology derived DEMs perform in a range of coastal environments? What is the distribution of their respective vertical errors?
2 Integration of Multi-Resolution DEMs
What are the user needs for differing resolution DEMs and what is the optimal process for developing DEMs of differing resolutions?
3 Vertical datum harmonisation across the littoral zone
What is the best method to integrate land-based DEMs with near-shore bathymetric DEMs ?
4 User requirements for bathymetric data collection
How useful is the near shore DEM derived from bathymetric LiDAR to modellers and what are the alternatives for collection of near shore bathymetry to meet the defined needs?
5 Hydro-DEMs
When is additional processing such as Hydro-enforcement and Hydro-conditioning necessary for DEMs used to model coastal inundation?