Australia plans to digitize itself

Photo: NASA

What if any event that occurs in a country is recorded by a computer system? And all this in real time, and the data will be available to all? Based on this idea, the Australian government conducts scientific research, and the project is long-term and is designed for 10 years. As a result, the government wants to get a digital copy of the country.

Oznome is a project named after the Human Genome Project, which aims to become the “digital past, present and future of everything” in the country by 2025. Researchers begin by digitizing environmental data.

“As with the Human Genome Project, Oznome is a significant crazy idea, which many people say is impossible,” said David Lemon, head of the research team at CSIRO.
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In order to make the idea a reality, scientists are going to find a way to compile data from research organizations, private companies, individual scientists. The goal is to understand how some systems and phenomena depend on others, to determine the existence of possible links between the hydrosphere, the energy sector of the country, agriculture, health care and the economy.

If you succeed, Ozonme will allow researchers to track the impact of climate change or the mining industry on the water supply of the Australian population, as an example.

Something similar is already being implemented in the United States, a similar project called the National Ecological Observatory Network. In Europe, there is also a similar initiative, called Infrastructure for the European Community (INSPIRE) .

In the future, the data obtained within the project can be used in complex forecast models of the future.

The main problem at the current stage of the project is to create a platform that allows you to combine data streams from various fields, process this data and provide it in a manner that is understandable to humans or machines. One of the positive aspects of the project is that if everything works out, this will save considerable funds - about $ 54 million a year only on the costs of managing information flows by research organizations. This also includes savings on research and evaluation of the effectiveness of various works - up to 30% of budget funds usually go to these needs.