GRAVITY 05

SOLUTIONS & AWARDS

Our Challenge Champions

Treasury Wine Estates (TWE)

Informing Irrigation Scheduling Decisions using Satellites for Soil Moisture Capacities

  • Terraview - Vineyard Water Use Efficiency (WUE)

  • One of the biggest challenges facing vine growers, including TWE, is the increasing difficulty of managing water resources due to climate change, which can directly impact grape growth, yield, and wine quality. To address this issue, the Australian government has introduced several policies and initiatives to promote effective water management in the agriculture sector. These measures include establishing water trading schemes and programs that encourage the adoption of water-efficient irrigation practices.

    Traditional hardware-based approaches to understanding water usage in vineyards are often error-prone and financially prohibitive for many vineyards. In response, Terraview has developed a solution that uses remote sensing and an AI model to deliver a soil moisture map of the area under observation, which can be used to make irrigation decisions. The solution enables the capability of a virtual moisture probe (VMP) that can be placed anywhere on the map to receive a moisture reading for that specific site. The analysis can be executed as low as every hour per observed area, without any requirement for the end-user to install any hardware.

    The current accuracy of the solution is +/- 1.5% of actual versus predicted/calculated via the AI model. The solution is highly reliable and cost-efficient, as reliable as the technologies used in space but not their price tag. We believe that this solution can help vineyard owners reduce water usage without compromising yield or wine quality. Effective water management can help Australian vineyard owners reduce costs, increase profitability, and establish themselves as responsible stewards of the environment.

    We know of these challenges as this is what Terraview does best. Terraview is a company dedicated to providing efficient and optimised solutions for viticulture, with a focus on wine grapes. The company has conducted numerous experiments resulting in dependable features such as Yield Estimation, Canopy Cover Management, Early Disease Warnings, Traceability, and Scouting for customers in Australia, the US, and Spain.

NSW Treasury

Developing an Efficient EV Fleet Charging Infrastructure based on Multiple Data Sets

  • ChargeAUsmart - 3E Charging Solution

  • With the Australian Government’s goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, the transportation sector, as one of the largest sources of energy consumption and emissions production, targets at promoting the electric vehicle (EV) fleet transition. Although the NSW Government plans to electrify its passenger vehicle fleet of 12,000 cars by 2030, insufficient charging infrastructure not only becomes a major obstacle to EV uptake for new users but also causes driving anxiety for existing EV users. Therefore, the charging challenge is commonly recognised as an urgent issue to be addressed.

    Consisting of multi-disciplinary researchers with highly relevant project experience and research expertise from the SMART Infrastructure Facility at the University of Wollongong (UOW) and the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN), the ChargeAUsmart team aims to propose an efficient, economical and extensible (3E) charging infrastructure deployment solution for the NSW Government electric vehicle transition by utilising large-scale optimisation approaches and multi-source datasets, such as historical vehicle operation records, specifications of EVs and chargers, electricity price, traffic condition and weather information. Heterogeneity (e.g., multiple types of EVs and chargers) and uncertainty (e.g., time-varying electricity price and stochastic charging demand) are considered to reflect real-life complexity. Comprehensive numerical experiments in the Sydney Greater Metropolitan Area (SGMA) with promising results have demonstrated the feasibility and efficiency of our solution. Although the case study is conducted based on the NSW Government EV fleet, the solution framework has been designed in an extensible way, which can be applied to diverse charging problems and different types of EV users (e.g., community EV fleet, public EV users).

Saber Astronautics

Open-Source Spacecraft Monitoring and Characterization for Intelligent Space Traffic Management

  • Helyx

  • More details will be provided as Helyx develops their prototype to be trialled in the upcoming SACT Event/s

Deloitte Canada

Estimating Economic Activity and Behaviour based on Satellite Imagery of Parking Lots

  • GP One Consulting - Economic Activity Data Exchange Platform & Implementation Partnership

  • GP One Consulting proposes a Data Exchange Platform & Implementation Partnership that will automate car park occupancy calculations (and ultimately a myriad of economic indicators) for commercial districts across Canada, on a weekly schedule, and at a low data & infrastructure cost offering.

    The proposed solution includes:

    - An online data request portal, which will include a bespoke online ticketing system to modify and change the frequency and locations of target sites.

    - A Data Exchange platform to automatically acquire satellite imagery, process through custom-built deep learning models and then publish to ArcGIS Online. Scheduled to return nationwide data updates within 24 hours.

    - An Implementation Partner Program to work collaboratively with Deloitte Canada to advance this solution to their client base.

    This solution addresses the key economic data acquisition challenges of:

    - Data Acquisition of accurate Economic Spending Patterns is difficult to acquire weekly, at a high resolution and a good price;

    - Actionable Insight can be time-consuming to uncover, as influential economic factors can change regularly; and

    - A single dataset in isolation is relatively useless without context.

    The scale-up phase proposes a 3-month pilot project to refine change detection models of extracting economic data, to leverage a Commercial Off The Shelf Esri SaaS platform for actionable intelligence and to work collaboratively to shape a future implementation partner engagement.

Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT)

World Wetland Watch: Large-Scale Wetland Monitoring via Remote Sensing

  • DHI Group

  • DHI Group will continue to work closely with WWT on their solution and more details will be provided when available.

Serasa Experian

Removing the Bottleneck: Better Crop Data and Models to Unlock Access to Agrifinancing for Millions of Brazilians

  • PlanetWatchers - Telling the Story of the Field

  • PlanetWatchers used SAR and optical satellite imagery to detect multiple biological and mechanical operations taking place in fields, improving the accuracy of data collected and delivery of insights.

Our Award Winners

  • Winner: ChargeAUsmart

Our Challenge Finalists

  • TWE Finalist: Deep Planet

    Deep Planet built VineSignal, the world's ultimate climate platform, to help the wine industry adapt to and reverse the effects of climate change. TWE will be able to sustainably produce wine, optimise irrigation water use, and understand soil nutrients and organic carbon.

  • NSW Treasury Finalist: Helyx

    Helyx built the EVolve Fleet Planning tool, a flexible, customisable application that assists in the rollout of EV charging infrastructure across a distributed fleet. It allows NSW Treasury to dig into their data to optimise rollout for financial, health and environmental variables. It is an interactive web application that allows scenario testing for different rollout options, providing strategic and specific site views.

  • Deloitte Canada Finalist: Latitudo40

    Latitudo40 developed ParkOR (Park Occupancy Ratio), a simple and cost-effective way to automatically estimate daily economic activity from a small parking lot to a big city or country. The solution is based on Sentinel-1 (SAR) and Sentinel-2 (optical) images powered by AI/ML algorithms. The solution will be delivered on their platform and through APIs to allow integration with any third-party systems.

  • Serasa Experian Finalist: Agrilift

    Agrilift worked on three solution areas using their FarmLink platform. This platform is capable of processing large volumes of data from sources such as satellite imagery providers, drones, on-farm sensors, farm management systems, operations partners, and others.