Two Australian businesses and a leading NSW university will share in $1.2 million as part of a program to strengthen Australia’s critical geospatial intelligence capabilities.
Spatial consulting agency NGIS, Perth-based technology company ISOLABS and the University of Wollongong are the successful applicants for the second round of the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO) Analytics Labs Program.
The AGO and not-for-profit company FrontierSI worked together to identify the successful applicants.
The $1.2 million program is designed to improve the AGO’s understanding of the modern machine analytics capabilities developed by industry, while raising industry awareness of AGO’s current and emerging challenges.
Minister for Defence Industry Melissa Price congratulated the successful applicants, saying their proposals demonstrated the immense value that could be realised when Defence and Australia’s defence industry team up to overcome key challenges.
“The government is proud to invest in programs that support our defence industry and expand its capacity to support the unique requirements of the Defence geospatial community,” Minister Price said.
The successful organisations have each been awarded six-month contracts to deliver rapid insights to AGO.
As was the case in the program’s first round, participants will work closely with AGO subject matter experts to demonstrate potential uses for modern machine analytic technologies in the development of geospatial-intelligence capabilities.
“I am very pleased to see small Australian businesses really demonstrating their capabilities to support key Defence requirements,” Minister Price said.