University of Tasmania, Australia

Tasmania to become an international test-bed for data collection.

Government and industry endorsement of ground-breaking SenseT project.

An exciting collaboration between the University of Tasmania, state and Australian governments and a range of industry partners promises to deliver a project of unprecedented scale and ambition.

The Federal Minister for Regional Australia, Simon Crean; the Premier, Lara Giddings, and industry stakeholders represented by the Director of CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation, Colin Griffith, and the Director of IBM Research and Development - Australia, Glenn Wightwick, today endorsed a sensing platform which will encompass the whole state.

The world-first SenseT data sensor network will utilise the ground-breaking National Broadband Network rollout in Tasmania to mesh together historical, spatial and real-time data and make it available through the web to the community.

Over the next five years sensors will be deployed across the island, measuring all aspects of activity, including energy, carbon, water, population and transport flow. Existing sensor networks will be federated into this single, large-scale system.

CSIRO is investing $10.5 million to the project over five years. The Tasmanian Government is contributing to the investment of CSIRO and UTAS.

The Australian Government has contributed $3.6 million to the project under the $120 million Tasmanian Forests Intergovernmental Agreement to bring total Commonwealth investment in SenseT to more than $14 million.

Industry partners also include National ICT Australia (NICTA) and Aurora Energy.

The sensor network has the potential to create transformative opportunities for the community, for business and for government.

"SenseT is one of the biggest coordinated investments in knowledge infrastructure that Tasmania has seen," the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Peter Rathjen, said. "It promises to have a dramatic impact on innovation and productivity in our economy, as well as supporting better decision-making on how we manage our resources and the environment."

Viticulture, the oyster and abalone industries, e-health, meteorology and carbon capture are just a handful of the areas likely to benefit from such a network.

The project has been initiated by the University of Tasmania, the Tasmanian Government and CSIRO, in collaboration NICTA, IBM and the Institute for a Broadband Enabled Society (University of Melbourne).