Fresh off the back of a nomination at the NSW Local Government Excellence Awards, Snowy Monaro Regional Council’s biosecurity drone program is soaring to even greater heights.
A partnership between Council, Local Land Services (LLS) and regional technology firm 2pi Software – the program brings together local knowledge, practical technology, and the latest developments in cloud-based machine learning.
This combination shows that public sector tech innovation is not just limited to the major entities. Strategic partnerships – both intergovernmental and with the private sector – have been key to Snowy Monaro leading the way in leveraging tech to develop a novel approach to weed and invasive species management in our region.
“Our drone passes over areas of known or suspected weed populations in a pre-determined grid, taking thousands of photos in a session,” said Brett Jones, Biosecurity Coordinator.
“The photos are then run through our custom-built software on the cloud that identifies weeds from these high-altitude photos using tiny differences in colouration.”
“We aim to provide a system that farmers and land managers alike can utilise for their own purposes, using small and affordable drones.”
The locally developed Shared Services Weeds Portal (SSWP) is the first software platform in the country to be directly connected to the Australian Scalable Drone Cloud (ASDC). This is a government initiative driven by the ANU to centralise drone data and drone project initiatives for research and other collective purposes.
Snowy Monaro Regional Council and 2pi Software have developed this technology to the point that it can now successfully pick out invasive weeds with orange flowers in a field dominated by native orange flowers, even from a height of 30 metres.
As it continues to develop, Council anticipates being able to remotely identify specific grassy weeds such as African Lovegrass out of a grass pasture.
“Using the technology to pick invasive grasses out of a green grass based pasture is certainly not out of reach,” Mr Jones said.
