This 90-minute webinar is the second in the IAIA-FothergillTC Digital Impact Assessment Webinar Series. The series delves deeper into specific areas and examples of practice as identified and discussed in their late 2021 report on The State of Digital IA Practice.
The webinar recording provides a deep dive into the power on data, digital analytics, and collaborative action in Western Australia, where a transformation to an over-arching digitally supported IA system is making significant progress.
The focus of the webinar is on a presentation by Chris Gentle – Program Director for Biodiversity Data and Information Management at WABSI (Western Australian Biodiversity Science Institute). Chris explains current progress on their work to enable digital transformation of IA via the Shared Analytic Framework for the Environment (SAFE) project.
SAFE is a “next-step” solution to use data and digital analytical tools to generate high quality and reliable predictive environmental information on the interactions and outcomes between WA’s environment and multiple different types of development projects that are relevant to the region’s economy. SAFE will assist the analysis stage of both EIA and strategic assessments to provide confidence in environmental trends and predict contributions to impacts from different activity, a key aim being to use the new system to enable less need for development to be stopped by the application of the precautionary principle around cumulative impacts; instead, SAFE will apply actual shared analytical prediction and integrated monitoring to actively forecast, review, and manage the complex environmental inter-relationships in the region.
The final 20-30 mins of the webinar are dedicated to a facilitated discussion with the speaker by the Chair, with opportunities for delegates to pose questions.