News

National Science Week aims to celebrate talents and achievements across science, innovation, mathematics, engineering and technology, as well as demonstrate the relevance of these fields to our daily lives, the wellbeing of society and the environmentally sustainable growth of our economy.

We embraced this opportunity to celebrate the incredible talents and achievements of the DARE cohort and how they are using Data Science to improve the informed decision-making needed for the management of Australian resources and the environment.

The DARE team had a busy week at the 25th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM2023) with 11 presentations, two posters and of course, networking with other modelling experts!

Three DARE PhD candidates presented their work, the team delivered a session on the opportunities and challenges of integrating machine learning and physics-based models in hydrology and our Research Engineers presented striking posters.

Our team were delighted to be a part of the Statistical Society of Australia’s (SSA) NSW Branch event in June: Quantifying the known unknowns!

DARE Deputy Director, Professor Lucy Marshall, and PhD candidate, Yiyi Ma, discussed the interaction between statistics and machine learning, aiming to address the lack of interpretability in machine learning.

The DARE team are excited to begin a new project in collaboration with WaterNSW, which aims to help more accurately calculate the surface water losses experienced in mining impacted catchments in the Metropolitan Special Areas.

Sophisticated data science capability guided by industry and domain experts gives DARE and WaterNSW the best opportunity to cut through the uncertainty and come up with rigorous conclusions.

To celebrate Data Science Week we asked the DARE team what they like about Data Science and how they are using it!

We also hosted a Deluxe Data Challenge, where our PhD candidates and Postdocs were challenged by our Research Engineers to predict soil moisture time series data from a gauge at Narrabri.

Australia’s Department of Industry, Science and Resources have been seeking input in order to refresh the National Science and Research priorities to reflect the country’s ambitions and challenges.

DARE Director, Willem Vervoort, along with several DARE CIs provided a detailed response outlining challenges which can be addressed through science, future opportunities for research, as well as strengths that Australia can build upon.

We kicked off 2023 with a bang, hosting the DARE Symposium in February at The University of Sydney. The first cohort of our talented PhD candidates presented a 10-minute thesis on their research.

The keynote presentation educated us on the importance of minding your Ps (properties) and Qs (research question) when analysing data. We were also delighted to have two of DARE’s valuable partner organisations present.

In November, CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology released the State of the Climate 2022 Report, outlining changes to weather and climate extremes across Australia.

As the magnitude and frequency of climate extremes increases our future becomes more uncertain. Our very existence is dependent on the natural resources and biodiversity the Earth holds, yet we do not know how ecosystems and environments will respond in the face of such rapid changes.

Data Science is currently a broad term interpreted differently by different groups of people in society. For example, this can vary from deep machine learning and artificial intelligence or simple data management. DARE, therefore, agrees with The Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI) and the Statistical Society of Australia (SSA) that it is timely and important to define Data Science.

Groundwater is water found below the land surface. This finite resource is necessary for a healthy environment, as many ecosystems depend on that. Draft NSW Groundwater Strategy highlights groundwater as a crucial resource for the NSW industry and agribusiness. That is due to its reliability and quality, especially when the state experienced devastating drought conditions in 2018-2019.

The recent State of the Environment Report and the shortcoming of water supply for the environment urges us to address how we can share water equitably.

Australia’s highly variable climate and complex landscapes make keeping track of all the water extremely challenging. Innovative approaches are needed to better understand what water we have and where all the water goes within river systems, so that we can share the water between the environment and people.

“The report asks some serious questions on how we respond to the trends in Climate Change, pressures on resources and biodiversity and how we best harness the power of AI and data to provide equitable solutions for our society… The future is uncertain, and analyses will always be shy of perfect, but by embracing and harnessing uncertainty, we can make better decisions for our future.”