Find hidden gems within COVID-19 lockdown

Jurisdiction: Australia

The new restrictions on movement in Melbourne have caused increased stress for Victorians. How can we use currently available datasets to show our fellow Australians what is already available for their quality of life within their 5km radius?

On August 2nd, the Victorian Government introduced restrictions on movement in Melbourne, limiting both the reasons for being outdoors (groceries and exercise) and the distance people can travel from their homes (5km). Are there elements of neighbourhoods that can help Melbournians make the most of that limited time and travel distance to take care of their wellbeing?

Use the existing datasets to explore the current situation; show residents those areas with the most opportunity for exercise, such as walking and cycling routes, in their 5km radiuses.

When restrictions are lifted, help them get to know their neighbourhood by making a treasure hunt of features of interest such as open spaces, historic landmarks, street arts and/or exciting plants, trees, birds and animals.

To gain maximum benefits from data assets, data needs to be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR principles). The FAIR principles are designed to support knowledge discovery and innovation by both humans and machines and support data and knowledge integration. Please identify which principles of FAIR were more important or were missing in your experience accessing different datasets.

• Are data Findable on the internet through discovery portals (like Trove, Research Data Australia or Data.gov.au)?
• Are data Accessible, either for download or by using a standardised protocol (API)?
• Are data Interoperable, using standard data formats, language and vocabularies?
• Are data Reusable in their initial richness and contain clear user rights and licenses?

Additional Information:

ARDC guide on FAIR data
AURIN Hackathon Guide
Research Data Australia - ARDC provides an online portal for finding research data and associated projects, researchers, and data services
Research Vocabularies Australia (RVA) - ARDC provides an easily accessible portal to controlled vocabularies used in research
• AURIN has two options to geocode address information that would be ideal to map lists of features or citizen science applications:
AURIN Portal - freely available to academic/gov users (documentation)
AURIN Data61/GNAF geocoder - freely available to all users (documentation)
ARDC guides on working with data

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