Active-Projects | Growing Data Foundation

Mount Burr Wetland Restoration

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Mount Burr Wetland Restoration project applies open environmental data and community monitoring to support the restoration of wetlands in the Mount Burr region of South Australia’s South East.

The project brings together landholders, conservation groups and the Growing Data Foundation to monitor wetland health using low-cost IoT sensors deployed via The Things Network. Data on water levels, salinity and wildlife activity is made openly available to inform restoration decisions.

The project

Sensor nodes installed around the wetland edges transmit real-time readings to an open data platform. Volunteer monitors, land managers and researchers can access the data to track restoration progress and identify issues early.

The tech

The project uses LoRaWAN sensor nodes, The Things Network infrastructure and open-source data dashboards. All collected data is published under a Creative Commons licence.

About

The Growing Data Foundation facilitated the project as part of its commitment to applying open data and community technology to environmental challenges in regional South Australia.

Riverland Schools IoT Project

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Riverland Schools IoT Project connects secondary school students in the Riverland region of South Australia with real-world environmental data through a curriculum-integrated Internet of Things (IoT) program.

Initiated in June 2020 at the invitation of the District Council of Loxton Waikerie, the project supports staff and students across four Riverland high schools in designing and deploying sensor experiments that draw on LoRaWAN infrastructure recently installed across the region.

The project

Students use low-cost sensors and the open Things Network to collect real-time data on topics they choose — water quality, microclimate, agricultural conditions — and then analyse and visualise that data as part of their school curriculum. The emphasis is on open data, open tools and developing local technical capacity in regional South Australia.

The tech

The project uses The Things Network (TTN) LoRaWAN infrastructure, low-cost sensor nodes, and open-source data dashboards. Data collected by students is published openly for community use.

About

The Growing Data Foundation facilitated the project, providing technical mentorship, hardware sourcing and curriculum design support. The project is part of GDF’s broader commitment to bringing IoT and open data skills to regional and rural communities.

What Grows Here – Best for Bees

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

What Grows Here — Best for Bees extends the original What Grows Here? flora identification project with a focus on plants that support native bee populations and other pollinators.

Building on the app developed for the 2014 GovHack competition, the Best for Bees initiative adds curated plant data identifying species known to provide habitat, forage and nesting resources for South Australia’s native bees. The project supports home gardeners, land managers and schools in making planting decisions that benefit local pollinator communities.

The project

Users can search for native plants suitable to their location that are also recognised as pollinator-friendly. Plant records are drawn from the State Flora Catalogue and the Atlas of Living Australia, with additional bee-habitat data sourced from research partners.

The tech

The project uses the open What Grows Here? data platform, extended with pollinator trait data. All data is published openly and the application source code is available on GitHub.

About

Native bees are critical pollinators for Australian ecosystems and agriculture. Unlike European honeybees, most Australian native bees are solitary and depend on diverse native plant communities for survival. The Best for Bees project aims to make it easy for anyone to contribute to native pollinator conservation through informed planting choices.