CSIRO signs commercialisation deal with Sparx Systems for the development of geospatial modelling tools

Sparx Systems and CSIRO have signed a research and development agreement that will help address global challenges in geospatial information management. The new deal will see the ongoing development of model registry features and functionality for Sparx's Enterprise Architect UML modelling tool.

Key development components include the CSIRO Model Registries research and the Solid Ground Enterprise Architect extension along with Sparx Systems' Cloud Service and Reusable Asset Service (RAS) solutions, existing components of the recently released Enterprise Architect 11.

"To address the complex interwoven issues society faces today, we need to rapidly integrate information from multiple systems," CSIRO project leader Paul Box said. "Information models underpinning these systems are often inconsistent and documented in different ways. This hampers our efforts to transform and integrate information."

"In conjunction with the Bureau of Meteorology, we developed Solid Ground to overcome this problem, enabling users to create and manage information models in a consistent way. This in turn leads to increased interoperability between the systems that are developed using these models."

Solid Ground was developed as a plug-in for Enterprise Architect and delivered to the Bureau of Meteorology and other organisations. It was used in developing the Australian Hydrological Geospatial Fabric (Geofabric), a highly specialised geographic information system that is a key information resource for the Bureau of Meteorology in producing its regular water resource assessments and national water accounts.

Sparx Systems created the RAS solution in Enterprise Architect in response to growing demand from its user base. The implementation of the RAS standard within Enterprise Architect provides a shared remote registry, accessible via a Cloud Service connection.

The RAS will allow organisations to securely share information between one another in a standardised environment. Users of the RAS can view the information in a single, consolidated virtual registry-repository, while retaining local control over their own registry-repositories.

Using this standardised solution, modellers can easily and conveniently distribute or download data resources including reusable model structures, information, corporate directives or standards.

RAS will enable the sharing of information models across organisations, communities and national borders.

"This agreement with CSIRO builds on an already strong working relationship" said Ken Harkin, Business Development Manager at Sparx Systems. "The products and knowledge underpinning this collaboration, have a sound pedigree, and we are confident that the resulting solutions will deliver much anticipated productivity benefits to the global spatial community and beyond, to other industry domains."

In Australia, the collaboration will focus on supporting large-scale community modelling efforts to develop the Foundation Spatial Data Framework.