Digital & Spatial Technology

Digital & Spatial Technology is Abley's geospatial, data and software consulting service line. It serves private companies, utility providers, councils and national transport agencies in New Zealand, Australia, Asia Pacific and the USA that want more value from spatial data and need their GIS connected to other business systems.

The team covers six areas: spatial solutions (GIS analysis, visualisation and optimisation of GIS systems), data and integration built mainly on FME, Esri implementation, software development, digital engineering (3D scenes, digital twins, augmented and virtual reality for transport infrastructure) and FME services. Projects run from initial concept and architecture to the deployment of large-scale system integrations, including links between Esri or open-source GIS and core business systems such as SAP. Abley is an Esri business partner and a Safe Software system integrator. Featured projects include migrating three of Ballance Agri-Nutrients' farm tools to FME and a potholing data-capture app for Fulton Hogan.

Satellite data features in one published project. In a feasibility study for New Zealand's Ministry for Primary Industries, first published in January 2022, Abley classified exotic forest in the Canterbury Region from Sentinel-2 multispectral imagery, trialling a Support Vector Machine classifier and a U-net deep learning model with Esri's tools in ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Notebooks. The aim was an independent dataset for testing the annual National Exotic Forest Description survey. Abley reports that the U-net was more accurate but missed many small areas of forest, and that more training data would refine the results.