Atherton Tablelands Geographical Information System (@GIS) is an initiative of three Atherton Tablelands Shire Councils - Atherton, Eacham and Herberton. @GIS was established as a business unit of Atherton Shire Council in January 2004, with the assistance of funding from the Australian Government's Sustainable Regions Programme (announced August 2003).

It is the mission of @GIS to:

• Empower Government, Industry, and the Community to enhance the development and management of their pursuits through the establishment of a Tablelands Cooperative Geographic Information System, and subsequent access to spatially orientated information.
• Provide access to relevant existing and collected data.
• Raise the level of technological awareness throughout the region through education.
• Establish a GIS business in the region with long-term commercial capabilities.

@GIS maintains a strong commitment to providing information - for Councils, local businesses, the tourism sector, emergency services providers, the farming and industry sectors - in readily accessible and easy to read formats. It has been estimated that around 80% of people learn visually. GIS provides the tools to visualise spatial data - to see and then to analyse patterns in space and time, and to communicate the results to audiences. GIS technology enables efficient communication of complexities - a picture of data can be efficiently grasped, while a page of numbers is much more difficult to assimilate.

@GIS Data Collector Chad Lewis working with community members.

@GIS provides data collection and GIS services to the three partner Councils in this joint venture, complementing asset management systems to develop a total management plan for the partners' assets. Base data sets have been established and are being used to inform local businesses, the tourism sector, emergency services, farmers and others as well as the three participating Councils.

Due to its unique approach, @GIS has been able to capitalise on the fact that the Atherton Tablelands has the capacity to attract world-class professional people who make the quality lifestyle choice to relocate to regional/rural areas. @GIS staff are highly professional and experienced in global and national arenas.

At the time of publication @GIS is involved in a Department of Natural Resources and Mines (DNRM) pilot project to create a state wide Property Location Index which will map property addresses to property descriptions/locations - previously this link was not always readily available. @GIS is amongst the first to test the data exchange for this project. Furthermore, @GIS has enabled Atherton, Eacham and Herberton Shire Councils, which operate different administrative software packages, to participate in this pilot by providing the resources required.

@GIS is ideally positioned to provide rapid response to new legislation related to land management. For example, @GIS has established a project to produce property maps of assessable vegetation in response to recent legislation related to land clearing.

@GIS also supports research and development in information technology and GIS applications. A current example concerns the development of a Marine Park Green Zone Proximity Alarm in response to the Great Barrier Reef fishing exclusion zones that came into effect on 1 June 2004. @GIS has combined GIS and GPS technology into a computer about the size of a car radio, which can sound an alarm or trigger warning lights to alert fishers as they approach a restricted zone.

@GIS Trainee Leon Tunnie working on the construction of the Marine Park Green Zone Proximity Alarm

While GIS units established for natural resource and asset management purposes are not uncommon in Australia, the @GIS focus on community empowerment through training is unusual.

Youth retention issues are of high priority for rural and regional Australia, with 2001 Census data indicating increasing numbers of young people (aged 18 to 25 years) leaving the Tablelands region due to lack of further education and employment opportunities. This situation is placing Tablelands young people "at risk" as many who are required to move away from their family homes are also required to leave behind their support mechanisms when they do so.

To assist with addressing this issue @GIS maintains a strong Traineeship Program, with the assistance of the Queensland Government's Breaking the Unemployment Cycle funding program, whereby six young Tablelanders undertake Traineeships in the @GIS workplace each year. The Traineeship Program is focused on establishing career paths in GIS technology for Tablelands young people, along with strategic partnerships with universities in support of these career paths, enabling young people to remain in the region.

In 2003 @GIS established a strategic partnership with TNQTAFE whereby a training package in Spatial Information Services has been established for the first time in Queensland. At time of publication, Atherton Campus of TNQTAFE is the only training organisation in Queensland delivering the SIS training package, as direct result of @GIS input and teaching skill.

@GIS empowering community - training in GPS operation as part of the TAFE course Certificate III in Spatial Information Services. Note the GPS located on the hat (left back) and the backpack GPS (foreground).

Because of this @GIS Trainees gain the valuable advantage of emerging from their 12 month Traineeship with two certificates: Certificate III in Business Administration, and Certificate III in Spatial Information Services. Most of the training is done on the job, which is facilitated by the fact that four @GIS staff hold Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training. @GIS staff also work with local schools to encourage teachers and students to utilise GIS software, now prioritised by Education Queensland.

The @GIS training focus is consistent with points made in the Queensland Spatial Information Infrastructure Council Capabilities Committee Discussion Paper published in July 2001 (p3):

• "GPS, GIS and other technologies will play a valuable role in the future and should be a focus for training"; and
• ". data, information and computer technologies should be made more readily available to assist regional communities, industry, governments and landholders to plan and monitor the effects of management practices on the condition of the resource base".

Another unique feature of @GIS is its focus on community empowerment through visual representation of easily accessible and readable demographic and social statistics.

For example, the @GIS Demographic Statistician is currently working with Trainees and the community to map youth catchment areas, in the knowledge that public transport is non-existent across most of the region. Where are young people (aged to 25 years) located within the three Shires? What are the demographics of these catchment areas - in relation to age groupings, computer and internet usage, weekly household incomes? Where are the areas of most disadvantage and most affluence ? Trainees are representing these statistics on maps based on Collection Districts (approximately 200 households) used in the 2001 Census (Australian Bureau of Statistics).

In a similar project sport and recreation catchment areas were mapped to assist in the development of an asset management plan for sport and recreation facilities across the Tablelands. One of the interesting features of these projects is the demonstration that populations do not necessarily live within Shire boundaries.

@GIS is a working demonstration of the empowerment, for all sectors of the community, that can result when Shires work together.