On July 1, AURIN  will change how we provide data to Australia’s research community.

We will retire the AURIN Portal, which has supported the research community across academia, government and industry for the past 10 years, and open a new online AURIN Data Provider.

The Data Provider will be the foundation on which AURIN will build a new suite of data access and tools, enhancing the capabilities currently provided.

The AURIN Data Provider will be an Application Programming Interface (API) endpoint for authenticated users to download datasets.

“We believe this will improve our ability to support the urban, regional, and social science research that Australia needs. We recognise that the transition may be challenging for some of our researchers and AURIN is committed to supporting our users in this process.” – AURIN Director Professor Stuart Barr.

For existing users of the AURIN OpenAPIs there will be little difference, and for those currently using the AURIN Portal, the Data Provider will provide more direct access to data for their analysis workflows.

Depending on your current workflow, this change may require some knowledge of coding to access datasets going forward. AURIN will work with users to support them through the transition from the Portal to the new Data Provider.

We will provide online how-to guides for our AURIN User community.  These will be in the form of example scripts and guides for the most common data analysis languages and platforms, and we will demonstrate how to access data through common GIS packages.

AURIN has supported researchers over the last decade with the access to data and analytical tools they needed to produce work that has improved liveability, informed climate change adaptation, analysed the employment implications of COVID, and more. And our commitment to these researchers remains unchanged.

The work of these researchers is critical to Australia as its population grows to more than 35 million people by 2050.

This includes our work on collaborative projects, such as:

• The Australian Urban Health Indicators (AusUrb-HI), which will develop a suite of new indicator data assets that improve the understanding of the health of Australian urban and regional populations.
• The Australian Transport Research Cloud (ATRC), which will deliver data and tools to accelerate transport research and impacts across Australia.

We have also invested heavily in the AURIN High Impact Projects (HIP) program, funding projects such as:

• The Park Life Project, which will develop a suite of planning support and data summary and processing tools to support a new high-quality, nationally standardised dataset of public open space for researchers, policymakers, and planners. The data will be available through the new AURIN Data Provider and we will also develop an expanded version of an existing Public Open Space Tool.
• The Bikeability for Transportation project will develop a new bikeability assessment tool for research and practice, making it possible to assess and monitor planning, design, infrastructure and policy interventions over time.
• The Integrated Heat Vulnerability Assessment Toolkit for Australian Cities, which will establish a nationwide dynamic and interactive heat vulnerability assessment toolkit through integrating multiple data sources, deep learning, and Web GIS technologies delivering cool intelligence for more heat resilient Australian cities and suburbs.

Learn more about our High Impact Projects here.

AURIN is funded by the Australian Government under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) to provide access to data and analysis tools for researchers investigating the most urgent and critical problems faced by Australia’s cities and regions.

“We’ve had wide-ranging consultations and conversations with our users to understand their current and future research infrastructure needs. The next generation of AURIN resources is designed around their feedback and takes advantage of recent technological advances.” – AURIN Director Professor Stuart Barr.

AURIN looks forward to supporting the future direction of NCRIS over the next decade as these changes will ensure we’re ready to meet the challenges and opportunities of the 2021 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap.