Sub-Theme
National Crossings
Crossings are structures built to facilitate the movement over, under or through another physical feature. In the Transport Theme, crossings include bridges, tunnels, fords, culverts and boardwalks.
National Datasets in this Sub-Theme
Purpose
Crossings provide connection with the road, railway, footpath, river or other feature which structures are built on to facilitate transport over or under another physical feature.
Dataset Uses
- Routeing, traffic flow management and economic analysis
- the development of routeing road networks for use by freight and logistics companies, emergency service / response authorities, and general public includes: shortest distance, fastest time and presence/absence of obstacles or restrictions depending upon mode of transport - name, structure, weight/height/speed limits or some other weighting
- predicting, analysing and modelling traffic flows, accidents, when joined with business or statistical information - may only need a list by name, but possibly also location and intersection with other roads, railways, etc.
- Context for other location information
- context for other features over local or small project areas - may show location, name, surface and user access
- context for other features on topographic maps, or other regional or national tourist maps - usually name, class, surface, and route number, obstacles or barriers
- context for charts and reference maps - generally only the location of higher order roads shown
- Asset management, infrastructure protection and public safety
- asset management systems by roads authorities
- identification of infrastructure vulnerable to different hazards
- funding to improve safety at dangerous locations
- Service provision
- Being able to calculate the remoteness of communities by comparing a location to the nearest urban centres, particularly to identify areas poorly served by medical facilities
- funding determinations for infrastructure investment
Standards and Specifications
Access and Licensing
Access and Licensing Details
Quality
- The roads component of this dataset conforms to the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying & Mapping's roads data model and PSMA's business rules for this product
- Accuracy of data varies from:
- Approximately 2m in metropolitan areas
- 10–20m in urban fringe and rural areas
- 50–150m in remote areas. There are breaks in connectivity at state borders
Data is six months old when released to market but in rural and remote areas features have a currency of 5–20 years
- Information is available that describes:
- Type of road
- Surface
- User access and physical restrictions
This information is at various levels of completeness depending upon the jurisdiction. Information may also not be consistently classified between states and territories – for example, an arterial road in one state may not be the same as an arterial road in another
Current Status
In each jurisdiction, the land management or mapping agency creates and manages datasets representing the location of a crossing. This information may be integrated from data held by transport authorities, derived from GPS data, roads defined in the cadastre, or from interpretation from satellite or airborne imagery.
Until 2006, data captured under Commonwealth mapping programs was not integrated with state and territory datasets. Since 2006, data captured in collaboration with the Commonwealth under the National Topographic Information Coordination Initiative will also be incorporated into state/territory datasets – these are mostly crossings in rural and remote areas which have not been revised for up to twenty years. As these are significant updates to a large number of crossings over large areas, these will take some time to be integrated into state and territory datasets.
There is currently no single vertical integration of all transport datasets, as listed, for the national coverage
Future Status
Short-term objectives
Provide a nationally consistent transport dataset which supports and delivers transport information through the vertical and horizontal integration of the listed datasets. This will allow linking of location of these features across all themes.
Dataset custodianship will sit with the relevant state and territory land management authority.
A national custodianship of the national crossing dataset needs to be confirmed significant stakeholders including:
- Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, as the lead Australian Government agency on transport and regional affairs
- Bureau of Meteorology, due to its role under the Commonwealth Water Act 2007 for water flow forecasting, modelling and prediction
- Commonwealth Grants Commission, due to its role in assigning funding to state governments through GST revenue
- Geoscience Australia, due to its role as the national mapping authority and its close collaboration with state and territory agencies in maintaining all topographic information, its role in maintaining information on exposure of infrastructure to hazards, and its underpinning role in providing spatial advice to other parts of Australian Government.
- Austroads, as the representative agency of transport authorities in Australia
The National Topographic Information Coordination Initiative will continue to address consistency issues in dataset content, and compliance with the ICSM Roads Data Model, by:
- Integrating the GEODATA Topo-250K data content into datasets managed by the states and territories, with subsequent aggregation by PSMA Australia
- Undertaking data capture programs to bring state and territory information up to the standard of the ICSM Roads Data Model content specifications
- National information products will be made available as web services
Medium-term objectives
- Crossings information included in national topographic mapping products will be derived from the datasets in states and territories
- Data held by transport authorities which is categorised as part of the foundation will be integrated with the foundation datasets
- Crossings will be captured no greater than 1m in urban areas and between 2m and 10m in remote areas if captured from imagery
Long-term objectives
- National information products will have near-real-time currency – crossings recently gazetted or proposed will be made available in the national product overnight
- All national information products will be available under open access arrangements (for example, by CCBY) at zero cost