Australian research portal unveiled

September 9, 2009:A new on-line portal that brings together research on climate and agriculture by more than 40 Commonwealth and State Government organisations has been launched.

Andrew Campbell, former head of Land & Water Australia and one of the founders behind the project said: “Australia’s challenges in Agriculture, Natural Resource Management and Climate Change are formidable.

"Meeting these challenges will require innovation and new knowledge, and it will also mean making the best possible use of existing knowledge. That requires the ability for people to access existing information easily, and to find out what research is already in train and who is doing it. This fantastic on-line initiative tackles all those objectives. It will help Australian science agencies to minimise the risk of unnecessary duplication, and to maximise the return from public investment in science.”

Bruce Wren, CEO of Netcat said: “While it’s exciting to be providing the cornerstone Web 2.0 technology behind AANRO, as a Company we’re proud to be involved in a project that is addressing one of the biggest challenges facing our nation”.

Netcat.Biz is developing and managing AANRO and has provided a platform with advanced search, database management, web content management, geospatial integration and web publishing.

The Company is the developer of Netcat WCM web content management (CMS) and portal software products which are installed in numerous large and mid-scale government and corporate organisations.

AANRO has been developed to prevent duplication of effort through providing researchers with access to a Web 2.0 Portal with access to material previously hidden in proprietary databases.

The AANRO website can be found at www.aanro.net.