New NICTA facility to focus on national security
New NICTA facility to focus on national security
Feb 18, 2005: A new National ICT Australia (NICTA) facility in has been officially opened in Queensland which will be focused on researching and developing solutions to protect Australia's online environment.
NICTA was formed by the Federal Government to attract, develops, and network talent for Australia’s future prosperity in the ICT market. Its research efforts focus on the technology challenges facing industry, community, and the national interest.
At the official opening of the new Queensland facility in Brisbane, NICTA also announced that it had signed contribution agreements with the University of Queensland, Griffith University, and Queensland University of Technology, with each university to provide support to NICTA Queensland to the value of $2 million over the next four years. This funding comes in addition to $4 million contributed by the Queensland Government, through the Department of State Development and Innovation over a four year period, announced last year. NICTA also plans to invest a similar amount out of its Australian government funding over the same period.
Dr Chris Scott has been appointed as the research director for the Queensland operation.
"Dr Scott has a strong commercial and research background having worked in both large commercial organisations and academic institutes," said Mr Roach. "This experience makes him an ideal leader to drive our research efforts in this vibrant State".
NICTA has tasked Dr Chris Scott - who has been appointed as the centre's research director - to build a research capacity focusing on developing new ICT-based solutions under the theme of ‘Safeguarding Australia’. These solutions will address potential and real threats to Australia such as, terrorism, crime, invasive disease and pests, as well as protecting the security of the online environment within Australia from cyber crime.
The initial focus in this new facility is disaster prevention, response, and recovery. At the heart of this is infrastructure monitoring and decision support where the new team will be working on breakthroughs in ubiquitous sensing, signal processing, computation, analysis, and communications, which will provide real-time information on the impact of an incident delivering a more effective and timely response.
According to Dr Scott, "This project aims to improve prevention, detection, prediction, and recovery co-ordination in disaster situations. We will employ technical expertise in the areas of spatial signal and information processing, networked embedded systems, data mining and integration, and context aware information presentation."
The facility is expected to house 20 researchers and 25 students working on four research projects by the end of 2005.
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