Flood, fire and the future: the road to resilience

Recent weather events and the COVID pandemic have highlighted the importance of resilience and sustainability of transport for supply chains across the Australian economy. Can the time series of road closure data collected by the Hub help us to understand then predict the impact of natural disasters on our roads?

Can we mash up information about road inventory and condition, with information about delays and congestion, rain and flooding, even soil type, for better understanding and planning for road building, maintenance and resilience into the future?

Predicting the impact of road closures from events such as floods or fires or future pandemic shutdowns would be an important planning tool for freight operators.

About the Data:

Every Australian, everywhere, every day, relies on freight.

The National Freight Data Hub (NFDH) is a new way for industry and governments to share and use freight data. The Hub will provide open access to government data, help industry share data together, and collectively answer the big questions about Australia's freight performance and how we can improve it.

Freight operators, producers and customers will benefit from the increased data sharing generated from the Hub, helping everyone understand better how and where freight is being moved, where the delays are and where the opportunities are to become more globally competitive.

The prototype National Freight Data Hub website was launched in May 2021 to demonstrate the value of improved access to freight data. An enduring website is under development and will extend the prototype further.

We consulted across industry, governments, researchers and other stakeholders to understand the enduring questions about Australian freight:

1. What freight is being moved to, from and around Australia?
2. Where is freight being moved?
3. How is freight being moved?
4. How can we enhance supply chain visibility?
5. What and where are the physical and regulatory bottlenecks and barriers for the efficient and safe movement of freight?
6. What proportion of traffic is freight?
7. How well are Australia's freight transport networks performing?
8. How do the costs of Australia's supply chains compare with international competitors?
9. How much of the freight fleet is running with spare capacity and what are the opportunities to increase efficiency of back loading?
10. What and where are the opportunities for freight movements to be more efficient and safer?

Additional Information:

Relevant links:

See https://datahub.freightaustralia.gov.au/about/ for more about us. We have developed a series of interactive prototype visualisations to begin exploring how existing freight data could be applied to some of our enduring questions. You can explore these existing interactive insights at https://datahub.freightaustralia.gov.au/insights/. For GovHack you could make new ones, or suggest improvements to existing ones.

The National Freight Data Hub prototype catalogue has a curated selection of over 200 freight data sets: https://data.datahub.freightaustralia.gov.au/. For GovHack 2022 we’d like to draw your attention to these new and extensive entries:
• Truck Telematics data - https://data.datahub.freightaustralia.gov.au/dataset/bitre-truck-telematics
• ABS data for International Merchandise Trade - https://data.datahub.freightaustralia.gov.au/dataset/abs-data-for-international-merchandise-trade
• Road Asset Register - https://data.datahub.freightaustralia.gov.au/dataset/asset-registers
• Roadworks - https://data.datahub.freightaustralia.gov.au/dataset/harmonised-national-roadworks
• Rest Stops - https://data.datahub.freightaustralia.gov.au/dataset/heavy-vehicle-rest-areas

Image credit: Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts.