Keynotes – 7th Smart Data Cities & 17th 3D GeoInfo

Hon Minister Rob Stokes

Rob Stokes is the NSW Minister for Infrastructure, Cities and Active Transport.

He has been a Member of the NSW Parliament since 2007 and has served as Minister for Planning and Public Spaces, Minister for Transport and Roads, Minister for Education, Minister for Environment, Minister for Heritage and Minister for the Central Coast.

Rob is an Honorary Fellow with Macquarie Law School, holds a double degree in arts and law from Macquarie University, a Masters of Science from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in planning law.

Hon Minister Victor Dominello

Victor Dominello is a senior Minister in the New South Wales Government and has held various portfolios over the last decade including Aboriginal Affairs, Innovation and Finance.

In 2019 he was appointed the inaugural Minister for Customer Service and in 2021 was also appointed the inaugural Minister for Digital Government.

Victor firmly believes the use of real-time data and technology are the most powerful ways to improve quality of life and reduce suffering.

Victor was a member of the original Crisis Cabinet which led the NSW response to Covid-19 and now sits on the Covid-19 and Economic Recovery Committee.

His particular focus has been on delivering digital solutions such as the Service NSW QR code check-in feature and the real-time data analysis which has informed the state’s decision making.

Victor has been the driving force behind the roll out of the Digital Driver Licence, the establishment of the $2.1b Digital Restart Fund and the rapid expansion of the Service NSW app to include QR code check-ins, the voucher programs, such as Dine and Discover, Covid-19 test alert notifications and the registration of positive rapid antigen tests.

In addition to digital, technology and customer experience, Victor is also obsessed with Batman.

Kiersten Fishburn

Kiersten Fishburn is the Deputy Secretary, Cities & Active Transport at Transport for NSW. This new Division is focused on ensuring our cities and neighbourhoods are integrated with transport, making our places, streets and open spaces functional, beautiful, inclusive and inviting for all to enjoy. She brings a fresh energy to the role with ambitions to help our cities reach their full potential.

Prior to joining Transport, Kiersten led the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE) as Secretary after almost two years as head of the Planning Delivery Unit (PDU). Under her leadership the PDU oversaw the acceleration of more than 600 complex planning matters, equating to over $57 billion in economic benefit. In addition, to her responsibilities as head of the PDU, Kiersten led DPIE’s Office of Local Government and Strategy and Innovation teams.

Before joining DPIE, Kiersten led Liverpool City Council for almost four years as their Chief Executive Officer. Under her leadership, Liverpool was successfully positioned as Sydney's third CBD, seeing the largest capital investment in commercial development in its history, and securing generational opportunities from the Western Sydney City Deal.

Her professional career has been devoted to public service, having also held leadership roles at City of Sydney, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre and Accessible Arts (New South Wales’ peak arts and disability organisation).

Scott Butterworth, Chief Data Analytics Officer, PEXA

Scott Butterworth’s corporate career spans more than 25 years, having held senior roles at Boston Consulting Group, National Australia Bank, Westpac and Clydesdale Bank. Prior to joining ASX-listed Australian prop-tech PEXA in his current role as Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Scott was Chief Financial Officer with ASX-listed law firm Slater & Gordon. In his current role with PEXA, Scott leads the PEXA Insights business in the development of a new generation of data solutions that empower businesses, governments, and consumers to appropriately make more informed property-related decisions.

Greater insights have the power to transform property experiences for everyone and bring about positive social and economic change for the Australian community at large. We're investing in building a team of property data specialists, and in strategic partnerships with organisations that share our vision, including cutting-edge data firms and universities.

Scott holds a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Commerce from University of Melbourne and an MBA from IMD Business School.

Professor Volker Coors

Volker Coors is Professor in Geoinformatics and Computer Science at HFT Stuttgart. His research is focused on 3D Geospatial data infrastructure and Urban Geo-Informatics. He holds a Diploma degree with honours in Computer Sciences and a doctoral degree in Computer Graphics from Technical University of Darmstadt. From 2006-2017 he was Dean of Studies of the Information Logistics course. Since 2019 he is scientific director of the Institute for Applied Research at HFT Stuttgart. Prof. Coors is a member of the CityGML Standard Working Group (SWG) and chairman of the 3D Portrayal SWG of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). He is a founding member of the joint commission "3D-City Models" of the German Society for Cartography e.V. and the German Society for Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Geoinformation e.V. and Vice-President of the Urban Data Management Society. In 2020 he was guest editor of a special issue on “The Applications of 3D-City Models in Urban Studies” in the peer-reviewed ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Informatics.

Professor Flora Salim

Professor Flora Salim is the CISCO Chair of Digital Transport, School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW Sydney. Her research, on behaviour modelling, AI and machine learning on time-series and spatio-temporal sensor data, has been funded by the ARC, Humboldt Foundation, Bayer Foundation, Microsoft Research, Qatar National Research Fund, and many local and international industry partners. She won the Women in AI Awards 2022 ANZ - Defence and Intelligence category. She is a member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts, an Honorary Professor of RMIT University, an Associate Investigator of ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society, a member of ACM UbiComp Steering Commitee, Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems, Area Editor of Pervasive and Mobile Computing, Associate Editor of Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT). She obtained her PhD from Monash University in 2009.

Professor Nick Bailey

Nick Bailey is Professor of Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow and Director of the Urban Big Data Centre. UBDC is an international centre-of-excellence in the use of ‘digital footprints’ data and associated analytical technologies to address the challenges of urban planning, development and management. It is a multi-disciplinary research centre and national data service, funded by UKRI-ESRC. Nick is also Associate Director of the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research, which works to enhance access to linked individual-level administrative datasets. His own research focuses mainly on urban housing and neighbourhood systems.

Professor Debra Laefer

Debra Laefer is a Professor of Urban Informatics at New York University (NYU) and earned degrees from Columbia University (BA, BS), NYU (MS), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (MS, PHD). In 2001, she undertook the mission of harnessing remote sensing capabilities for city-scale engineering workflows (e.g. infrastructure assessment, disaster mitigation). This began by re-envisioning urban, aerial LiDAR data capture, creating automatic means for conversion into computational modelling, employing hyperspectral imagery for differentiating in situ mechanical attributes, and pioneering high performance computing solutions for all attributes of full waveform LiDAR and for integrating multi-dimensional datasets. Most recently, her research has challenged the underpinnings of machine learning and deep learning for LiDAR datasets and forged new conceptions in 3D epidemiology to curb COVID-19 transmission. She has authored over 200 peer-reviewed papers and received numerous awards: 2021 Oracle Outstanding Paper Award in LiDAR Data Storage; 2020 New York State GIS Association COVID-19 Award, 2020 ESRI awards, and 2019 Institution of Civil Engineers Manby ICT/GIS/BIM award. Most recently she chaired the 2021 3D GeoInfo Conference in New York City.

Professor Michael Batty

Michael Batty is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London where he is Chair of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) and a Turing Fellow in the Alan Turing Institute. He has worked on computer models of cities and their visualisation since the 1970s and his recent publications Cities and Complexity (2005), The New Science of Cities (2013), and Inventing Future Cities (2018), are all published by The MIT Press. The edited book Urban Informatics (Springer 2021) reflects his focus on the applications of digital technologies to urban planning. With Wei Yang, he published A Digital Future for Planning: Spatial Planning Reimagined, The Report of the Digital Task Force for Planning in 2022.

Professor Sugie Lee

Sugie Lee is a Professor in the Department of Urban Planning & Engineering and a director of the Urban Design & Spatial Analysis Lab (UDSAL) at Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea. He is interested in smart city, urban mobility, walkability, and urban safety as well as the application of urban big data and machine learning to address various urban problems. He has published in such academic journals as Journal of Planning Education and Research(JPER); Urban Studies; Land Use Policy; Transport Policy; Landscape and Urban Planning; Computers, Environment, and Urban System; and Environment and Planning B. He is also currently a member of the editorial board in such journals as JPER; International Journal of Urban Sciences; Journal of Korea Planning Association; and Journal of Urban Design Institute of Korea. He is a vice president of the Korea Regional Science Association and chairperson of the Seoul Metropolitan Region Planning Committee of the Korea Planning Association.

Polly Hudson

Polly Hudson is a senior research fellow at The Alan Turing Institute where she leads for the Colouring Cities Research Programme. Polly trained as an architectural historian, and worked initially in historic building restoration, museum and exhibition design, and community planning. In 1996 she set up The Building Exploratory charitable trust in London as a prototype for creative, multidisciplinary knowledge sharing centres designed to improve local building stocks, built by and for local communities in collaboration with academia, local government and industry. Here she tested the first iteration of Colouring London, and over the next decade experimented with the visualisation and animation spatial data relating to cities and climate change. From 2014-2019 she was based at Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), University College London where she is a senior research fellow. Polly is a member of the ‘Computer Vision for Digital Heritage’ and ‘Facilitating Participation in Data Science ‘special interest groups at Turing. She sits on the UK’s Digital Twin Hub Community Council and has held public appointments at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, English Heritage, The Royal Institute of British Architects, and The National Lottery.

Professor Elizabeth Wentz

Elizabeth Wentz is the Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate College and a professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. She is the Director and PI of the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience, an ASU initiative to support Maricopa County, Arizona by sharing knowledge, catalyzing discovery, and exchanging responses to challenges together, in order to build community resilience. Her research focuses on the design, implementation and evaluation of geographic technologies with particular emphasis on how such technologies can be used to understand urban environments. Geographic technologies, which include Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing, and spatial analysis, offer insight into how human activities and physical space relate in urban systems by using quantitative methods to measure and analyze such activities.